Death Penalty News

A three-judge panel ordered a lower court to consider the feasibility of a firing squad for Jeffrey Lee but did not immediately stay his scheduled Thursday execution. A federal appeals court Monday ordered a new hearing for an Alabama death row inmate scheduled to be executed on Thursday, but did not stay the execution. The three judge panel of 11th Circuit Court of Appeals judges — U.S. District Court judges Adalberto Jordan, Robert J. Luck and Embry Kidd, appointed by Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden — ruled that Alabama’s use of nitrogen gas for executions violated the Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment for Jeffrey Lee, 50, who was sentenced to die for the 1998 murders of Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson during a pawn shop robbery.

Supreme Court says capital punishment can be awarded only when life imprisonment is unquestionably foreclosed; commutes death sentence in Uttarakhand double murder case to 25 years without remission. The Supreme Court recently observed that capital punishment can be awarded only when the alternative of life imprisonment is unquestionably foreclosed. Court explained that while deciding whether a convict deserves the death penalty, judges must carefully balance aggravating and mitigating circumstances, taking into account not only the nature of the crime but also the background of the offender, prior antecedents, socio-economic circumstances, and the possibility of reformation and rehabilitation.

Harris County district judge recommends compassionate release for Clarence Jordan A 1977 convenience store robbery that resulted in a clerk’s death landed Clarence Jordan on Texas Death Row, where he remained for decades even though he was declared incompetent for execution. On Monday, a judge recommended that the disabled man be released.  Harris County District Court Judge Katherine Thomas resentenced Jordan to life with the possibility of parole and suggested that he be considered for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Medically Recommended Intensive Supervision program, also known as compassionate release.

The fiancée of an Egyptian man who is facing trial over converting to Christianity has issued an urgent appeal for journalists to “break the silence” over what she describes as “state-sanctioned religious persecution”. Thirty-year-old Said Mansour Rezk Abdelrazek is due to stand trial at Egypt’s Terrorism Circuit Court on 15th June and faces a potential life imprisonment or death sentence. He is officially recorded as an international religious prisoner of conscience by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

Convicted child killer Tanner Horner has now taken up residence in one of the most brutal death row prisons after being sentenced to die by a Texas jury last month. Horner is incarcerated at the Polunsky Unit, an infamously restrictive prison outside Houston where the state's death row inmates are housed in an all-solitary confinement wing and spend at least 22 hours a day in their 60-square-foot cells. The former FedEx deliveryman, 34, was booked at the notorious prison on May 5 within hours of being sentenced for the gruesome murder of Athena Strand, 7, whom he admitted strangling while delivering a Christmas gift to her home in November 2022.

Indonesian authorities have arrested two Russian nationals for allegedly smuggling narcotics into Bali following a dramatic high-speed car chase at the popular tourist destination. A 52-year-old woman and a 40-year-old man were arrested on Friday for allegedly trying to smuggle 7.8kg of hashish in a suitcase from Thailand, said Indonesia's national narcotics agency on Sunday. "We secured evidence in the form of hashish weighing 7.8kg gross weight, along with passports, mobile phones, and one four-wheeled vehicle,” said narcotics agency chief Komjen Pol Suyudi Ario Seto.

A Jordanian court sentenced a citizen to death by hanging on Sunday after he was convicted of killing three drug enforcement agents during a raid earlier this year. The Jordanian state security court said, in a statement, that it “unanimously issued its final ruling on Sunday in the case concerning the martyrdom of three members of the anti-narcotics administration”. It said the accused was found guilty of charges including “physically assaulting officials charged with enforcing the narcotics law, resulting in death… and consequently sentenced him to the most severe punishment, which is the death penalty”.

The Army is preparing to carry out the executions of the military's four death-row inmates if ordered to do so by the president, according to an internal planning document reviewed by ABC News. If carried out, it would mark the first time the military executed convicted American inmates in more than a half-century The plan, dubbed "Operation Resolute Justice" and issued internally in February, directs Army officials to coordinate with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer condemned prisoners from the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to the federal execution facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the Justice Department carried out a series of non-military federal executions during President Donald Trump's first term.

Iranian authorities have executed a prisoner identified as Saber Akrami in Gorgan Central Prison. He had previously been sentenced to death on a conviction of premeditated murder. According to information obtained by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, the execution was carried out at dawn on Wednesday, June 3, 2026. Akrami, 54, was the father of four children. Sources told Hengaw that Akrami owned a local grocery store in Gorgan. Approximately three years ago, he was arrested in connection with the killing of a man in what sources described as a case linked to so-called “honor-related” motives. He was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death by the Iranian judiciary.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 5 June 2026: Afsaneh Zandabadi, a 22-year-old woman on death row for drug-related offences, was executed in Tabriz Central Prison. Despite her testifying throughout the proceedings that she had been raped, threatened, abused and groomed from childhood by her stepfather to carry the drugs, he faced no legal consequences. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a woman was hanged in Tabriz Central Prison on 18 May 2026. Her identity has been established as 22-year-old Afsaneh Zandabadi who was a victim of rape, grooming and abuse at the hands of her stepfather.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has scheduled the execution of Jeffrey Lee by nitrogen suffocation for June 11, 2026, even though his capital jury voted 7-5 against the death penalty and chose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. The trial judge overrode the jury’s verdict and sentenced Mr. Lee to death in 2000, relying on a unique Alabama practice that allowed judges to overrule jury verdicts in death penalty cases. Alabama is the only state where judges overrode jury verdicts of life to impose the death penalty routinely—in more than 100 cases since 1976. As a result, nearly 20% of the people currently on Alabama’s death row were sentenced to death by elected judges even after their juries chose life imprisonment without parole.

Kaohsiung, June 5 (CNA) A 74-year-old man was sentenced to death on Friday for killing three women in separate incidents between 2024 and 2025, following convictions for murder, desecration, and abandonment of corpses, according to a court ruling. The Kaohsiung District Court, composed of a panel of three professional and six citizen judges, also convicted Chang Chieh-tsung (張介宗) of theft, including illegally withdrawing NT$5,000 using a victim's debit card. Chang was also sentenced to the deprivation of his civil rights for life.

The Supreme Court has upheld the death sentences of Alireza Mordasi, an imprisoned teacher held in Ahvaz’s Sheiban Prison. He was arrested on or around August 1, 2023, in Ahvaz by security forces. He was transferred to Sheiban Prison (also spelled Sheyban) in Ahvaz, where he remains.  Mordasi was arrested alongside others as part of a larger case. State media claimed the group had links to the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI/MEK, an exiled opposition group) and planned "disruptive operations" or "terrorist" activities in provinces including Khuzestan. 

Hassan Amiri and Hossein Amiri, 20-year-old twin brothers and co-defendants in the same case, have been sentenced to death by Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court of Tehran, presided over by Judge Iman Afshari, on charges of “collaboration with Israel.” The brothers, who were subjected to severe physical and psychological torture during detention, are currently being held in Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj and face the imminent risk of execution.

The Final Letter of a Student Executed Before His Appeal Was Heard The family of Vahid Ben Amerian did not know their son would be executed that morning. No notice arrived from the court. His lawyers were not informed that the sentence would be carried out, even as his case was still pending before Iran’s Supreme Court. The family learned through state media that the top electrical engineering student had been executed on April 4 alongside five other prisoners. Before his execution, Vahid sent his mother a final message: “What greater honor is there than for you and me, Mother, to pay the price of resilience, to endure this pain, and to have made an impact on the fate of our people?”

South Asian country enacted new anti-rape law in wake of 2020 incident A Pakistani court has upheld the death sentences awarded to two men for raping a French woman in front of her children six years ago. Abid Ali and Shadqat Ali were accused of assaulting the foreign tourist on the busy Lahore-Sialkot motorway in September 2020. Investigators said the 32-year-old woman’s car had run out of fuel, leaving her stranded on the highway after midnight. She was calling for help when the two men pulled up. They broke the windows of the car, dragged the tourist and her children to a nearby field and sexually assaulted her. They were sentenced to death by a trial court in March 2021 but moved to the Lahore High Court for reprieve later that year.

At least 80 prisoners, including 17 political prisoners, were executed in prisons across Iran during May 2026, according to data compiled by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights. The figure represents a decrease of 83 executions, or approximately 51%, compared with the same month in 2025, when at least 163 executions were recorded. Hengaw has verified the identities of 76 of those executed, while the identities of four others remain under investigation. Among those executed was a woman, Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old from Parsabad, who was executed in Ardabil Central Prison after being convicted of murder.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 2 June 2026: Morteza Sadeghzadeh, Kurdish man on death row for drug-related offences, was executed in Damghan Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was hanged in Damghan Prison on 1 June 2026. His identity has been established as Morteza Sadeghzadeh, a 28-year-old Kurdish man. He was arrested around three years ago and sentenced to death on drug-related charges by the Revolutionary Court. At the time of writing, his execution not been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran.

An Australian woman has been arrested in Indonesia for allegedly receiving a delivery of cannabis-infused vape liquid. Indonesian police have arrested an Australian woman allegedly found with 59 millilitres of vape liquid containing cannabis that she said was for pain relief but can land her in prison. The woman, 53, risks 20 years behind bars under Indonesia's no-exceptions anti-drug laws, narcotics officer I Nyoman Diana Mahardika told AFP on Thursday. The unnamed woman was arrested last month at her rented house on the resort island of Lombok after police found out she had allegedly received a delivery of liquid cannabis.