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Arkansas Supreme Court Decision Allows New DNA Testing in Case of the ​“West Memphis Three,” Convicted of Killing Three Children in 1993

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On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decided 4-3 to reverse a 2022 lower court decision and allow genetic testing of crime scene evidence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men convicted in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after taking an Alford plea, in which they maintained their innocence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended sentence. 

Mauritania broadens death penalty for blasphemy

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Showing repentance will no longer prevent the death penalty from being applied for blasphemy and apostasy, Mauritania said on Friday, as the conservative Muslim nation hardens up its religious laws.

The decision follows the release on November 9 of a blogger previously condemned to death for criticising religious justification for discrimination in Mauritanian society.

Mauritania village
A new bill will "harden up expected sentences for blasphemers," the government of the west African nation said in a statement released by the official AMI news agency.

"Every Muslim, man or woman, who mocks or insults Mohammed, his angels, books... is liable to face the death penalty, without being asked to repent. They will incur the death penalty even if they repent," Justice Minister Brahim Ould Daddah said, according to the statement.

The decision to free blogger Cheikh Ould Mohamed Ould Mkheitir for time served after his sentence for blasphemy was downgraded from death to 2 years in jail caused clashes and outrage in Mauritania last week.

A Muslim in his 30s, Mkheitir was sentenced in December 2014 over a blog which questioned decisions taken by the Prophet Mohammed and his companions during holy wars in the 7th century.

He also attacked the mistreatment of Mauritania's black population, blasting "an iniquitous social order" with an underclass that was "marginalised and discriminated against from birth."

Prosecutors have appealed the decision to release the blogger and are calling once more for the death penalty to be handed down.

Mauritania has not carried out the death penalty since 1987.

Justice Minister Ould Daddah said times had changed since the original law was written in 1983, and "consequently the law has to move on," AMI reported.

Source: news24.com, November 18, 2017


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"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: Mauritania
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