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Activists Call on President Biden to End the Federal Death Penalty Before Leaving Office

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A conversation with Death Penalty Action Co-founder and Executive Director Abe Bonowitz. Now that Joe Biden is a lame duck president, activists are holding him accountable to make good on his promise to end the federal death penalty during his remaining six months as president. Biden’s election campaign in 2020 had pledged to end the federal death penalty and incentivize the remaining 27 states that still allow executions to do the same. While he made history as the first president in the United States to openly oppose the death penalty, there has been no movement to actually end federal executions during his nearly four years in office.

Texas executes Billy Galloway

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HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A South Dakota parolee condemned for killing an Army officer during a robbery and beating in Texas has been executed.

Billy Galloway's lethal injection Thursday evening comes a day after his former cellmate was put to death for the same crime.

Galloway (left)  had a long, violent history culminating in the slaying of 37-year-old David Logie in September 1998. The Army major from Fayetteville, N.C. was bludgeoned with a hammer and a tree limb behind a building in Greenville, about 50 miles northeast of Dallas.

It was one of two slayings blamed on Galloway and Kevin Varga during a cross-country rampage of crime.

The 41-year-old Varga was executed Wednesday evening. Twenty-four hours later, the 41-year-old Galloway became the ninth prisoner executed this year in the nation's most active death penalty state.

Galloway becomes the 18th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1206th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Source: AP, May 13, 2010
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Saudi Arabia Executes Abdul Majid Al-Nimr

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The Judiciary Fabricates Charges and Issues Arbitrary Sentences, While the Interior Ministry Falsifies Information On August 17, 2024, the Saudi Press Agency published a statement issued by the Ministry of Interior announcing the execution of Abdul Majid bin Hassan bin Abdullah Al-Nimr. The statement did not specify the type of sentence carried out, but it mentioned that it was issued by the Specialized Criminal Court, indicating that it was likely a discretionary (ta’zir) sentence. The statement listed the charges that the sentence was supposedly based on, including committing criminal acts involving betrayal of his country, joining a terrorist cell affiliated with the Al-Qaeda organization, financing terrorism and terrorist activities, and supporting extremist ideologies.
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Activists Call on President Biden to End the Federal Death Penalty Before Leaving Office

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A conversation with Death Penalty Action Co-founder and Executive Director Abe Bonowitz. Now that Joe Biden is a lame duck president, activists are holding him accountable to make good on his promise to end the federal death penalty during his remaining six months as president. Biden’s election campaign in 2020 had pledged to end the federal death penalty and incentivize the remaining 27 states that still allow executions to do the same. While he made history as the first president in the United States to openly oppose the death penalty, there has been no movement to actually end federal executions during his nearly four years in office.
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Saudi Arabia | Execution caught on video

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Public execution in Saudi Arabia (file photo) A Saudi newspaper has carried a film showing the beheading of a man convicted of raping a teenaged boy before murdering him in the heart of the desert. The rare and shocking 51-second film showed the executioner bringing down his sword on the defendant’s head, which was severed in just a split of second. The executioner, a tall man wearing traditional Saudi dishdasha (gown) and ghutra (head cover), then wiped blood off his sword with a piece of cloth after the beheading before walking away from the rapist’s headless body. Sharq newspaper, which published the film, did not say how it was shot as filming of executions in the conservative Gulf kingdom is banned. Newspapers said the unnamed defendant had been convicted of abducting the Saudi boy to a desolate desert area and raping him. He then forced him to lie on the sand and crushed him with his four-wheel car. Warning: Graphic Content ✔ RELATED VIDEO
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Drug convicts await ‘shock’ execution in Saudi Arabia

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Since May, Saudi Arabia has executed 28 people on drug-related charges, according to a tally based on official statements, up from just two in all of 2023 The two Egyptian inmates ate a routine final dinner in a prison in northern Saudi Arabia, not knowing they would be put to death for drug crimes the next morning.  Their abrupt killing this month extended a recent spree of drug-related executions in Saudi Arabia, after officials ended a moratorium on the death penalty for such crimes less than two years ago. 
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Group asks Gov. Cooper to commute all North Carolina death sentences before leaving office

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The North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty met Sunday afternoon at The Church on Morgan in downtown Raleigh.  There, advocates called for Gov. Roy Cooper to commute all death sentences in North Carolina before he leaves office. Rev. Sharon Risher lost her mother and 2 cousins in 2015 during the Charleston shooting, when 21-year-old Dylann Roof killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
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New billboard hopes to attract more attention to Alabama death row inmate Toforest Johnson’s case

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Amid Rising Executions, Iran Puts Three More to Death

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The Islamic Republic of Iran has carried out the executions of three more prisoners amid a rise in the use of the death penalty. A prisoner previously sentenced to death on drug-related charges was executed in Urmia Prison on Wednesday morning. Human rights groups identified the prisoner as Mohammad Daghestani, who was arrested on drug charges and later sentenced to death by the Islamic Republic's judiciary.
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Missouri court hearing this week about new DNA evidence in death penalty case

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(Jefferson City, MO) – A St. Louis County Court is scheduled to hear about new DNA evidence this week involving a prisoner who could be executed next month. The case involves Marcellus Williams, who was convicted in the 1998 stabbing death of Felisha Gayle, a former social worker and newspaper reporter. Last January, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell filed a motion to vacate Williams’ conviction. 
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Alabama death row inmate's lawyers seek to block his execution by 'torturous' new method

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Lawyers for a man scheduled to be executed with nitrogen gas this fall argued in a court filing that Alabama has ignored problems with the method as it seeks to carry out more executions Lawyers for an Alabama inmate, set to be executed with nitrogen gas this fall, have argued in a recent court filing that the state has overlooked issues with the execution method as it plans to carry out more nitrogen executions.
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