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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)

Ohio Parole board: No clemency for death row inmate

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Ray Tibbetts
Ray Tibbetts
The execution of a 59-year-old man who killed his wife and the elderly man she cared for now may go forward after Ohio's parole board recommended Friday that Gov. John Kasich deny clemency.

Ray Tibbetts, 59, is scheduled to be executed on July 26.

The constitutionality of the state's lethal injection process, however, is still being considered in federal court. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is reviewing a judge's order that found Ohio's execution procedures unconstitutional. 

Kasich's office has said it believes its appeal will be successful, allowing the state to move forward with the first executions since 2014 – when a man suffered during an execution.

Tibbetts is on death row for the 1997 killings of his wife, Judith Sue Crawford, and 67-year-old Fred Hicks in an Over-the-Rhine home. 

Prosecutors said Hicks, who used an oxygen tank to breathe, may have been asleep when Tibbetts stabbed him multiple times. Three knives and a blade broken from a knife handle were left in Hicks' body.

In voting 11-1 to recommend that clemency be denied, the parole board's report called the killing of Hicks "particularly senseless and gratuitous."

During his more than six years as governor, Kasich has commuted the sentences of five death row inmates to life in prison without parole. 

He has allowed 12 executions to go forward.

Source: cincinnati.com, March 10, 2017

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