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...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...Barrett signed newspaper ad in 2006 sponsored by St Joseph County Right to Life, an extreme anti-choice group
Amy Coney Barrett, the Trump administration’s supreme court nominee, publicly supported an organization in 2006 that has said life begins at fertilization. It has also said that the discarding of unused or frozen embryos created in the in vitro fertilization (IVF) process ought to be criminalized, a view that is considered to be extreme even within the anti-abortion movement.
The revelation is likely to lead to new questions about how Barrett’s personal views on abortion may not only shape reproductive rights in the US for decades to come if she is confirmed by the Senate, but how her appointment could affect legal rights for women undergoing fertility treatment, as well as their doctors.
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...A black civil rights campaigner says he was the victim of an 'attempted lynching' by a group of white men and 'would be a hashtag' had friends not intervened during the incident at a southern Indiana lake.
Vauhxx Booker, who is a member of the Monroe county human rights commission, said the men pinned him against a tree, shouted racial slurs and one of them threatened to 'get a noose' at Monroe Lake near Bloomington over the Fourth of July weekend.
Booker uploaded clips of the encounter to social media, where they were widely shared. The FBI has announced it is investigating the incident
Laura Hurst was found Wednesday evening in a house owned by a local sheriff that contained 140 snakes
An Indiana woman has died after she was found with an 8ft python wrapped around her neck in a house owned by a local sheriff that accommodates a collection of snakes.
Laura Hurst, 36, apparently kept some snakes in the house in Oxford, Indiana, Sgt Kim Riley, an Indiana state police spokesman, said, according to a report in the Lafayette Journal & Courier.
Continue reading...The Guardian visits three gay bars in Texas, Mississippi and Indiana, where the owners and punters share how important those spaces remain for a community threatened by Trump
Authorities said a man died after a shooting involving a police officer in South Bend, the Indiana city where the Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg is mayor.
Buttigieg said he changed his campaign schedule to return to South Bend on Sunday and hold a late-night news conference. He said the circumstances of the death would be thoroughly investigated, and called on any witnesses of the shooting to come forward and speak to investigators.
Continue reading...By many measures, Buttigieg’s mayoral career has been a success – but his policies have not pleased everyone and poverty and crime are still high
Jack Colwell was a young reporter with a big story. Trade union sources told him that the Studebaker car plant, the beating heart of South Bend, Indiana, was closing down with a loss of nearly 7,000 jobs that would devastate the community. On 9 December 1963, above his byline, the front page headline on the South Bend Tribune newspaper read: “Auto output to end here.”
Related: 'They call me Mayor Pete': Buttigieg launches 2020 presidential run
Continue reading...The vice-president and the Democratic hopeful are both Christian and have worked together but in the age of Trump, they and their fellow Hoosiers sense a looming battle
Both are from modestly sized cities in Indiana. Both were baptised Catholic but came to embrace other branches of Christianity. Both found inspiration in former president John F Kennedy as they launched political careers of their own.
The parallels between Mike Pence and Pete Buttigieg stop there.
Continue reading...Bones were found to be a part of a collection of over 40,000 artifacts in the home of Don Miller, an artifacts collector
The FBI has discovered about 2,000 human bones at the home of an extreme artifacts collector in rural Indiana.
The bones were found to be a part of a collection of over 40,000 artifacts in the home of Don Miller, a second world war veteran and former electrical engineer, CBS reported Tuesday.
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