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First Third Of 2024 In Saudi Arabia: Executions Rise By 189% And Portend Another Bloody Year. At Least 71 Currently Facing Execution.

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Since the beginning of 2024 until the end of April, the Ministry of Interior in Saudi Arabia announced the execution of 55 individuals. This figure constitutes a 189% increase compared to the executions in the first third of 2023, which witnessed 19 executions. The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights views these numbers as a clear indication of the Saudi government's continued approach towards executing and issuing death sentences, and that the promises made in recent years have become elusive.

USA: Will Tsarnaev face death? Decision expected in early 2014

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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce whether prosecutors will seek the death penalty against accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev by Jan. 31, 2014, CBS News legal analyst Rikki Klieman told Crimesider.

Klieman said that if the government decides to pursue the death penalty, the defense's objective will be to get a plea to life imprisonment.

"This U.S. Attorney's Office is going to be particularly sensitive to the desires of the victims," Klieman said. "There are many victims in this case who will feel that [Tsarnaev] should get death; there are other victims in this case who will feel, for a variety of reasons... that he should get life."

Klieman said if there isn't a guilty plea in the case, the trial is likely to last 9 months.

Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to a 30-count federal indictment that includes charges of using a weapon of mass destruction.

Authorities say Tsarnaev, 20, and his brother Tamerlan, 26, built 2 pressure-cooker bombs and placed them near the Marathon finish line. The April 15, 2013, explosions killed 3 people and wounded more than 260. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died in a shootout with police several days after the bombings.

Source: CBS news, January 1, 2014
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First Third Of 2024 In Saudi Arabia: Executions Rise By 189% And Portend Another Bloody Year. At Least 71 Currently Facing Execution.

Published
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Since the beginning of 2024 until the end of April, the Ministry of Interior in Saudi Arabia announced the execution of 55 individuals. This figure constitutes a 189% increase compared to the executions in the first third of 2023, which witnessed 19 executions. The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights views these numbers as a clear indication of the Saudi government's continued approach towards executing and issuing death sentences, and that the promises made in recent years have become elusive.
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20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

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The following document is a written record of convicted killer Hamida Djandoubi's last moments before he was guillotined in a Marseilles prison on September 10, 1977. This written record -- dated September 9 -- was written by a judge appointed to witness the execution. Djandoubi's execution was the last execution carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. Then-President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who had voiced his "loathing for the death penalty" before he was elected to office, flatly turned down Djandoubi's appeal for clemency and chose to let "Justice run its course", as he did on two previous instances ( Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977). Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was executed in Marseilles' Baumettes prison in September 1977. The following text was writ
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Mississippi | Biloxi man gets death penalty for torture, murder of toddler

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A Mississippi Coast man is headed to death row for his role in the beating and suffocation death of his 2-year-old stepson — all because the toddler soiled his diaper and took too long to get a juice box out of the refrigerator. A jury in Harrison County Circuit Court in Biloxi deliberated for just over two hours Friday before handing down the death sentence against Joseph David Heard, 41, in the Dec. 27, 2021, killing of his stepson, Hayden Lee Bataille, of Biloxi. 
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Cruel and Unusual: Documentary explores epicenter of Texas’ prison system

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Every few years, from childhood until my late teens, my granddad would take me along with him to the small Texas town where he grew up—Normangee, population 522—to visit old relatives and even older graves. The drive took us up I-45, beyond the Houston sprawl, past pine forests, and eventually through Huntsville, epicenter of the state prison system. One of the city’s seven prisons was just off the interstate, and as we passed by I’d stare at the guard towers and barbed wire before turning my attention across the street to the Texas Prison Museum, which had its own mock guard towers in the parking lot. (“Prison” and “museum” were words that never seemed to go together.) Later, I learned that the museum’s central attraction was the wooden electric chair the state used for executions until 1964.
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Saudi authorities agree to postpone execution of Kenyan national

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NAIROBI, Kenya, May 13 – Saudi Arabia has acceded to Kenya’s request to postpone the execution of Stephen Munyakho that was set for Wednesday to allow for further negotiations between all parties. According to Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing’Oei, Kenya will be engaging stakeholders in Nairobi and Riyadh, including religious leaders, to agree on the next urgent steps.
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Tennessee | New law allows death penalty for child rape

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has approved legislation allowing the death penalty in child rape convictions, a change the Republican-controlled Statehouse championed amid concerns that the U.S. Supreme Court has banned capital punishment in such cases. Lee, a Republican, quietly signed off on the legislation last week without issuing a statement.
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