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

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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.

Attorneys: Nebraska death row inmate John Lotter's IQ too low for execution

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John Lotter
LINCOLN (AP) — Attorneys for a Nebraska death row inmate whose case inspired the 1999 movie "Boys Don't Cry" say he should be found ineligible for execution because he has the intellect of a child.

John Lotter was sentenced to death for his role in the 1993 killings of Teena Brandon, who was a transgender man and went by Brandon, and two witnesses, Lisa Lambert and Philip DeVine, at a farmhouse in Humboldt, about 75 miles south of Omaha.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports that Lotter's lawyers filed a motion stating that recent IQ testing shows that Lotter, 46, is intellectually disabled and therefore can't be put to death under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling forbidding the execution of the intellectually disabled.

Nebraska law says an IQ of 70 or below is presumptive evidence of an intellectual disability. 

Court records show Lotter scored a 67 last year, which would be the equivalent IQ of an 8-year-old.

The judge will need to grant an evidentiary hearing to consider the issue.

Source: Omaha World Herald, April 3, 2018


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Location: Nebraska, USA
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