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Japan | Hakamada found religion, but then felt under attack by ‘the devil’

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Editor's note: This is the last in a four-part series on letters that Iwao Hakamada wrote while on death row. About a decade after cursing God, Iwao Hakamada was baptized Catholic at the Tokyo Detention House on Dec. 24, 1984. “Since I have been given the Christian name Paul, I am keenly feeling that I should be aware of the greatness of Paul.” (June 1985)

Death row inmates challenge electric chair in Tennessee execution protocol

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After state allowed use of chair in the event of a drug shortage judge permits inmates to object to chair in ongoing lawsuit

Ten death row inmates already challenging Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol were permitted by a judge Thursday to amend their lawsuit to include objections to the use of the electric chair.

The general assembly passed a law earlier this year allowing prisoners to be electrocuted if Tennessee Department of Correction officials were unable to obtain the drug used for lethal injection.

Prior to that, prisoners could not be forced to die by the electric chair, although they were allowed to choose that method under some circumstances.

The death row plaintiffs claim the new law violates both the US and Tennessee constitutions. Among other things, they claim it violates evolving standards of decency. They also claim that the law is too vague. And they question whether the state’s electric chair actually operates as it is supposed to.

Davidson County chancellor Claudia Bonnyman ruled on Wednesday that the inmates could amend their lawsuit to include the new claims. The original lawsuit challenged the state’s new lethal injection protocol, adopted in September 2013. It switched execution from the use of three drugs to just one, pentobarbital.

The switch was a response to legal challenges over the effectiveness of the three-drug mixture and a nationwide shortage of one of them, sodium thiopental. Those issues have effectively prevented any executions in Tennessee for nearly five years.


Source: The Guardian, Sept. 18, 2014
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