FEATURED POST

Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

Published
Image
Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

I Spent More Than Six Years as an Innocent Woman on Death Row

Published
Sabrina Butler
I was 18 when I was convicted of murdering my baby and sentenced to death, and 25 when I was finally found innocent.

I was 17 and living in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1989. One night, I went to check on my beautiful 9-month-old son, Walter. He wasn’t breathing. I scooped him up and frantically rushed to the neighbor next door, who could not help me. I ran downstairs where another girl took my baby, started CPR, and advised me what to do. I performed CPR all the way to the hospital. The CPR left bruises on his chest. At the hospital, the doctors said they had done all they could.

The next morning, I went down to the police station as I had been asked to do. When I got there, a detective yelled at me, “You know you killed your baby. You stepped on him with your feet and smashed him on the floor. You killed him.”

I was alone with no lawyer or parent with me. I told him I tried to save my baby. He wrote down what I said and threw it in the garbage. He yelled at me for three hours. No matter what I said, he screamed over and over that I had killed my baby. I was terrified. I was put in jail and not allowed to attend Walter’s funeral.

When I was 18, I was convicted of murdering my baby and sentenced to death. As a death row prisoner, I was alone in my cell for 23 hours a day. It was a good thing: if the other women could have gotten near me, they would have killed me because they thought I deserved to die.


Source: TIME, May 30, 2014
Related content:

Most Viewed (Last 7 Days)

Missouri executes Brian Dorsey

Published
Image
Brian Dorsey is a “rare case where those of us who sit in judgment of a man convicted of capital murder got it wrong,” according to a former judge who upheld his death sentence. Brian Dorsey's appointed trial lawyers were paid a flat fee of $12,000 to represent him. Against the advice of another lawyer, they advised Dorsey to plead guilty without a deal from prosecutors to take the death penalty off the table. 
Read more

Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

Published
Image
Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.
Read more

Why witnesses could only see part of the process when Missouri executed Brian Dorsey

Published
Image
Missouri executed four people in 2023. Amber McLaughlin, Michael Tisius, Johnny Johnson and Leonard Taylor, who maintained that he was innocent, all died by lethal injection. The state is one of five in the country that carried out executions last year. Once public spectacles, state-sponsored executions have become highly secretive affairs. Especially in Missouri. Witnesses on Tuesday night watched Brian Dorsey die from a lethal dose of pentobarbital at the state prison in Bonne Terre, about an hour south of St. Louis.
Read more

Another Young Man Executed in Iran as Death Penalty Cases Rise

Published
Image
Prison authorities of the Islamic Republic have executed another young man amid a significant rise in the use of the death penalty. The inmate convicted of murder was executed at Khorramabad Prison on April 5, according to the Norway-based Iran Human Rights Organization. The inmate, identified as 30-year-old Hassan-Ali Mirzania, was reportedly found guilty four years ago of fatally shooting two brothers with a hunting rifle.
Read more

Japan | Death-row inmates' lawsuit targeting same-day notifications of executions dismissed

Published
Image
The Osaka District Court on Monday dismissed a lawsuit by death row inmates that claimed same-day notifications of executions violate the Constitution — the first ruling of its kind. The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit against the government in hopes of sparking a wider discussion on the rights of death row prisoners. They also sought ¥22 million in compensation and plan to appeal to a higher court.
Read more

India | Efforts on to raise money to save man facing death penalty in Saudi Arabia

Published
Image
THE HINDU BUREAU — Businessman and social activist Bobby Chemmanur, who has pledged to raise deliverance money to save Kozhikode native Abdul Rahim from death, continued his efforts on Thursday with a fund raising Yatra across Kerala. The Yatra reached Kochi on Thursday from Thiruvananthapuram, proceeded to Thrissur and will go on to other districts before April 16 to save the Kozhikode native, who was sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia.
Read more

Missouri | Condemned inmate could face ‘surgery without anesthesia’ if good vein is elusive, lawyers say

Published
Image
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Missouri’s execution protocol allows for “surgery without anesthesia” if the typical process of finding a suitable vein to inject the lethal drug doesn’t work, lawyers for a death row inmate say in an appeal aimed at sparing his life. Brian Dorsey, 52, is scheduled for execution Tuesday for killing his cousin and her husband at their central Missouri home in 2006. His attorneys are seeking clemency from Gov. Mike Parson and have several appeals pending.
Read more

Ending death penalty in Taiwan

Published
Image
The Constitutional Court announced that it is to hear a case on the constitutionality of the death penalty and has scheduled oral arguments on April 23, attracting widespread attention. However, instead of delving into the core debate of whether the death penalty contravenes the Constitution, legislators across party lines and the media have been preoccupied by arguing whether the grand justices should or should not make a ruling.
Read more