FEATURED POST

Photographing the Community on Tennessee’s Death Row

Published
Image
From 2010 to 2015 I was incarcerated in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the Tennessee prison that houses death row for the men’s system. On one side of a gate, 250 of us lived in a “support staff” unit working maintenance, landscaping, kitchen service or whatever else kept the facility operational. On the other side of the gate were maximum-security prisoners and those in protective custody, and a unit just for the condemned.
Post a Comment

Washington Governor Jay Inslee grants reprieve to child killer on death row

Published
Washington Governor Jay Inslee
Washington Governor Jay Inslee
BELLINGHAM - Gov. Jay Inslee granted a reprieve Thursday to a Bellingham man sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl.

A Whatcom County jury sentenced Clark Richard Elmore to death in 1996, for the killing of his girlfriend’s teenage daughter. Elmore raped Kristy Lynn Ohnstad in a van, choked her until she passed out, drove a metal skewer through her skull, beat her with a sledgehammer, and dumped her body in the woods. She was 14.

Over the past two decades Elmore has appealed to successively higher courts. In October the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear his case. An execution date was set for Jan. 19.

Inslee formally granted a reprieve Thursday. Two years ago earlier he had announced a moratorium on death sentences in Washington state.

“Governor Inslee has been very consistent that his moratorium on the death penalty cases in Washington isn’t about individual cases,” reads a statement released Thursday by the governor’s office. “As he stated when he announced the moratorium in 2014 the action is based on the governor’s belief that the use of capital punishment across the state is inconsistent and unequally applied — sometimes dependent on the budget of the county where the crime occurred.”

Prosecutor Dave McEachran met with Inslee last week to ask him to consider making an exception and allow the execution to proceed.

Kristy’s family spoke with Inslee, too, and “expressed a preference to see Elmore serve life in prison,” according to the governor’s office.

Elmore will remain at the state prison in Walla Walla, where he’s effectively serving a life sentence.

Gov. Jay’s Inslee office released the following statement:
Under state law, Article III, Section 9 of the Washington Constitution and RCW 10.01.120, the governor is granted the authority to issue reprieves — or stays of execution— and, consistent with his intent to issue a moratorium on death penalty executions, Governor Inslee has issued a reprieve in Clark Elmore’s case. This action does not commute Mr. Elmore’s sentence nor issue a pardon and he will remain in the State Penitentiary in Walla Walla for the rest of his life. In recent weeks the governor spoke with the Whatcom County prosecutor, who asked the governor to reconsider his position, as well as the victim’s family who expressed a preference to see Elmore serve life in prison.
Governor Inslee has been very consistent that his moratorium on the death penalty cases in Washington isn’t about individual cases. As he stated when he announced the moratorium in 2014 the action is based on the governor’s belief that the use of capital punishment across the state is inconsistent and unequally applied – sometimes dependent on the budget of the county where the crime occurred.
The governor urges the state legislature to end the death penalty once and for all.

Sources: The News Tribune, Kiro7, December 29, 2016

⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!
Location: Washington, USA
Related content:

Most Viewed (Last 7 Days)

Photographing the Community on Tennessee’s Death Row

Published
Image
From 2010 to 2015 I was incarcerated in Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, the Tennessee prison that houses death row for the men’s system. On one side of a gate, 250 of us lived in a “support staff” unit working maintenance, landscaping, kitchen service or whatever else kept the facility operational. On the other side of the gate were maximum-security prisoners and those in protective custody, and a unit just for the condemned.
Read more

Georgia | Death row inmate’s last cigarette request 'denied over health concerns'

Published
Image
Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith has represented a number of clients who have been sentenced to death row across the USA and he's recounted some of their final moments A human rights attorney has reminisced about the bitterly ironic moment his executed client was initially denied a last cigarette over health concerns. Clive Stafford Smith shared the poignant tale with LadBible, recounting how Nicholas Lee Ingram skipped his final meal in favor of a smoke.
Read more

South Carolina executes Richard Moore

Published
Image
South Carolina executes Richard Moore despite broadly supported plea to cut sentence to life   South Carolina put Richard Moore to death by lethal injection Friday for the 1999 fatal shooting of a convenience store clerk, despite a broad appeal for mercy by parties that included 3 jurors and the judge from his trial, a former prison director, pastors and members of his family.
Read more

Iran executes Jewish man for fatal stabbing

Published
Image
Arvin Netanel Ghahremani's relatives claim he did not receive adequate defense. Authorities in Iran on Monday executed a Jewish man, Arvin Nathaniel Ghahremani, who had been sentenced to death for murder, Iranian media reported. “The sentence of retribution was executed this morning,” said Hamidreza Karimi, the prosecutor for Kermanshah in western Iran, according to the Mehr news agency.
Read more

US Supreme Court declines to halt South Carolina inmate’s upcoming execution

Published
Image
A federal judge also decided inmates don’t have a right to know more about the drugs they can choose to kill them COLUMBIA — The U.S. Supreme Court will not stop an inmate’s execution scheduled for Friday, according to a Thursday order. Richard Moore, 59, had asked the nation’s highest court to keep him from the death chamber long enough to hear claims that prosecutors struck Black jurors because of their race during his 2001 trial. But in a two-sentence order, the justices declined.
Read more

Prisoners plead for air conditioning in lawsuit against Florida corrections department

Published
Image
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — It was the hottest September in more than a century in parts of South Florida, and Dwayne Wilson could hear his 81-year-old fellow inmate gasping for breath and crying out for help at the Dade Correctional Institution, 45 miles southwest of Miami on the edge of the Florida Everglades. The elderly man was confined to a wheelchair and for weeks had been complaining of severe chest pain and difficulty breathing in the unventilated dorm where he was serving his sentence, according to a federal class action lawsuit filed this week on behalf of Wilson and two other inmates at the prison.
Read more

Human Rights Crisis in Iran: Amputations and Executions Surge Amid International Alarm

Published
Image
October 30, 2024 – Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have raised urgent alarms over escalating human rights abuses in Iran, where both corporal punishments and executions are being enforced at alarming rates. Amnesty International reports that five men held at Urumieh Central Prison in West Azerbaijan Province – Hadi Rostami, Kasra Karami, Mehdi Shahivand, Mehdi Sharifian, and Morteza Esmaeilian – are at immediate risk of having their fingers amputated by Iranian authorities. This follows the October 29 use of a guillotine machine by prison officials to amputate four fingers from the right hands of two other men, brothers Mehrdad and Shahab Teymouri, who were transferred to solitary confinement just prior to their punishment.
Read more

Iran Executes Finger Amputation Sentences on Two Brothers Convicted of Theft

Published
Image
Authorities at Urmia Prison in Iran’s West Azerbaijan Province carried out the sentence of finger amputation on two brothers convicted of alleged theft. Branch 1 of the provincial juvenile court ordered the amputation of four fingers from the right hand of each brother, Shahab and Mehrdad Teimouri.  After the procedure, the brothers were transferred to Imam Khomeini Hospital in Urmia for medical treatment.
Read more

Delayed Execution: The Syrian Regime Detains Minors in Prisons to Execute Them Upon Reaching 18

Published
Image
This investigative report uncovers a punitive approach employed by Syrian security forces following the detention of minors. Children were held without trial until they reached the legal age of 18, at which point they were transferred to Military Field Courts. Additionally, the Syrian regime used illegal methods to issue death sentences for detained minors under the Anti-Terrorism Law (No. 19 of 2012). Investigation by Ali Al Ibrahim and Mohamad Skaf
Read more

Iran | At Least 166 Executions in October; Highest Monthly Execution Toll in Two Decades

Published
Image
Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); November 2, 2024: Amid escalating tensions between Iran and Israel, and under the cover of war propaganda, the Islamic Republic carried out at least 166 executions in October alone. This marks the highest number of executions recorded in a single month since Iran Human Rights began documenting executions in 2007. Among those executed were 13 Afghan nationals, six women, and an Iranian-German citizen.
Read more