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.
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USA: Death Penalty Use in 2015 Declines Sharply
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Use of and support for the death penalty continued its
steady decline in the United States in 2015
By all measures, use of and support for the death penalty continued its steady decline in the United States in 2015. The number of new death sentences imposed in the U.S. fell sharply from already historic lows, executions dropped to their lowest levels in 24 years, and public opinion polls revealed that a majority of Americans preferred life without parole to the death penalty. Opposition to capital punishment polled higher than any time since 1972.
The numbers also pointed to the increasing geographic isolation of the death penalty and its disproportionate overuse by a handful of jurisdictions. Fewer states and counties imposed death sentences, and 93% of executions were concentrated in just 4 states. 16% of all the new death sentences imposed in the country came from a single California county and — while nearly every state requires juries to unanimously agree to a death sentence — more than a quarter of the nation’s new death sentences were imposed by judges in two states after juries did not unanimously agree on death.
Nearly two-thirds of the new death sentences in the U.S. in 2015 were imposed in the same 2% of American counties that have disproportionately accounted for more than half of all U.S. death sentences in the past.
The national trend towards abolition of the death penalty in law or practice continued:
Nebraska legislatively abolished the death penalty; the Connecticut Supreme Court declared its death penalty unconstitutional; and Pennsylvania joined three other states in imposing gubernatorial moratoria on executions. For the first time in a generation, there were fewer than 3,000 men and women on death rows nationwide.
Six more men and women were exonerated from death row. And as two Justices of the Supreme Court issued an historic opinion inviting systemic constitutional challenges to the death penalty in America, numerous additional states put executions on hold because of problems in obtaining execution drugs or in administering their execution protocols.
NEW DEATH SENTENCES
New death sentences in the United States have fallen to historic lows. With less than two weeks remaining in 2015, and few cases pending, 14 states and the federal government have imposed 49 new death sentences. This was a 33% decline from the 73 death sentences imposed in 2014 — itself already a 40-year low.
The number of new death sentences imposed in the U.S. in 2015 was the fewest in any single year since 1973, when states began enacting new capital sentencing statutes in response to the Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia declaring all existing death penalty statutes unconstitutional. New death sentences were 84% below the 315 death sentences imposed during the peak death-sentencing year of 1996.
Even as the use of the death penalty declined, its most dangerous flaw remained apparent. Six death row prisoners were exonerated of all charges this year, one each in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas. Since 1973, a total of 156 inmates have been exonerated and freed from death row.
The number of people on death row dropped below 3,000 for the first time since 1995, according to the latest survey by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
At least 70 death row prisoners with execution dates in 2015 received stays, reprieves, or commutations, 2.5 times the number who were executed.
In addition, there is an ongoing risk that judicial review is inadequate to protect capital defendants with serious intellectual disabilities or crippling mental illness.
DPIC’s report states: “The death penalty is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst crimes and the worst of the worst offenders. However, … [t]wo-thirds of the 28 people executed in 2015 exhibited symptoms of severe mental illness, intellectual disability, the debilitating effects of extreme trauma and abuse, or some combination of the three.”
KEY FINDINGS OF THE REPORT
There were 28 executions in 6 states, the fewest since 1991.
There were 49 death sentences in 2015, 33% below the modern death penalty low set last year.
New death sentences in the past decade are lower than in the decade preceding the Supreme Court’s invalidation of capital punishment in 1972.
Six more former death row inmates were exonerated of all charges.
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.
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.
Programme on state television discloses new details and punishments from espionage cases as part of a campaign marking National Security Education Day Authorities in Beijing have revealed that a Chinese scientist who was convicted in 2015 of selling state secrets to foreign spy agencies was executed in 2016, one of several “shocking” spy cases.
In a rare joint statement, the district attorney and the defense agreed that prosecutors withheld evidence that could point to a Rio Grande Valley woman’s innocence in the death of her toddler. A district judge who previously presided over a woman’s capital murder case recommended last week that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturn Melissa Lucio's 2008 conviction after a district attorney’s office admitted that prosecutors withheld evidence from her defense.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); April 15 2024: Marjan Hajizadeh and Esmail Hassaniani, a couple sentenced to death for drug-related charges in a joint case, were executed in Zanjan Central Prison. Marjan is reported to have been 16 at the time of arrest, which IHRNGO is working to confirm. If verified, she will be the first child offender executed for drug charges since 2014. She was also a child bride forced into marriage.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments centering on an Arizona death row prisoner that could set new precedent to determining ineffective assistance of counsel. A Mohave County Superior Court jury convicted Danny Lee Jones for the 1992 murders of Robert Weaver and his daughter Tisha, as well as the attempted murder of Weaver’s grandmother. A judge sentenced Jones to death for the two murders.
