Coalition is calling on president to commute sentences of all 49 federal death row inmates
A coalition of leading US civil and human rights groups is calling on Joe Biden immediately to commute the sentences of all 49 federal death row inmates and reinstate a moratorium on executions carried out by the US government.
Related: Virginia all but certain to become first southern state to abolish death penalty
Continue reading...Led by two prominent African American congresswomen, 35 Democrats have urged Joe Biden to commute the sentences of all 49 federal prisoners left on death row – days after the Trump administration finished its rush to kill 13 such prisoners.
Related: 'This is not justice': supreme court liberals slam Trump's federal executions
Continue reading...The supreme court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer have excoriated the Trump administration for carrying out its 13th and final federal execution days before the president leaves office.
Related: Dustin Higgs becomes 13th and final federal prisoner executed under Trump
Continue reading...Lisa Montgomery pronounced dead on Wednesday morning after supreme court cleared path for her death
A Kansas woman was executed early on Wednesday, the first time in nearly seven decades that the US government has put to death a female inmate.
Lisa Montgomery, 52, was pronounced dead at 1.31am after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. She was the 11th prisoner to receive a lethal injection there since July when Donald Trump, an ardent supporter of capital punishment, resumed federal executions after a 17-year hiatus.
Continue reading...First federal execution of woman in 67 years halted as judge cites need to determine her mental competence
A judge has granted another stay in what was slated to be the US government’s first execution of a female inmate in nearly seven decades.
Judge Patrick Hanlon granted the stay late on Monday, citing the need to determine Lisa Montgomery’s mental competence, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported.
Continue reading...Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on death row, was found guilty of an ‘especially heinous’ crime – but those who have looked deeply into her agonized life see it differently
Lisa Montgomery’s first experiences of sexual abuse occurred indirectly when she was three years old. She would lie in bed at night beside her beloved half-sister Diane, close enough to touch, while Diane, then eight, was being raped by their male babysitter.
At the age of 11, Montgomery learnt what it was like to be attacked herself. Her stepfather Jack, a “mean drunk” who regularly beat her and her mother, began raping her once or twice a week.
Continue reading...Lisa Montgomery, who strangled a pregnant woman and cut her baby out of her belly, is set to be executed by lethal injection on 12 January
A US appeals court has cleared the way for the only woman on federal death row to be executed before president-elect Joe Biden takes office.
The ruling, handed down on Friday by a three-judge panel on the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit, concluded that a lower court judge erred when he vacated Lisa Montgomery’s execution date in an order last week.
Continue reading...An Ohio death row inmate who survived an attempt to execute him by lethal injection in 2009 has died of possible complications of Covid-19, the state prisons system said.
Related: US judge again delays execution of woman on federal death row
Continue reading...In a last-ditch effort to stay alive, Dustin Higgs, a federal death row prisoner set to be put to death next month as part of the Trump administration’s flurry of executions in its final days in office, has petitioned the president for clemency.
Related: Trump administration has executed more Americans than all states combined, report finds
Continue reading...Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, admitted killing nine people he befriended online after they expressed suicidal thoughts
A court in Japan has sentenced to death a man dubbed the “Twitter killer” for the murders in 2017 of nine people whom he befriended online after they had expressed suicidal thoughts.
Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, admitted strangling and dismembering his victims, eight of whom were women, over the course of three months. The youngest was 15 and the oldest 26.
Continue reading...Alfred Bourgeois’s IQ put him in the intellectually disabled category, which should have barred execution, lawyers say
The Trump administration continued its unprecedented series of post-election federal executions Friday by putting to death a Louisiana truck driver who abused and killed his two-year-old daughter.
Alfred Bourgeois, 56, was pronounced dead at 8.21pm eastern time after receiving a lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Continue reading...Elected officials and human rights groups in renewed plea for end to federal executions after Bernard, 40, put to death in Indiana
A wave of outrage from human rights group, activists, elected officials, and others over the execution Thursday night of federal prisoner Brandon Bernard continued to grow on Friday behind a coordinated call for the abolition of the death penalty.
Related: First US Covid vaccinations expected next week as FDA emergency approval appears close – live
Continue reading...Saudi Arabia announced it would end capital punishment for juvenile crimes, but campaigners fear at least 10 prisoners could be executed at any time
Saudi security forces arrested Mohammed Al Faraj outside a bowling alley when he was 15 years old. The teenager from Qatif, aShia-majority province in the east of the country, was separated from his companions and transferred to a prison for adults in the city of Dammam where he was detained and denied outside contact.
When his family was finally able to visit him in October 2017, Al Faraj claimed he’d been beaten and kicked, forced into stress positions for hours and left for days in solitary confinement. Observers say Al Faraj was tortured into confessing to three crimes related to protests in the restive Qatif province, including harbouring a fugitive, attending the funeral of a relative in 2012 and sending WhatsApp messages that could affect public security. The charges carry the death penalty.
Continue reading...The US is set to execute a female federal inmate for the first time in 67 years, Donald Trump’s justice department has said.
Related: Alfre Woodard: 'We want all those with a stake in the death row business to see this film'
Continue reading...Move comes after nationwide demonstrations sparked by series of sexual assaults
Bangladesh will introduce the death penalty for rape cases, after several high-profile sexual assaults prompted a wave of protests across the country in recent weeks.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, cabinet secretary Khandker Anwarul Islam confirmed that the cabinet had approved a bill ruling that anyone convicted of rape would be punished with death or “rigorous imprisonment” for life.
Continue reading...Sentenced to death in China, American Mark Swidan hopes for a permanent reprieve but his fate may hinge on an easing of diplomatic tensions
When Chinese police raided the Guangzhou hotel room of Mark Swidan and arrested him on 13 November 2012, he was on the phone to his mother, Katherine. Swidan had been in China sourcing building materials for his business , Katherine says, and they were discussing booking his ticket home to Houston, Texas, for his wedding, when he said there was a knock at the door.
“I heard banging, then I didn’t hear anything after that,” she recalls.
Continue reading...The star of the award-winning film Clemency talks about the US prison system, her enslaved great-grandfather and her hopes for Black Lives Matter
The focus of Black Lives Matter protests has inevitably fallen on the most visible injustice - instances of police brutality. More systemic racial disparities in the American penal system are too often hidden from plain sight. The US incarcerates more of its citizens – 2.2 million people – than any other country on Earth. African American adults are nearly six times more likely to receive a prison sentence than white adults. Nearly half of the 206,000 people serving life sentences in 2018 were black, though black people represent only 13.4% of the population; almost equal numbers of white and black prisoners are currently on death row – just over 1,000 of each ethnicity – but as the prosecution of capital punishment has declined, so the racial imbalance has increased.
If ever a film could bring home the buried trauma of those latter statistics it is Clemency. The film, which won a grand jury prize at Sundance last year, has been instrumental in catalysing again urgent debates around mass incarceration, capital punishment and race.
Continue reading...Wesley Ira Purkey spoke out against capital punishment before receiving lethal injection in Indiana
The United States on Thursday carried out its second federal execution this week, killing by lethal injection a Kansas man whose lawyers contended he had dementia and was unfit to be executed.
Wesley Ira Purkey was put to death at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Continue reading...Daniel Lee put to death in Indiana after court overturns last-minute order to delay execution
The US federal government on Tuesday carried out its first execution in 17 years, putting to death the convicted murderer Daniel Lee after the supreme court cleared the way overnight, a US Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman said.
Lee was pronounced dead at 8.07am ET, the spokeswoman, Kristie Breshears, said by phone.
Continue reading...Director’s films ‘propaganda against the system’, judges reported to have declared – but coronoavirus outbreak casts doubt on whether he will accept summons to prison
Mohammad Rasoulof, the Iranian director who won the the top award at last month’s Berlin film festival, has been ordered to serve a one-year prison sentence over his movies, his lawyer has said.
Rasoulof’s sentence arose from three films that Iran’s authorities found to be “propaganda against the system”, his lawyer Nasser Zarafshan told the Associated Press. The sentence also included an order than he stop film-making for two years, the lawyer said.
Continue reading...