Death Penalty News

Convincing a Republican attorney general to advocate against a death sentence is a near impossible feat, but Supreme Court roadblocks could force Oklahoma to execute a man in a conviction it doesn’t accept. WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court handed Richard Glossip one loss in 2015 — and if not for a corrections department blunder, he’d be dead. Almost a decade later, Glossip returns to the high court a second time, bringing the justices mountains of support for another trial and hoping a procedural hurdle doesn’t end his case for innocence before it can begin.

The convictions of Erik and Lyle Menendez, who were jailed more than three decades ago for the murder of their parents in the US, are set to be reviewed. The brothers shot Jose and Kitty Menendez at their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989, in what prosecutors said was a plot to inherit their father's fortune. On Thursday, LA County district attorney George Gascon said there was "a moral and an ethical obligation" to review evidence submitted by the brothers last year, which claimed they were sexually abused by their father and acted in self-defence.

Authorities in the Islamic Republic have executed two more prisoners amid a significant rise in the use of the death penalty. The prisoners, who were previously sentenced to death for alleged murder, were executed on Wednesday. According to the HRANA human rights news agency, the execution of one prisoner sentenced to death for murder was carried out at Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad.  The prisoner has been identified as 32-year-old Vahid Nowruzi.

The Iranian judiciary carried out the execution sentences of 21 prisoners on Tuesday and Wednesday, the first and second of October.  This means that in two days and within 48 hours, on average, one prisoner was executed every two hours in Iran. While in September, every 10 hours a prisoner was executed in Iran.  This alarming acceleration in the rising execution rates indicates that the Iranian judiciary ruthlessly and inhumanely employs the death penalty in the shadow of war.

Responding to the news that the Singapore authorities executed a man for a drug-related offence today (4 October), Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for Research, Kate Schuetze, said: “Azwan bin Bohari’s execution was clearly unlawful under international law and standards. It is especially concerning that this hanging took place in spite of a pending legal application.

Singaporean authorities are reportedly set to execute Mohammad Azwan Bin Bohari (“Azwan“), a 47-year-old Singaporean, on Friday, 4 October 2024. A copy of an execution notice dated 30 September 2024 from the Singapore Prisons Service was published by local rights group Transformative Justice Collective (“TJC“) on Instagram.  According to TJC, this is the second execution notice that Azwan’s family received this year. The first scheduled execution in April 2024 was halted as Azwan had a “pending case” before the Courts, TJC said.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); October 2, 2024: At least 72 people were executed in Iran in September and 478 executions were recorded in 2024. Five Afghan nationals were amongst those executed. Of the 72 executions, 35 were for drug-related offences, 35 for murder and 2 for charges of moharebeh (enmity against god) and efsad-fil-arz (corruption on earth). Since Pezeshkian took office on 30 July, at least 179 people have been executed, an average of almost three executions per day.

The 37 prisoners on death row who have exhausted their appeals are to remain in prison, Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) said on Tuesday in response to a question by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Wu Tsung-hsien (吳宗憲) at the legislature in Taipei. The 37 would remain in prison, as per the Prison Act (監獄行刑法), even though the Constitutional Court on Sept. 20 ruled that the death penalty could only be applied to “the most serious” premeditated murders or premeditated crimes resulting in death.

TOKYO: Japan’s new justice minister Hideki Makihara has said abolishing the death penalty would be “inappropriate” despite the recent acquittal of the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner. Japan and the United States are the only two G7 countries that still use capital punishment, which has strong public support in Japan where scrapping it is rarely discussed. But the policy -- always carried out by hanging in Japan -- is also criticised for the “cruel” way it is carried out, with prisoners often informed of their impending death in the early morning just a few hours before it happens.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); September 30, 2024: Nesar Ahmad Rahmati, an Afghan national on death row for drug-related offences, was executed in Mashhad Central Prison. Mashhad (Vakil Abad) Central Prison on 30 September. His identity has been established as Nesar Ahmad Rahmati from Kunduz province. He was arrested for drug-related offences six years ago and sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court. At the time of writing, his execution has not been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); October 1, 2024: Abbas Karimi has been transferred to the pre-execution solitary confinement cells of Isfahan Central Prison after failing to raise the €1.06 million blood money demanded by the victim’s family. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, Abbas Karimi who was previously given two weeks to raise €1.06 million blood money, was transferred to solitary confinement on 1st October in preparation for his scheduled execution on 3rd October.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi attorney general on Tuesday requested an execution date for the state’s longest-serving death row inmate. Richard Gerald Jordan, now 78, was sentenced to death in 1976 for the kidnapping and killing of Edwina Marter earlier that year in Harrison County. The Mississippi Supreme Court rejected Jordan’s latest appeal Tuesday, and Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed papers hours later asking the court to set a date for the lethal injection.

A Texas man convicted of fatally stabbing twin 16-year-old girls more than 3 decades ago was executed on Tuesday evening.  Garcia Glenn White was pronounced dead at 6:56 p.m. CDT following a chemical injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for the December 1989 killings of Annette and Bernette Edwards. The bodies of the twin girls and their mother, Bonita Edwards, were found in their Houston apartment. White, 61, was the 6th inmate put to death in the U.S. in the last 11 days. His execution took place shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, rejected 3 last-ditch appeals.

World's longest-serving death row inmate mulls suing govt after acquittal A lawyer for the world’s longest-serving death row inmate — who was acquitted in a Japanese retrial last week of a 1966 quadruple murder — said that the defence team is considering filing a damage suit against the government over the fabrication of evidence that ruined the man’s life and his mental health by keeping him in prison for 48 years. Iwao Hakamada, an 88-year-old former boxer, was found not guilty last week by the Shizuoka District Court which concluded that police and prosecutors collaborated in fabricating and planting evidence against him. The court said he was forced into confession by violent, hours-long closed interrogations.

Texas serial murderer Garcia Glen White is scheduled for execution this week for the murders of 16-year-old identical twin sisters and their mother in 1989. This will be the nation's sixth execution in a 10-day period. But White's attorneys argue that his mental deficiencies − combined with prolonged use of crack cocaine − are more to blame than White, described by those who knew him as a gentle giant whose life went off the rails because of football injuries, job loss and an ensuing drug addiction.

The Islamic Republic's authorities have executed two people in public. The executions come amidst a concerning trend of increasing use of the death penalty in the country. Ebrahim Gamizi, the prosecutor of central Khomein, announced that the sentence of two "armed robbers responsible for the death of Second Lieutenant Morteza Barati” was carried out in public. According to ISNA news agency, the execution took place on Monday morning in Khomein, located in the central Markazi Province.

The world's longest-serving death row inmate hailed his historic acquittal as a "complete victory" on Sunday, just days after a Japanese court declared Iwao Hakamada innocent of a 1966 quadruple murder. The 88-year-old former boxer spent 46 years on death row, mostly in solitary confinement.  The world's longest-serving death row prisoner thanked his supporters for helping him achieve "complete victory" after a Japanese court last week overturned his decades-old murder conviction.

JEDDAH – A Pakistani citizen has been sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia on charges of heroin smuggling. The Saudi Ministry of Interior stated that a Pakistani named Nadeem Shahzad was arrested for heroin smuggling.  A local court sentenced him to death after the crime was proven, a decision that was upheld by the appellate court and the Supreme Court. It added that the execution of the death penalty was carried out today, September 30, in Dammam.

The Idaho Department of Correction is renovating the execution chamber at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution near Kuna, according to building permits from the Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses. The change comes after the failed execution attempt of 74-year-old Thomas Creech on Feb. 28, in which the medical team could not establish an IV line to carry out his execution by lethal injection.  The department called off his execution.

Crimes now punishable by death seem to now include anti-state propaganda and illegal manufacturing, according to reports North Korea is expanding its list of crimes punishable by death, according to reports. Supreme leader Kim Jong Un's regime expanded the list of offenses warranting the death penalty from 11 to 16 via revisions of criminal law, according to Yonhap News Agency.

Saudi Arabia has carried out its highest number of executions in more than three decades after three executions announced Saturday took the 2024 figure to 198, according to an AFP tally. The Gulf monarchy executed the third highest number of prisoners in the world after China and Iran in 2023, according to Amnesty International. The latest tally surpassed its previous highs of 196 in 2022 and 192 in 1995, according to the London-based human rights group, which began recording the annual data in 1990.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); September 28, 2024: At least 14 men including two Afghan nationals were executed for murder and drug-related charges in Shiraz Central Prison on 16, 18, 23 and 25 September.  With previous reported executions, at least 19 men were hanged at the prison in the past fortnight. (IHRNGO has received reports of 36 executions but has be unable to independently verify 17 of them.)

A young Jewish man on death row for an alleged murder in Iran is at imminent risk of execution, according to human rights sources. The Islamic Republic's Supreme Court has rejected Arvin Ghahremani's appeal, who is imprisoned in Kermanshah Central Prison, for the second time. Ghahremani, 20, was sentenced to death for an alleged murder that took place during a street fight when he was 18.

The VP was once a vocal opponent of the practice. Freddie “Khalil” Owens. Marcellus “Khaliifah”  Williams. Emmanuel Littlejohn. Travis Mullis. Alan Eugene Miller. All five men were executed within one week in five different states, a period political scientist Austin Sarat condemned as “the worst execution spree in three decades.”

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); September 26, 2024: Kambakhsh Mahmoudi, a man on death row for murder, was executed in Kermanshah Central Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was executed in Kermanshah (Dizel Abad) Central Prison on 25 September. His identity has been established as 34-year-old Kambakhsh Mahmoudi from Bistoon who was sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder.