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“River of Fire”: In New Memoir, Sister Helen Prejean Reflects on Decades of Fighting Executions

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The Trump administration is moving ahead with plans to resume the death penalty after a more than 15-year moratorium. This week Attorney General William Barr proposed fast-tracking executions in mass murder cases, and last month ordered the execution of five death row prisoners beginning in December. The federal government has executed just three people since 1963 — the last being in 2003. The death penalty is widely condemned by national governments, international bodies and human rights groups across the world. Experts say capital punishment does not help deter homicides and that errors and racism in the criminal justice system extend to those sentenced to death. We speak with Sister Helen Prejean, a well-known anti-death-penalty activist who began her prison ministry over 30 years ago. She is the author of the best-selling book “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty,” which was turned into an Academy Award-winning film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. …

Indonesia: Cleric calls on govt not to carry out executions... during Ramadhan

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A local leader of Indonesia's biggest Islamic organization has called on the Attorney General's Office (AGO) not to carry out the anticipated execution of several drug convicts during the fasting month of Ramadhan, which begins on July 6.

KH. Maslahuddin, the chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) in Cilacap, Central Java, said it was hoped the government would respect the holiness of Ramadhan and give the death row inmates a chance to repent before God in the special month for Muslim people.

"After that, please carry out the execution as quickly as possible. Do not postpone it further," Maslahuddin told journalists last week. 

He said if necessary the executions could even be conducted before Ramadhan. "So that prosecutors, firing squad personnel, the Muslim death row inmates and other parties involved in the execution can be devoted to carrying out their Ramadhan religious services," Maslahuddin said. [Hypocrisy and bigotry rule the world - DPN]

He said it was important that the AGO not repeatedly postpone the execution of the convicts, especially in the case of those whose court ruling was already final and could not be legally challenged, so the punishment would create a deterrent effect on other drug crime perpetrators.

"It should be conducted as soon as possible -- the sooner the better. The execution and threat of the death penalty must be continuously communicated to the public so that potential perpetrators think twice before committing such crimes," said Maslahuddin.

Repeatedly postponing the execution of the sentences would only open room for perpetrators to file appeals or use other legal measures in an effort to escape the death penalty.

Citing an example, Maslahuddin said the second appeal and a repent and forswear request letter filed by drug convict Freddy Budiman at the Cilacap District Court were merely aimed at postponing the execution of his death sentence.

As reported earlier, the AGO confirmed it would soon carry out a 3rd round of executions conducted under President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo. However, the AGO has not yet provided details on the date of the execution and the number of inmates to be executed.

The government reportedly delayed the execution due to ongoing legal measures by lawyers of several convicts. The AGO executed 14 people convicted for drug crimes in 2 rounds last year.

Source: Jakarta Post, May 30, 2016

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Location: Cilacap, Cilacap Regency, Central Java, Indonesia

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Texas: Death row inmate Larry Swearingen denied clemency before Wednesday execution

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Montgomery County’s only death row prisoner lost a long-shot bid for clemency Monday, just over 48 hours before he is scheduled for execution.
For convicted killer Larry Ray Swearingen, these final days and last-minute legal filings must feel familiar. The Wednesday execution date marks the sixth time he’s been scheduled for death in the past two decades.
The 48-year-old Willis man was sent to death row in July 2000, after he was convicted of slaughtering Montgomery County college student Melissa Trotter and dumping her body in the Sam Houston National Forest.
The case against him was built on circumstantial evidence, and Swearingen has repeatedly professed his innocence, questioning everything from autopsy results and entomology to cell phone forensics and an analysis of torn pantyhose. 
Over the years, those questions have sparked national publicity and galvanized local support even to the last minute. A rally opposing his execution is scheduled Tuesday outside the courthouse in Mo…
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Texas executes Larry Swearingen

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Texas executed Larry Swearingen for a 1998 Texas slaying. His lawyer says bad science got him on death row.
Swearingen consistently maintained his innocence in the strangling death of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter. Texas prosecutors, however, had no doubt he was her killer.
For decades, a staunch claim of innocence and doubts over forensic science engulfed the death penalty case of Larry Swearingen. On Wednesday, he was executed in Texas' death chamber.
The 48-year-old man lived on death row for nearly 2 decades, consistently expressing his innocence in the 1998 strangling death of Melissa Trotter, a 19-year-old community college student in Montgomery County he has said was his friend. Multiple state courts had previously taken five execution dates off the calendar over the years to look into different issues surrounding Swearingen’s conviction, but prosecutors and Trotter’s family remain firmly convinced he was her killer.
After a late appeal was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court mi…
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Florida: The last words of the serial killer who was executed for murdering six gay men

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The last words of serial killer Gary Ray Bowles have been revealed in a statement read after his execution.
Bowles, 57, was put to death at a prison in Florida on Thursday, August 22, 23 years after he was sentenced to death over the murders of six gay men.
He opted to eat cheeseburgers, french fries and bacon as his last meal.
In his final words, read to reporters after his death, Bowles attempted to apologise to his mother.
‘You don’t wake up and decide to become a serial killer.’
He said: “I’m sorry for all the pain and suffering I have caused. I hope my death eases your pain.
“I want to tell my mother that I am also sorry for my actions.
“Having to deal with your son being called a monster is terrible. I’m so very sorry.
“I never wanted this to be my life. You don’t wake up one day and decide to become a serial killer.”
Bowles had not previously expressed remorse for his actions, saying in a 2014 interview with A&E: “It’s not hard to kill somebody… you can kill somebody prett…
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Notes from inside death row in Singapore

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Pannir Selvam Pranthaman, 32, was found guilty of carrying 51.84g of heroin at Woodlands Checkpoint in September 2014. He was due to be executed at dawn on May 24, 2019. He appealed for a stay of execution so that he could challenge the clemency process. He was granted a stay by the Court of Appeal, a day before he was due to face the gallows. His lawyers argued that the decision of the prison to proceed with the execution was made prior to the rejection of clemency by the President and that he had therefore been "deprived of a fair determination of the clemency process." 
COMMENTARY, Aug 19 — I was sentenced to death on May 2, 2017. The judge said that even though my involvement was just as a courier, he has no any other choice because the DPP of Singapore did not want to issue the certificate of co-operation.
I saw my family break down with my very own eyes, they couldn’t believe what was happening. 
At that moment, the lowest point of my life, I mustered the strength to s…
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Florida executes Gary Ray Bowles

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Serial killer who preyed on gay men executed at Florida State Prison. Bowles was condemned for the murder of Walter Hinton in Jacksonville Beach – one of the killings that terrorized the East Coast’s Interstate 95 corridor in an eight-month span in 1994.

Hinton was Bowles’ sixth and final known victim in a spree that began in Daytona Beach with the slaying of John Hardy Roberts. In between, there were victims in Rockville, Maryland; Savannah, Georgia; Atlanta and Nassau County, Florida.
(CNN) -- Florida has put to death the man known as the "I-95 killer," who was convicted of killing three people and admitted to killing several more in a 1994 spree targeting gay men.
The Supreme Court decided late Thursday not to stay the execution.
The high court was mulling a last-ditch appeal Thursday from 57-year-old Gary Ray Bowles, whose lawyers contended he is too intellectually disabled to be executed.
The execution was scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday but was delayed while the Supreme C…
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The Execution of Stephen West

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West's final words: 'In the beginning, God created man. And Jesus wept. That’s all.'
Stephen West wept.
The curtains in the execution chamber opened at 7:15 p.m. on Aug. 15, 2019 — one year, six days and four condemned men since Tennessee revived its death penalty. West’s was to be the fifth name on a list representing a run of executions the likes of which has not been seen in this state since the 1940s. And there he sat, flanked by prison guards, weeping in the electric chair. 
A moment earlier, as the other media witnesses and I sat in the dark witness gallery, we could hear West's attorney Justyna Scalpone in the chamber with him, trying to comfort him as she prepared to leave him for the last time.

RELATED | Tennessee executes Stephen West
“We all love you,” said Scalpone, sniffling. 
Now she was sitting two seats to my left in the front row, looking through four rectangular vertical window frames into the brightly lit death chamber. In between us was one of West’s…
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‘I refuse to accept this as my fate’: Larry Swearingen slated for execution despite claims of innocence

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As his scheduled death date approached, Larry Ray Swearingen still refused to accept that the Huntsville gurney could be his fate.
The 48-year-old Montgomery County man was sentenced to die for the 1998 murder of Melissa Trotter, a college student who was raped, strangled and left in the Sam Houston National Forest with torn pair of pantyhose tied around her neck. But Swearingen always said he didn’t do it and, after eking out stays before each of the last five scheduled death dates, he was skeptical the Aug. 21 execution could come to pass.
“I don't believe you're going to kill me,” he told the Houston Chronicle, likening the case against him to a house of cards. “I believe I will pull that one single card and it's gonna come tumbling down.”
In recent weeks, the courts denied appeal after appeal, and the state parole board on Monday unanimously turned down his one shot at a commutation. He is scheduled to die at 6 p.m.
The condemned man’s lawyers have repeatedly decried …
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Will North Carolina's Supreme Court Allow Racism to Remain a Persistent Factor in its Death Penalty?

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In 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act (RJA), which allowed defendants to strike the death penalty from their cases if they could show that racial discrimination was a factor in their prosecution. 
The law came as a response to a series of exonerations of Black people who were falsely convicted of crimes they did not commit by all-white or nearly all-white juries. 
The legislature took a bold step to address was what suspected to be deeply troubling evidence of racism infecting the death penalty—but no one knew for sure what evidence uncovered by the RJA would find.
In 2010, people on death row began filing RJA claims. Four had hearings, and the evidence uncovered was indeed stark, troubling, and clearly pointed to the systemic ways that racism infects capital cases in North Carolina. The four petitioners had death sentences reversed and were resentenced to life without parole (LWOP).
But in 2013, the law was repealed by the same new legislature that targeted Black vot…
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Australian convicted of cooking up his own cocaine could now face death penalty in Bali

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Ryan Williams was already jailed for 5 years. But a bizarre legal loophole could see him face the death penalty.
An Australian man sentenced to a shock 5 years in a Bali jail for cooking up his own cocaine and who decided not to appeal and risk the death penalty has now been told the death penalty is back on the table.
Bizarrely it comes as Sydney man Ryan Scott Williams finds himself with an unlikely ally wielding a double-edged sword.
His accusers, whose actions in appealing for a lighter sentence for him have again opened the door to the very thing he hoped to avoid by not appealing himself - the death penalty or a higher sentence.
This is because, on appeals, it is open to the High Court to increase sentences, not just decrease them.
Prosecutors have decided to lodge an appeal against the 5-year sentence handed down to Williams on the basis, they argue, that the law used against him was not appropriate to his crime.
The 45-year-old was convicted in Denpasar District Court earlier …
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Iraq has executed 100 since January, 8,000 on death row: official

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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region ⁠— More than 100 individuals have been executed in Iraq since January, with a staggering 8,000 more on death row, according to Iraq's UN-approved human rights body.
The execution figures came from Iraqi Ministry of Justice data that was reviewed by the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, according to one commission member.
"According to the data of the Iraqi Justice Ministry that have been reviewed by the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, over 100 people have been executed in Iraq," Hemin Bajalan told Rudaw English on Sunday. "There are 8,022 prisoners in Iraq convicted with execution."
Iraq has one of the highest rates of execution in the world, and is ranked in the top four along with Iran, Saudi Arabia and China, according to Human Rights Watch's 2019 report, which documented the year prior.
Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government has not made public the number of executions it carried out this year, according to t…
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