Death Penalty News

The Legislative Yuan yesterday passed amendments to the Criminal Code significantly increasing penalties for drug-impaired driving, including raising the maximum prison term from three to five years and allowing capital punishment for repeat offenders who cause death within 10 years. The amendments passed with support from opposition lawmakers, who hold a majority in the legislature, following a joint motion by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) to separate penalties for drug-impaired driving from those for drunk driving.

Dr. Mark Fowler knew something was wrong after 45 minutes passed without word from the warden. In most cases, executions take no more than ten minutes. When he was summoned from his waiting room to the chamber next door, he saw 50-year-old Christa Pike, who’d received two lethal doses of pentobarbital that night, strapped to a gurney, gasping for air. “She’s not dead,” Fowler recalls the warden saying. “I thought, Well, in human beings there’s a spectrum of responses to medications and we’ll give it a few more minutes,” he says. Another half-hour passed. Fowler worried she might survive with irreversible brain damage. “She’s going to be in a permanent vegetative state with a quarter-million dollars in medical expenses.” He came back in and diagnosed her as comatose. The deputy commissioner ordered the execution to stop. Now, instead of taking part in Pike’s death, Fowler’s job was to bring her back to life.

Convicted murderer Christa Pike said Friday that she is in constant pain, a month after surviving a botched execution attempt in the US state of Tennessee. "There hasn't been a moment since that night when I haven't been in pain," Pike said in a statement released by her lawyers. "My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts," she said. "I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn't just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul."

Branch 23 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court has sentenced three individuals arrested during the January 2026 protests—Amirreza Rezaei, Vahid Gahramani, and Mehdi, a cleric whose surname has not been disclosed—to death. HRANA reported that the sentences were officially served to the three prisoners in detention on Monday, October 26.  Among the charges brought against them in this case is “operational actions on behalf of Israel.”

Gov. Mike Braun is still weighing Jeffrey Weisheit’s clemency request, however. Gov. Mike Braun’s administration will not allow death row inmate Jeffrey Weisheit to undergo additional brain scans before his scheduled execution next week. The decision follows weeks of legal efforts by his attorneys to obtain additional medical evidence for his clemency case. Braun’s general counsel, Stephanie Flittner, met with Weisheit’s legal team Wednesday to discuss the testing and his pending clemency request.

Iranian authorities have executed two prisoners, Amrollah Seiri and Reza Talebi, in Karaj and Sabzevar Central Prisons. Both were sentenced to death for “premeditated murder,” with Seiri spending 14 years in prison before his execution. According to information received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Seiri (Hadavandi), a Lor man from Farunabad in Pakdasht County, Tehran Province, was executed in Karaj Central Prison on Wednesday morning, October 28, 2026.

A Flagler County judge sentenced Jermaine Mandell Williams Sr. to death Monday for stabbing his wife outside their Bunnell home in 2024.  Williams, 34, was convicted of 1st-degree murder in July. Jurors deliberated about 20 minutes before finding him guilty and later voted 11-1 to recommend the death penalty.  The attack happened Aug. 2, 2024. Surveillance video and testimony showed Williams went inside the home, returned with an 8-inch chef’s knife and attacked his wife, Yolonda Charmaine Williams, in the street, according to court and prosecution accounts. She was stabbed 19 to 20 times and later died at a hospital. 

A Cameron County jury recommended the death penalty for Rogelio Martinez for killing a San Benito police lieutenant during a police chase in Brownsville.  Martinez stared forward as the judge announced the recommendation. Lt. Milton Resendez's family told Martinez in court that their lives will never be the same.  Resendez's wife and siblings walked past cameras and declined to speak with reporters. Inside the courtroom, where no audio or video recording was allowed, Resendez's sister Jackie raised her voice at Martinez during impact statements. 

Brian Lansing Martin was sentenced to death Monday for killing Sheffield Police Sgt. Nick Risner, whose death prompted Alabama lawmakers to restrict early-release credits for inmates convicted of killing someone with a deadly weapon. A Colbert County judge formally imposed the sentence Oct. 26, following a jury’s unanimous recommendation in September, WAFF reported. “Today’s sentence represents justice and accountability for the murder of Sergeant Nick Risner,” Colbert County District Attorney Hal Hughston said in a statement quoted by the station.

A Kuwaiti court on Monday sentenced three men to death on charges of plotting to assassinate the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior, collaborating with Iran, and joining Lebanese Hezbollah, according to two judicial sources speaking to Agence France-Presse. The Criminal Court ordered the death penalty for religious scholar and Secretary-General of the National Islamic Alliance Hussein Abdullah Al-Maatouq alongside two other individuals.

Verdicts are first issued for group of 47 French citizens handed over from Syria An Iraqi court on Tuesday sentenced seven French ISIS members to prison in the first verdicts of a trial involving 47 of the country's citizens transferred from Syria, handing down sentences under terrorism laws. The court sentenced six people to 20 years in prison, and one was jailed for 15 years.

The socialist president celebrated for abolishing the death penalty in France sent 45 condemned men to the guillotine when he was Minister of Justice. In French political history, François Mitterrand is the father of the historic victory of May 1981. He remains associated with one of the greatest moral laws of the Fifth Republic: the definitive end of capital executions, carried through with Robert Badinter in the autumn of 1981.

Tennessee Republican lawmakers are ready to change the state’s death penalty laws in the wake of two botched executions by lethal injection, including a renewed look at electrocution and firing squads. Republican Rep. Jody Barrett of Dickson confirmed this week he is considering sponsoring legislation in 2027 to make firing squads a method for putting people to death, even though one Democratic lawmaker called the practice “depraved.” Republican Sen. Tom Hatcher also said he is having a bill drafted that would either remove lethal injection from the execution process or reform it based on the results of a third-party investigation Gov. Bill Lee ordered after the failed execution of convicted murderer Christa Pike in September. Hatcher, a first-term senator from Maryville, acknowledged that eliminating lethal injection would leave electrocution as the only way allowed to put people to death.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 25 October 2026: Javad Baranizadeh, a man on death row for murder, was executed in Ghezel Hesar Prison in Karaj. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was hanged in Ghezel Hesar Prison on 21 October 2026. His identity has been established as Javad Baranizadeh. He was arrested around three years ago and sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder by the Criminal Court.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Ravi Kumar Diwakar, who awarded 23 death sentences in 11 cases between April and September 2026, has been transferred from a fast-track court to a family court in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. Under an Allahabad High Court transfer order, Diwakar has been appointed Additional Principal Judge of the family court. Judge Shiv Kumari will take over as the Additional District and Sessions Judge at the fast-track court. The transfer comes after Diwakar questioned the withdrawal of 97 part-heard criminal cases, including murder cases and other serious offences, from his court through administrative orders issued by the then Muzaffarnagar District and Sessions Judge in August.

SINGAPORE – A 24-year-old Malaysian man was arrested at Tuas Checkpoint on Oct 21 for trying to smuggle over 2kg of drugs into Singapore on a motorcycle. In a statement on Oct 26, the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) said officers had directed the man’s Malaysia-registered motorcycle for more checks at the checkpoint. They found five bundles, suspected to contain controlled drugs, in a tote bag hidden under a raincoat in the top box of the vehicle.

Gov. Mike DeWine created a faster path to pardons and now opposes the death penalty. Some hope that means he'll grant them clemency before he leaves office in January Advocacy groups are urging Ohio Governor Mike DeWine to grant pardons and commutations before his term ends. Governors have the constitutional power to grant clemency, which includes pardons, commutations, and reprieves. Since 2019, DeWine has granted 396 clemency applications, many through an expedited project for non-violent offenders. Several high-profile inmates, including some on death row, are seeking clemency from the governor. With just three months left as Ohio governor, people are lobbying Mike DeWine for last-minute pardons and commutations.

Indonesia has not carried out an execution in a decade, yet it continues to impose death sentences and holds hundreds of people on death row under a new criminal code that reclassifies capital punishment as a measure of last resort. The country’s last executions occurred in 2016, when four people convicted of drug trafficking were put to death by firing squad. No further executions have taken place. The pause meets thresholds used by international organizations to describe a country as de facto abolitionist, even though the death penalty remains legal.

A U.S. Marine has been formally charged with killing and robbing a Japanese woman at a hotel in Okinawa’s capital, three weeks after his arrest prompted calls for changes to the status of forces agreement governing American military personnel in Japan. Lanc Cpl. Devin Jacob Ballard, 20, was indicted Sunday on a charge of robbery causing death in the killing of Anna Yagi, 39, according to a copy of the indictment provided by the Naha Public Prosecutors Office. The Japanese legal system applies in this case.⁠