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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

South Carolina: State asks for mental evaluation of Dylann Roof

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Dylann Roof
Dylann Roof
Prosecutors say they want an independent psychological evaluation of accused church shooter Dylann Roof to rebut or confirm the findings from a pair of evaluations performed by the defense team's experts.

The request comes about a week after a judge delayed the murder trial until 2017 to give psychologists more time to draw conclusions about Roof's mental state. 

Defense attorneys estimated it would take another 6 months for the full reported to be completed.

"In the present case, recent hearings leave no doubt of the defense's intentions to present mental health evidence during the sentencing phase of this trial," Solicitor Scarlett Wilson said in the filing.

Wilson says the mental evaluation will be sealed from the State until the penalty phase begins to prevent self-incrimination by Roof.

Roof is accused of killing 9 black parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in downtown Charleston. He faces a number of murder and attempted murder charges for the shooting and prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty.

Roof also faces nearly three dozen federal hate crimes charges, but the Attorney General's office has not yet announced whether it will seek the death penalty also. As a result, that decision has caused a delay in scheduling the federal trial.

Roof's attorneys at the state and federal level have said multiple times that Roof is willing to plead guilty if prosecutors remove the possiblity of death as a sentence.

Source: WCIV news, April 21, 2016

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Location: South Carolina, USA
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