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As clock ticks toward another Trump presidency, federal death row prisoners appeal for clemency

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President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. In Bloomington, a small community of death row spiritual advisors is struggling to support the prisoners to whom they minister.  Ross Martinie Eiler is a Mennonite, Episcopal lay minister and member of the Catholic Worker movement, which assists the homeless. And for the past three years, he’s served as a spiritual advisor for a man on federal death row.

Death for fraud: China debates Wu Ying's sentence

Chinese police officers
rehearsing execution procedure
It was a fraud trial involving a huge sum of money - and the verdict triggered a national outcry and a rare promise from China's top court.

In 2009, at the age of 28, multi-millionaire Wu Ying was sentenced to death for illegal fundraising.

Last week, however, the Supreme Court of China stated publicly that her sentence would be reviewed "cautiously".

The discussion that erupted online over Ms Wu concerns not only her fate, but the future of China's legal and financial systems.

She was initially charged with "illegally absorbing deposits from the public", but charges later escalated to financial fraud - and more specifically - fraudulent fundraising.

The indictment said she had raised 770m yuan ($122m; £79m) fraudulently from 11 people, with unreasonably high interest rates promised.

Wu Ying's case has been controversial since her arrest, but the High Court of Zhejiang's decision to uphold her death sentence has seen the debate renewed in the media and online.

One of the microbloggers' accusations is that the courts are applying double standards.

The same day the verdict in Wu's appeal was handed down, a court in Hebei sentenced Sun Lipeng - another businessman - to 20 years in prison for illegally raising 3.3bn yuan ($527m; £342m), according to Guangzhou's Southern Metropolis Daily.


Source: BBC News, February 24, 2012

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