Category Archives: Capital punishment

Louisiana denies clemency hearings to five death row prisoners

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There was a rush to hold hearings before the anti-death penalty governor, John Bel Edwards, leaves office in January

The Louisiana state board of pardons has voted against granting clemency hearings to five Louisiana death row prisoners, effectively ending a campaign to hold hearings for 55 death row inmates before the state’s anti-death penalty governor, John Bel Edwards, steps down in January.

On Friday, the four-member panel sitting in Baton Rouge denied the hearings to four people on a split vote, and by a majority to a fifth, Winthrop Earl Eaton, who was convicted in the 1985 killing of a Louisiana pastor, on the grounds that he is unlikely to be executed because he is mentally incompetent.

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Nun accuses Louisiana of blocking death row clemency appeals in lawsuit

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Sister Helen Prejean, known for 1995 film Dead Man Walking, accues board of pardons of breaking state’s public meetings law

Sister Helen Prejean, the Catholic nun and anti-death penalty advocate, is accusing Louisiana’s board of pardons of breaking the state’s public meetings law to effectively delay clemency petitions for death row inmates.

The action pits the 84-year-old sister, who came to prominence as the author of the book behind the 1995 film Dead Man Walking, against Louisiana’s far-right attorney general, Jeff Landry. Landry is part of a legal effort seeking to block the pardon board from hearing mass clemency petitions.

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‘Astonishingly cruel’: Alabama seeks to test execution method on death row ‘guinea pig’

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Nine months after Kenneth Smith’s botched lethal injection, state attorney general has asked for approval to kill him with nitrogen

Kenneth Smith is one of two living Americans who can describe what it is like to survive an execution, having endured an aborted lethal injection last November during which he was subjected to excruciating pain tantamount, his lawyers claim, to torture.

Nine months later Smith has been singled out for another undesirable distinction. If the state of Alabama has its way, he will become the test dummy for an execution method that has never before been used in judicial killings and which veterinarians consider unacceptable as a form of euthanasia for animals – death by nitrogen gas.

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Singapore executes man over drugs in third hanging in a week

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Punishment for heroin trafficking comes just days after city executes first woman in nearly 20 years

Singapore has executed a 39-year-old man who was convicted of trafficking heroin in the city-state’s third hanging in just over a week, authorities say.

Mohamed Shalleh Adul Latiff was sentenced to death for possessing about 55g of heroin “for the purpose of trafficking” in 2019.

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Singapore executes a woman for first time in almost two decades

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Saridewi Djamani was handed a death penalty after being convicted of trafficking 30g of heroin in 2018

Singapore has hanged Saridewi Djamani, the first woman to be executed in the city state in almost 20 years, amid an outcry from human rights groups.

The 45-year-old Singaporean national, who was sentenced to death in 2018 for trafficking about 30g of heroin, was executed early on Friday, the Central Narcotics Bureau said.

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Ghana abolishes death penalty, with expected reprieve for 176 condemned prisoners

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Country joins growing list of African nations free of capital punishment, but execution remains for high treason

Ghana has become the 29th country in Africa to abolish the death penalty in a move hailed by human rights activists.

The decision means that the 176 people currently on death row, including six women, are likely to have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

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Singapore to execute a woman for first time in almost 20 years

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Killing of Saridewi Djamani is one of two this week as activists say most on death row are marginalised people

Singapore is due to execute a woman for the first time in almost 20 years on Friday, one of two killings planned for this week.

Singaporean national Saridewi Djamani was sentenced to the mandatory death penalty in 2018, after she was found guilty of possession of about 30g of heroin for the purposes of trafficking, according to the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC), which tracks death row cases.

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Alabama due to resume executions despite botching three last year

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James Barber due to die on Friday but granddaughter of Dorothy Epps, the woman he murdered, doesn’t want it to happen

Alabama is due to resume executions on Thursday despite botching three last year and after a review of capital punishment practices in the southern state was largely kept from public view.

The inmate set to die by lethal injection by 6am on Friday is James Barber. Now 54, he was convicted of the murder of Dorothy Epps, who was 75, in 2001.

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Arizona man freed after nearly three decades on death row

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Barry Jones pleads guilty to lesser charge in deal to overturn his conviction for murder of four-year-old girl in 1994

An Arizona man who spent nearly three decades on death row before the reversal of his conviction over the death of a four-year-old girl has been freed from prison.

Barry Jones’s release, ordered on Thursday, came after a Tuscon-area state court judge approved a deal between prosecutors and him which involved his pleading guilty to a lesser murder charge. According to prosecutors, a medical review of the case failed to conclude that Jones caused the girl’s fatal injury, and his pleading guilty to second-degree murder involves his failure to adequately seek emergency care for the victim.

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Missouri man executed for killing two jailers in failed escape plot

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Michael Tisius, 42, received a lethal injection for killing Leon Egley and Jason Acton at the small Randolph county jail in 2000

A man who shot and killed two rural Missouri jailers nearly 23 years ago during a failed attempt to help an inmate escape was executed on Tuesday evening.

Michael Tisius, 42, received a lethal injection of pentobarbital at the state prison in Bonne Terre and was pronounced dead at 6.10 pm . He was convicted of the 22 June 2000 killing of Leon Egley and Jason Acton at the small Randolph county jail.

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Iran hangs two men for blasphemy as executions rise amid unrest

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Deaths take number of prisoners executed to at least 203 since start of this year, says human rights group

Iran has hanged two men convicted of blasphemy, according to authorities, carrying out rare death sentences for the crime as the number of executions soars across the Islamic Republic after months of unrest.

The country remains one of the world’s top executioners, having put to death at least 203 prisoners so far this year, according to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights. But executions for blasphemy remain rare, as in previous cases the sentences have been reduced by authorities.

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Iran executes Swedish-Iranian for alleged terrorism

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Habib Farajollah Chaab allegedly behind attack that killed dozens of people in southern province of Khuzistan in 2018

Iran has executed a man who was allegedly behind an attack that killed dozens of people at a military parade in the southern province of Khuzistan in 2018, state media have reported.

Habib Farajollah Chaab had been sentenced to death for being “corrupt on Earth”, a capital offence under Iran’s strict Islamic laws.

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Oklahoma death row inmate loses clemency bid despite attorney general appeal

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Only Republican governor Kevin Stitt stands between Richard Glossip and the death chamber, with lethal injection set for 18 May

Richard Glossip, a death row prisoner in Oklahoma who has insisted he is innocent since he was convicted of murder 25 years ago, has been denied clemency even though the state’s Republican attorney general made an unprecedented appeal to spare his life.

The pardon and parole board voted by 2-2 on Wednesday to deny Glossip, 60, clemency in the face of exceptional resistance from Republican politicians in Oklahoma who have joined forces to try and stop his execution going ahead. As things now stand, only the Republican governor Kevin Stitt stands between Glossip and the death chamber, with lethal injection set for 18 May.

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Singapore executes man over plot to smuggle 1kg of cannabis

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Tangaraju Suppiah was hanged despite international pleas to reconsider capital punishment for drugs offences

Singapore has hanged a prisoner for conspiracy to smuggle one kilogram of cannabis, authorities said, ignoring international protests and concerns that he lacked full access to a lawyer or interpreter.

The United Nations Human Rights Office had called for Singapore to “urgently reconsider” the hanging and British tycoon Richard Branson had urged the city state halt it.

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Singaporean on death row denied access to lawyers, say activists

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Tangaraju Suppiah, due to be hanged this week, forced to self-represent after unsuccessful appeal

A Singaporean man who is due to be hanged this week for abetting an attempt to smuggle cannabis is one of a growing number of death row prisoners who have to represent themselves after their appeals because they cannot access lawyers, activists have said.

Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, was sentenced to death in 2018 after a judge found he was the owner of a phone number used to coordinate an attempt to traffic 1 kilogram of cannabis. He is due to be executed on Wednesday.

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Japanese man granted retrial after 45 years on death row

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Iwao Hakamada, 87, was convicted of four murders in 1968 but granted ‘temporary release’ in 2014 after new evidence emerged

A court in Japan has granted a retrial to a man – thought to be the world’s longest-serving death row inmate – who was sentenced to hang for the murders of a family of four almost six decades ago.

The Tokyo high court ruled on Monday that Iwao Hakamada, 87, should be tried again for the crimes in a decision campaigners said was a “step towards justice”.

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Republican sorry for suggesting ‘hanging by a tree’ as execution method

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Tennessee lawmaker Paul Sherrell faced fierce criticism for ‘grotesque suggestion’ in southern state with history of lynchings

A Tennessee Republican lawmaker apologised after suggesting “hanging by a tree” could be added to a bill concerning methods of execution in the state.

Paul Sherrell, a state representative from Sparta, made the suggestion on Tuesday, during discussion of an amendment which would allow execution by firing squad in Tennessee.

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Alabama takes steps toward using nitrogen as new execution method

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But critics decry death penalty ‘experimentation’ that state is developing after a series of botched lethal injections

Alabama is close to completing a protocol that will use nitrogen gas as a new form of execution in the state, officials have said, amid warnings from advocacy groups that it is an experimental move after botched lethal injections.

On Wednesday, Alabama commissioner John Hamm, who heads the state’s prison systems, told the Associated Press, “We’re close. We’re close,” in reference to the new execution method. Hamm added that the protocol should be completed by the end of this year.

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‘He’s a bit of a prat’: voters in Ashfield turn on Lee Anderson

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The Tories’ new deputy chairman thinks he has the support of his constituency. But a tour around the market town says otherwise

Depending on your political instincts he’s a prime candidate for the “worst man in Britain”, no-nonsense voice of the people, or pugnacious darling of the Tory right.

Lee Anderson defends his inability to swerve controversy by claiming that what might make parliamentarians blanch, the people of Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, unequivocally back.

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‘Can you spell lynching?’: lawyer’s shocking note in Texas execution case

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Appeals court submission exposes racial toxicity in case of Black man John Balentine, sentenced to death for 1999 triple murder

In April 1999, John Balentine, a Black man on trial for murder in Amarillo, Texas, sat before an all-white jury as they deliberated whether he should live or die.

Should he be given a life sentence, in which case he would likely end his days behind prison bars? Or should they send him to death row to await execution?

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