FEATURED POST

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

Published
Image
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.

Connecticut: Man on death row set to be resentenced in Cheshire home invasion

Published
Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky
Steven Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky
NEW HAVEN -- One of two men sent to Connecticut’s death row for the slayings of a mother and her two daughters during a 2007 home invasion is set to be resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release because the state abolished the death penalty.

Joshua Komisarjevsky is scheduled to be resentenced Tuesday in New Haven Superior Court.

He would be the third of the 11 death row inmates to be resentenced to life since the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled last year that their death sentences violated the state constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes were convicted of murder in the killings of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters, 17-year-old Hayley and 11-year-old Michaela, in Cheshire.


Hayes and Komisarjevsky broke into the Petit house at about 3 a.m. July 23, 2007, and beat Dr. William Petit Jr. on the head with a baseball bat as he was lying on a couch in the sunroom downstairs. They tied him up in the basement. Then the perpetrators tied the girls and their mother to beds upstairs.

Later that morning, Hayes forced Jennifer Hawke-Petit to drive with him to her bank and withdraw $15,000. Shortly after they returned to the house, Hayes raped and strangled her and one of the two perpetrators applied a match to gasoline that had been spread throughout the home. The girls died upstairs in the fire.

Petit was able to escape from the basement and crawl out of the house to seek help from a neighbor minutes before the fire erupted. Hayes and Komisarjevsky crashed the Petit vehicle into a police barricade nearby as they fled and were apprehended.

Source: The Associated Press, July 24, 2016

⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running!


"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." - Oscar Wilde

Location: Connecticut, USA
Related content:

Most Viewed (Last 7 Days)

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

Published
Image
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.
Read more

Iran sentences popular rapper to death for supporting Mahsa Amini protests

Published
Image
An Iranian court has sentenced to death a popular rapper jailed for more than a year and a half for supporting nationwide protests sparked by Mahsa Amini's death, local media reported Wednesday . "Branch 1 of Isfahan Revolutionary Court sentenced Toomaj Salehi to death on the charge of corruption on Earth," the singer's lawyer Amir Raisian said, quoted by the reformist Shargh newspaper.
Read more

Malaysia urged to extend moratorium on executions until full abolition of death penalty

Published
Image
PETALING JAYA: Amnesty International Malaysia has commended Malaysia for the abolition of the mandatory death penalty and for imposing a moratorium on the execution of the death sentence, which has led to an overall decrease in the use of the death penalty by the courts. However, the rights group urged the government to extend the moratorium on executions until the death penalty is fully abolished.
Read more

Could Moscow attack suspects face execution in Belarus?

Published
Image
After the deadly terrorist attack at Moscow's Crocus City Hall, some Russian politicians are debating trying the suspects to Belarus, which still has death penalty. But it's not that simple. The terror attack on Moscow's Crocus City Hall has ignited debate about the reintroduction of the death sentence in Russia. Given that 140 people died and more than 500 were wounded at the concert hall on March 22, 2024, emotions are running high.
Read more

Iran | 9 prisoners executed in a single day

Published
Image
9 prisoners of drug charges executed in the central prisons of Kerman, Chabahar and GhezelHesar According to the Iranian Human Rights Society website, on Sunday, April 21st, 2024, 9 prisoners including, Baloch and Kurdish drug suspects were executed in the central prisons of Kerman, Chah bahar, and GhezelHesar.  
Read more

Punjab | Woman sentenced to death for kidnapping, burying toddler alive

Published
Image
Neelam sentenced to death for burying toddler alive after kidnapping her, in a rare and heinous crime. The court found her guilty of murder and destruction of evidence, causing outrage in society. LUDHIANA: Over two years after the brutal murder of a toddler, the woman who killed her was sentenced to death by a local court. The convict had buried her neighbour’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter alive. 
Read more