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America Is Stuck With the Death Penalty for (At Least) a Generation

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With Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement, the national fight to abolish capital punishment will have to go local.
When the Supreme Court revived capital punishment in 1976, just four years after de facto abolishing it, the justices effectively took ownership of the American death penalty and all its outcomes. They have spent the decades since then setting its legal and constitutional parameters, supervising its general implementation, sanctioning its use in specific cases, and brushing aside concerns about its many flaws.
That unusual role in the American legal system is about to change. With Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the court this summer, the Supreme Court will lose a heterodox jurist whose willingness to cross ideological divides made him the deciding factor in many legal battles. In cases involving the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, his judgment often meant the difference between life and death for hundreds of death-row pr…

Indonesian court sentences 4 drug smugglers to death

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Meth bust by Indonesian police (file photo)
Meth bust by Indonesian police (file photo)
The Medan District Court on Wednesday decided on capital punishment for 4 Indonesians convicted of smuggling 270 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine from Malaysia to North Sumatra.

The 4 defendants are businessmen Ayau and Daud, alias Athiam, from Bengkalis, Riau, Lukmansyah, a security guard in Dumai, Riau, and Jimmy Syahputra, a resident of Deli Serdang, North Sumatra.

The panel of judges found that they violated the Narcotics Law, which carries a maximum penalty of death for traffickers.

"The defendants are proven to have conspired to traffic narcotics. With all the evidence, the judges rejected their defence and ordered the death penalty," said presiding judge Asmar while reading out the verdict on Wednesday night.

In October, the National Narcotics Agency (BNN), along with the Dumai Customs Office, foiled the smuggling in Medan, North Sumatra.

Almost 300 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine, locally known as shabu-shabu, were packaged in 45 boxes.

The value of the substance is estimated to be Rp 500 billion, with the average price of meth in Indonesia Rp 2 billion per kilogram.

Indonesia is currently one of the main markets for meth trafficking in Asia. A number of smuggling attempts in large amounts have been successfully foiled by the authorities.

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has implemented a tough drug policy by ordering executions of drug traffickers since he took office in 2014.

The government is currently preparing for a 3rd round of executions of 18 inmates, despite condemnation from human rights activists.

Asmar said the syndicate transported the meth from China to Malaysia and finally to Medan, North Sumatra.

Daud first met a person, identified as Lau Lai alias Aan alias Jecky who is still at large, at the CK Malaka Hotel in Malaysia in August.

They later plotted to smuggle the drugs to Medan. Lau Lai asked Daud to find a receiver and a warehouse to keep the meth in Medan.

Daud later contacted Ayau and Irwan Toni, also still at large, to find the meth storage place in Medan.

Daud also contacted Jimmy and transferred Rp 55 million to the latter's account to purchase a car to unload and transport the large amount of meth from Dumai port, Riau, to Medan.

The court also revealed that in September Irwan contacted Lukmansyah to tell him that the meth packages were on their way to Medan. It was at this time that the information was leaked to the custom officials in Dumai.

The meth arrived at Dumai in October and was initially to be kept in a water tank at the Jade Square warehouse complex on Jl. Yos Sudarso, Medan.

Authorities raided the warehouse a day after the meth arrived and arrested Jimmy and seized the meth packages.

The lawyer of the 4 defendants, Nurwadi Aco, said he would appeal the verdict.

"Several facts are still in dispute," he said after the trial.

Source: The Jakarta Post, June 23, 2016

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Location: Indonesia

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Texas: With a man's execution days away, his victims react with fury or forgiveness

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For the past 3 months, Christopher Anthony Young has awoken in his 10-by-6 foot concrete cell on death row and had to remind himself: He's scheduled to die soon.
As the day crept closer, the thought became more constant for Young, who's sentenced to die for killing Hasmukh "Hash" Patel in 2004.
"What will it feel like to lay on the gurney?" he asks himself. "To feel the needle pierce my vein?"
Mitesh Patel, who was 22 when Young murdered his father, has anxiously anticipated those moments, as well. He wonders how he will feel when he files into the room adjacent to the death chamber and sees Young just feet away through a glass wall.
For years, Patel felt a deep hatred for Young. He wanted to see him die. Patel knew it wouldn't bring his father back. But it was part of the process that started 14 years ago when Young, then 21, gunned down Hash Patel during a robbery at Patel's convenience store on the Southeast Side of San Antonio.
3 mont…
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Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejects clemency for Chris Young

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Today, July 13, 2018, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, by a vote of xxx, rejected Christopher Anthony Young’s application for clemency. 
Young faces execution by the State of Texas on Tuesday, July 17, 2018.
Earlier this year, the Board unanimously recommended clemency for Thomas Whitaker, a white man convicted of masterminding the murders of his mother and brother.  His father, Kent, was also shot in the ambush but survived and forgave his son, pleading for his life.
Chris Young is African-American.  The son of the man he killed opposes his execution.
Governor Abbott has the authority to grant a one-time, 30-day reprieve.
Statement from David Dow and Jeff Newberry, attorneys for Chris Young:
“We are devastated that the members of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles failed to recognize what we know to be true: The man the State of Texas seeks to execute – our client, Christopher Anthony Young – is not the same reckless young man who took the life of Hasmukh Patel in San Anto…
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Texas executes Christopher Young

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Christopher Young was executed for the 2004 murder and robbery of a San Antonio convenience store clerk. 
A Texas prisoner was executed Tuesday evening for the fatal shooting of a San Antonio convenience store owner after courts turned down appeals that the state parole board improperly rejected the inmate's clemency request because he's black.
Christopher Young, 34, never denied the slaying, which was recorded on a store surveillance camera, but insisted he was drunk and didn't intend to kill 53-year-old Hasmukh "Hash" Patel during an attempted robbery after drinking nearly two dozen beers and then doing cocaine that Sunday morning, Nov. 21, 2004.
Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Young said he wanted to make sure his victim's family knew he loved them "like they love me."
"Make sure the kids in the world know I'm being executed and those kids I've been mentoring keep this fight going," he added.
As the lethal dose …
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Ohio executes Robert Van Hook

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Convicted killer Robert Van Hook executed at Lucasville prison
Convicted of the horrific murder of a Cincinnati man, Robert Van Hook died by lethal injection on Wednesday in Ohio's 1st execution in more than 10 months.
The 58-year-old Van Hook was pronounced dead at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at 10:44 a.m. after being strapped to the gurney in the death chamber and administered the lethal dose of drugs.
He served a violence-plagued 32 years in prison after a death-penalty conviction for what now could be considered a hate crime - of the utmost violence.
On Feb. 18, 1985, Van Hook met David Self in a gay bar in downtown Cincinnati and went home with him. Van Hook's clemency report says he lured Self into a vulnerable position and strangled him into unconsciousness.
"He then took a paring knife from the kitchen and stabbed the victim behind the right ear, aiming the thrust upward toward the brain, accompanied by a blade-twisting movement," the report said.
…
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The Aum Shinrikyo Executions: Why Now?

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With the execution of Aum Shinrikyo leader and six of his followers, Japan looks to leave behind an era of tragedy. 
On July 6, 2018, Japanese authorities executed seven members of the religious movement Aum Shinrikyo (Aum true religion, or supreme truth), which carried out the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack and a series of other atrocities. None of the seven of the executed men were directly involved in releasing the gas on that tragic day; four of those who did remain under a death sentence, and their executions may be imminent.
The seven executed were involved in planning and organizing the various crimes committed by Aum. Asahara Shoko (born Matsumoto Chizuo), was the founder and leader of the movement, having developed the doctrinal system instrumental to Aum’s violence and its concept of a final cosmic war of good (Aum) against evil (the corrupt material world and everyone — from the Japanese government to the general public — who lived in it). Asahara is believed to have given …
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Execution date pushed back for Texas 7 escapee after paperwork error on death warrant

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Joseph Garcia is scheduled for execution in August.
Citing a court's clerical mistake, prosecutors this week asked for a new execution date for Texas 7 escapee Joseph Garcia.
The condemned Dallas County killer was scheduled to die on Aug. 30, but on Wednesday the court approved a new Dec. 4 date after the clerk failed to issue a death warrant in time.
"This statutory violation could result in a last-minute stay of execution," prosecutors wrote in a Tuesday court filing.
State law requires that the court issue a death warrant within 10 days of greenlighting the execution date. But in Garcia's case, a Dallas County judge set the date on May 24, and the warrant wasn't issued until June 6 - 3 days late.
Last February, a similar issue forced the state to grant a stay in the case of Tilon Carter, a Tarrant County death row prisoner. In that case, defense lawyers were notified a day late, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ended up calling off the execution four da…
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20 Minutes to Death: Record of 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 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 written on the night of the e…
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Indonesia: Gay couple publicly whipped after vigilante mob drags them out of beauty salon

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Two Indonesian gay men were caned in public last week despite the government’s pledge that such barbaric punishment would not be continued. 
The men were whipped 80 times each with a rattan cane as onlookers hurled abuse and insults.
15 people were caned outside of a mosque in the country’s conservative Aceh province for offenses like drinking or selling alcohol and showing affection in public. It is the only region in Indonesia that imposes Islamic sharia law.
The unidentified couple were pulled out of a beauty salon earlier this year by a vigilante mob who accused them of having sex. 
The country has been cracking down on gay men and flogging or humiliating them with the government’s permission.
Police in Jakarta arrested over 140 men at a sauna popular with gay men in May 2017 and another 51 men in a raid of a different sauna in October. 
Police said the men were detained on suspicion of violating Indonesia’s pornography law.
In May 2017, two gay men were publicly caned after vigil…
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Fentanyl And The Death Penalty

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TRANSCRIPT, July 14, 20188:22 AM ET, Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday
NPR's Renee Montagne speaks with Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center about Nevada's attempt to use fentanyl for an execution.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

States around the country have been struggling to acquire drugs for lethal injections. As the state's supplies have run out, many pharmaceutical companies have balked at having their products used for executions. The state of Nevada this week was forced to postpone the execution of convicted murderer Scott Dozier. That's because the manufacture of midazolam, one of the drugs in the lethal cocktail, sued the state and a judge disallowed its use. What stands out about this postponed execution is that Nevada had hoped to become the first state to use the opioid fentanyl in a lethal injection. Robert Dunham is with the Death Penalty Information Center, which takes on the issue of how the death penalty is administered. Thank you for joining u…
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Saudi Arabia executes seven people in one day

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Saudi Arabia had the third highest execution rate in the world in 2017, after China and Iran, according to Amnesty International. Saudi Arabia has executed 73 people this year, 150 in 2017.
Saudi Arabia on Tuesday executed seven death row inmates who had been convicted of murder and drug trafficking, state media reported. 
Two Saudi citizens and three Chad nationals were executed after being sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of a Pakistani security guard, with the alleged intent of robbing the warehouse he was protecting, according to the state-run SPA agency. 
Another Saudi Arabian was executed for murder after setting a man on fire, SPA reported. 
A Lebanese national was executed for attempting to smuggle captagon into the kingdom, SPA said.
Captagon, a drug popular among fighters in war zones, usually blends amphetamines, caffeine and other substances in pill form.
Tuesday's executions bring to 73 the total number of people put to death in the kingdom this year, …
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