Death Penalty News

A physician uses a cartoon lawsuit to question the burdens US execution law places on condemned prisoners. As a physician, I have spent a career on the far side of a fact pattern I did not choose. This is the moment when something prescribed or administered goes wrong inside a body that trusted it not to. I have seen that more than once. It would be more comfortable to cast myself as the one who gets hurt. It is more honest to say I am the supplier. The drug, the dose, the device, and the airway all enter the body through me. In the cartoon, I am not the coyote. I am Acme.

AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Under current Supreme Court precedent, states cannot execute someone for raping a child if the victim survives. That’s not stopping State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-McKinney. “We’re going to have a debate in this building behind me about the death penalty being on the table for any Texan who rapes a child,” Leach, the chair of the Texas House Committee on Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence, said. Leach made the comments while hosting a news conference supporting his client, abuse survivor Cindy Clemishire.

In a single page of a verdict issued by Abolqasem Salavati, presiding judge of Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, the official count of Molotov cocktails listed as evidence changes three distinct times: from 20 to 22, and finally to 25. This deeply flawed document ultimately imposed death sentences on two protesters detained following the January 2026 demonstrations, alongside 10-year prison terms for all three co-defendants.

Hengaw – Friday, September 18, 2026 Rezvan Asgharzadeh, a 45-year-old woman and mother of six who had been sentenced to death on drug-related charges, has been executed in Dastgerd Prison in Isfahan.  Her husband, who was sentenced to death on similar charges, remains imprisoned at the same facility and is at risk of execution.

A man was executed in Iran for passing information about Iranian missile sites to Israeli intelligence services during the war, the judiciary reported Saturday. ’’The death penalty was carried out against Hossein Pedaran, who had provided the Mossad with information on missile sites in Isfahan province,’’ in central Iran, Mizan, the Iranian judiciary’s news outlet, reported. The judiciary accused Pedaran of ‘‘espionage and intelligence cooperation’’ on behalf of Israel but did not provide information about the date of his arrest or his trial. It said the death sentence had been ‘‘confirmed by the Supreme Court.’’ The case had not previously been reported by Iranian media.

A Sri Lankan Tamil migrant worker, Sivarasa Anojan, is facing the death penalty in Saudi Arabia after an appeal against a five-year prison sentence over a Facebook post deemed insulting to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Former Foreign Minister Ali Sabry has urged Saudi Arabian authorities to grant clemency to Sri Lankan national Anojan Sivarasa following reports that his five-year prison sentence has been escalated to a death sentence over an offensive social media comment. Expressing deep concern over the reported development, Sabry said Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry had not confirmed the death sentence and that the formal written judgment was still awaited. “Respect for Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty and legal system does not require silence in the face of disproportionate punishment,” Sabry said.

SINGAPORE: A 36-year-old Malaysian man and a 35-year-old Malaysian woman were arrested after trying to cross into Singapore on a motorcycle with drugs, including more than 10 kg of cannabis. If convicted, they may face the death penalty. In a media release on Friday (Sept 18), the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) said its officers discovered four bundles of “vegetable matter” believed to be controlled drugs underneath the seat of the Malaysia-registered motorcycle.

A 29-year-old man charged with stalking and murdering his 31-year-old ex-girlfriend in Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Dec 31, 2025, told a court on Thursday that he first hit her with a hammer and then stabbed her with a kitchen knife because he "wanted to finish her off." According to the indictment,Takumi Ouchi is accused of stalking his ex-girlfriend, Haruka Komatsumoto, by attaching a location-tracking tag to her car and subsequently killing her at her home between 5:20 p.m. and 7:15 p.m. on Dec 31.

An Australian national accused of murdering a Thai teenager and concealing her body inside a suitcase appeared in a Thai court on Friday, formally entering a not guilty plea to all charges. Simon Peter Carman, 45, faced the Pattaya Provincial Court following his indictment by prosecutors. He has been held at the Pattaya Remand Prison since late June, following an investigation into the death of 17-year-old Tunchanok Donhomla. Carman was formally indicted on multiple counts, including murder, concealing a corpse to hide the cause of death, abduction of a minor over 15 years of age for indecent purposes, and two counts of committing indecent acts on a minor.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WBMA) — Alabama has executed Jeffery Lee, nearly three decades after he was convicted in the 1998 killings of two people during a pawnshop robbery in rural Dallas County. Lee, 49, was put to death by lethal injection Thursday evening at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. His execution came three months after a federal judge blocked Alabama's plans to execute him using nitrogen gas. He was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. Central Time, according to the office of Governor Kay Ivey. 

Convicted murderer Stacey Humphreys was not executed Wednesday night as scheduled after the Georgia Supreme Court upheld a Cobb County judge’s order temporarily halting the execution. The pause is for Humphreys to receive a hearing under the Georgia Survivor Justice Act, which Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law last year. The state law is intended to allow abuse victims to petition for reduced sentences if their abuse led them to commit a crime. “Given the important and novel questions regarding the newly enacted SJA raised by this litigation, this appeal will be considered in the ordinary course of business and according to a forthcoming scheduling order,” the justices wrote in an order Wednesday. “We leave undisturbed the stay order issued by the Cobb County Superior Court.”

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 17 September 2026: In a new report on the deadly crackdown on the January 2026 protests, IHRNGO has published a list of more than 4,200 people killed.  The list is the result of months of collecting information, cross-checking sources and verifying victims’ identities, providing an extensive body of documentation on the killing of protesters in Iran. Among those identified are at least 420 women and 281 children under the age of 18.  Twenty-five of the children were under 14, and the youngest victim documented was just four and a half months old.

Texas kills man by lethal injection in state’s fifth execution this year A man convicted over the shooting deaths of 3 people was executed on Wednesday in Texas, while another execution scheduled for the same time in Georgia was halted by a judge.  It’s the 5th execution in Texas this year. Georgia has yet to put anyone to death this year. The nation’s busiest death chamber is in Florida, which accounted for more than 1/2 the 25 executions already carried out in the US this year. 

LeJames Norman would become the 5th inmate put to death by the state this year barring a U.S. Supreme Court reprieve. His codefendant is scheduled for execution a week later.  LeJames Norman, 1 of 2 men sentenced to death for killing three people in a robbery, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday barring a final reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court.  In 2005, Norman and Ker’sean Olajuwa Ramey broke into a neighbor’s home in Edna intending to steal cocaine, according to court records. The 2 then got into an altercation with the occupants of the home and killed Celso Lopez, Tiffani Peacock and Sam Roberts. While Norman initially fled to Mexico after the killings, he was apprehended by Border Patrol when he re-entered the country and subsequently cooperated with police, including by testifying at Ramey’s trial. 

Lawyers for Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, filed a 226-page clemen­cy peti­tion with Governor Bill Lee, ask­ing him to com­mute her death sen­tence to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole ahead of her September 30 exe­cu­tion date. Ms. Pike’s clemen­cy peti­tion out­lines the case her team has built over decades of appeals: her actions at 18 years old can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from a child­hood marked by repeat­ed rape, sex­u­al abuse, and neglect that went unad­dressed by the adults and state sys­tems meant to pro­tect her. Once incar­cer­at­ed, Ms. Pike was diag­nosed with bipo­lar dis­or­der and post-trau­mat­ic stress disorder.

Iranian authorities have executed Kurdish prisoner Fereydoun Akbarzadeh at Ilam Central Prison. He had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder.” According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Akbarzadeh, from Sarableh County in Ilam Province, was executed at dawn on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, at Ilam Central Prison. Hengaw sources said Akbarzadeh had previously been arrested on charges of premeditated murder and was subsequently sentenced to death by the Iranian judiciary.

State prosecutors say decision takes family’s wishes into account; Nick Reiner, 33, pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges over killing of late Hollywood icon and his wife LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — The Los Angeles County District Attorney said on Tuesday his office has chosen not to seek the death penalty against Nick Reiner, the son of Hollywood filmmaker Rob Reiner, who has pleaded not guilty to murdering his parents in their home in December. District Attorney Nathan Hochman told reporters outside a downtown Los Angeles courthouse that prosecutors took into account the wishes of the surviving Reiner family members in reaching their decision.

A man convicted in the shooting deaths of three people is set to be executed Wednesday in Texas. Meanwhile, another execution that was scheduled for the same time in Georgia has been halted by a judge. This would be the fifth execution in Texas, while Georgia has yet to put anyone to death this year. The nation’s busiest death chamber is in Florida, which accounted for more than half the 25 executions already carried out in the U.S. this year.

British consular incidents involving suspected ‘drug mules’ grew from 80 in 2023 to above 340 in 2025.  The number of British nationals detained overseas on drug trafficking charges has surged more than 4-fold over 3 years, official figures show, alongside a government warning that penalties include life imprisonment and the death sentence.  Consular incidents involving suspected "drug mules" grew from 80 in 2023 to above 340 in 2025, with at least 160 recorded so far this year.  Over 200 UK citizens are presently held in foreign custody for smuggling cannabis originating in Thailand. Around 60% of those caught since 2024 are aged between 16 and 30.