Death Penalty News

Arizona executes inmate who set couple on fire in 'horrific attack' Arizona has executed Leroy McGill for setting 21-year-old Charles Perez and his 24-year-old girlfriend on fire. Perez died the next day and Perez survived with severe burn injuries.  Arizona has executed a death row inmate for setting 2 people on fire more than 20 years ago, killing 1 of them and changing the other's life forever.  The state executed Leroy McGill, 63, by lethal injection on Wednesday, May 20, for the 2002 murder of 21-year-old Charles Perez. McGill set Perez and his girlfriend on fire after they accused him of theft, court records say. Perez died of his injuries the next day while his girlfriend survived with severe burns. 

For close to a quarter of a century, death row inmate Hiroko Kazama’s every movement in her 3½ tatami-size cell at the Tokyo Detention House has been watched. When she wakes up, uses the bathroom or creates a piece of art, she does so surveilled by guards who observe her through a ceiling-mounted camera. “Prisoners are never told how or when they are being monitored, which creates a profound sense of fear and uncertainty,” Kazama, 68, said in a statement to The Japan Times. As male guards are not prohibited from surveilling female prisoners, such exposure is particularly distressing for Kazama.

A Broward County man is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Thursday evening while his legal team mounts a furious, multi-pronged effort to halt the execution in federal and state courts. Richard Knight, who was convicted of the 2000 murders of Odessia Stephens and her daughter, Hanessia Mullings, faces a May 21 execution date at 6:00 p.m. ET. If carried out, it will mark the seventh execution in Florida this year and the 34th under Governor Ron DeSantis.

The judges argued he would be aware that the job involved something dangerous or illegal, because he was "accustomed to criminal activities". A 73-year-old Singaporean man was unsuccessful in appealing against his conviction and sentence for drug trafficking in 2019. Previously, Low Sze Song and his accomplice, 37-year-old Malaysian national Sivaprakash Krishnan, were each found guilty of trafficking at least 43.2g of pure heroin, exceeding the 15g threshold for the mandatory death penalty under Singapore law. After a trial, they were both sentenced to death on Apr. 14, 2023.

On days when executions are scheduled at Union Correctional Institution, in northwest Florida, members of the prison’s Catholic services pray the rosary. Over the course of the last year, they gathered in the chapel 24 times to pray for each person scheduled to die. After the state’s 19 executions in 2025, a record number , prisoners and staff alike have become increasingly numb to the routine act of state-sanctioned killing. The vibe around here is mostly the same on execution days. We used to be locked down; but not anymore, when there are sometimes up to two executions a month these days. The compound moves as it always has. Everybody here has been, and will be, here a long time; one gets used to these grim machinations.

South Carolina didn’t seek a death sentence the first time. Murdaugh is poised to challenge any attempt to do so now as illegally “vindictive.” After South Carolina’s Supreme Court reversed Alex Murdaugh ’s double-murder conviction and life sentence last week, the state’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, said the death penalty is “on the table” for a retrial against the ex-attorney who was found guilty in 2023 of killing his wife, Maggie, and their son Paul in 2021. But introducing the prospect of capital punishment could further complicate the state’s case in what’s already been a tortured legal process.

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona prisoner convicted of killing another man by throwing gasoline at him and lighting a match is set to be put to death Wednesday, the first of three executions planned this week around the U.S. Leroy Dean McGill, 63, is scheduled to receive a lethal injection of pentobarbital at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. He was convicted of murder in the July 2002 death of Charles Perez. Authorities said McGill threw the gasoline and a lit match at Perez and Perez’s girlfriend, Nova Banta, as they sat on a sofa in a north Phoenix apartment on July 13 of that year. Perez and Banta had accused McGill of stealing a gun from the apartment before the attack. At the time, McGill was using methamphetamine and hadn’t slept in several days.

On May 13, the Ministry of Justice published an appraisal document for the policy dossier of the draft amended Penal Code prepared by the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). In a significant shift, the MPS has proposed reducing the number of crimes punishable by death in Việt Nam from 10 to 2.  The Details: Under the proposal, capital punishment would be retained only for murder under Article 123 and for the rape of a person under 16 under Article 142.  The stated goal is to meet international standards to which Việt Nam is a party. Notably, drug-related crimes would be exempt from capital punishment, even though they currently account for nearly 85% of death sentences. 

Hengaw – Tuesday, May 19, 2026—Iranian authorities executed a prisoner from Shiraz identified as Saeid Rahmanirad, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of premeditated murder by the Iranian judiciary, at Adelabad Prison in Shiraz. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, the execution was carried out at dawn on Sunday, May 17, 2026, at Shiraz Central Prison, commonly known as Adelabad Prison. Rahmanirad, 30, had been convicted of “premeditated murder” by the Iranian judiciary.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - Alex Murdaugh’s defense attorneys are questioning a statement from the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office about his fate after a retrial. Murdaugh, who was convicted in 2023 of killing his wife and son, was granted a new trial by the South Carolina Supreme Court. Attorney General Alan Wilson issued a statement saying, ”In light of the Supreme Court’s decision, we’re back to square one on this case, and that means all our legal options are on the table, including the death penalty." Murdaugh’s lawyers held a press conference on Monday to discuss a related federal lawsuit he has filed against the former Colleton County clerk of court. “I had hoped that would have been the main topic of this press conference, but over the weekend we learned that the Attorney General has announced he’s considering the death penalty in this case,” attorney Dick Harpootlian said. “Clearly, he is not talking to the lawyers in his office. He’s probably talking to his ...

2,707 executions worldwide in 2025, a record for over 40 years. Every year, Amnesty International releases a report detailing the use of the death penalty from the previous year. In this year’s report, there was a staggering rise in executions and death sentences, carried out by a handful of governments determined to rule by fear. Here, we provide the details on the main findings from the report, at a global and regional level.

Amnesty International Malaysia, however, says that without full abolition, Malaysia remains with the minority of countries still holding on to an unjust and irreversible punishment. PETALING JAYA: Malaysia’s judicial reforms have led to a clear decline in the use of the death penalty, with only 15 new death sentences recorded in 2025, although Amnesty International Malaysia says full abolition remains a distant goal. The rights group said Malaysian courts imposed 15 death sentences in 2025, down from 24 in 2024 and 38 in 2023, following the abolition of the mandatory death penalty.

The line is crackly. But the voice of Mehrab Abdollahzadeh is clear and, given the circumstances, surprisingly steady. He's on death row in western Iran. He speaks quickly - as if time is running out. And his message is desperate. "You are hearing my voice from Oromiyeh Central Prison, and this may be the last time you hear it," he says in a voice note obtained by the Kurdistan Human Rights Network.

Freedom for Richard Glossip cost $50,000. It also cost 29 years of his life. The former death row inmate convicted of murdering the owner of the motel he managed walked out of jail Thursday for the first time since 1997, after 10% of his $500,000 bond was paid by celebrity and criminal reform advocate Kim Kardashian, her publicist told The Oklahoman. As Glossip’s case stretched on, the documentary “ Killing Richard Glossip ” raised many questions about his convictions – and the eyebrows of Republicans in Oklahoma’s government, including supporters of capital punishment. “Considering the facts we uncovered, and that there exists no physical forensic evidence or credible corroborating testimony linking Glossip to the crime, our conclusion is that no reasonable juror hearing the complete record would have convicted Richard Glossip of first‐degree murder,” said the law firm of Reed Smith after interviewing three dozen witnesses and reviewing more than 145,000 pages of evidence.

The death penalty law for West Bank Palestinians convicted of deadly acts of terrorism came into effect Sunday night, after the commander of the IDF Central Command, Maj. Gen Avi Bluth, signed the military order necessary to enact the measure in the territory. The order requires that a military court presiding over the prosecution of terrorists whose attacks resulted in the death of a victim apply the death penalty alone as the only available sentence, unless the court finds special circumstances allowing for life imprisonment. Following the passage of the legislation at the end of March, Defense Minister Israel Katz requested that Bluth approve the military order, which he did on Sunday.

A division bench of the Lahore High Court at Rawalpindi dismissed the appeal and upheld the death sentence of Rizwan Habib, who was convicted of the brutal murder of his former wife, US citizen Wajiha Swati, in a case involving a property dispute over assets worth around Rs1 billion that took place in Rawalpindi. The High Court remarked that the convict perpetrated a vile crime, thus justifying the death sentence. The division bench of the Lahore High Court included Justice Sadaqat Ali Khan and Justice Tanveer Sheikh.

Alan Wilson said prosecutors are “back to square one” and all legal options are on the table. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said Friday that his office may pursue the death penalty when it retries Alex Murdaugh in the 2021 murder of his son and wife. “In light of the Supreme Court’s decision, we’re back to square one on this case, and that means all our legal options are on the table, including the death penalty,” Wilson said. The state’s high court reversed Murdaugh’s double murder conviction in an opinion published Wednesday that accused a former court clerk of “egregious” jury interference.

Prosecutors said Friday that they will seek the death penalty for a Chicago man charged with fatally shooting two Israeli embassy staffers in the US capital last year. Elias Rodriguez was arrested immediately after the May 21 shooting of Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and his fiancee, Sarah Milgrim, 26, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. US Attorney Jeanine Pirro said in a court filing that prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Rodriguez, who faces murder, firearms and hate crime charges.  "Rodriguez's actions were motivated by political, ideological, national, and religious bias, contempt, and hatred," Pirro said.

The Florida Attorney General's Office has still not responded to the defense's request for a review of the case, which was filed almost eight months ago. The family of Pablo Ibar has publicly expressed its outrage at the lack of response from the Broward County District Attorney's Office in Florida to their request for a review of the case, filed almost eight months ago by the defense of the Spanish-born prisoner, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for a triple murder committed in 1994 in Miramar, near Miami. The defense denounces unjustified delays in responding to the review request, while the Pablo Ibar-Fair Trial Association has reactivated its fundraising campaign. They allege that the prosecution has twice failed to meet the deadline set by the judge for issuing its ruling.

Iranian authorities have executed a prisoner identified as Eghbal Arghandeh in Karaj Central Prison. He had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder.” According to information obtained by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, the execution of 30-year-old Eghbal Arghandeh was carried out at dawn on Wednesday, May 13, 2026, in Karaj Central Prison. Sources told Hengaw that Arghandeh had been arrested approximately six years ago in connection with a fatal street altercation and was later sentenced to death by the Iranian judiciary.