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In the Bible Belt, Christmas Isn’t Coming to Death Row

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When it comes to the death penalty, guilt or innocence shouldn’t really matter to Christians.  

NASHVILLE — Until August, Tennessee had not put a prisoner to death in nearly a decade. Last Thursday, it performed its third execution in four months.
This was not a surprising turn of events. In each case, recourse to the courts had been exhausted. In each case Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, declined to intervene, though there were many r…

Iraq: 19 Russian women handed life sentences for joining ISIS

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Iraqi authorities have arrested more than 560 women identified as IS militants.
Women are among 560 arrested for 'joining and supporting' the armed group that was defeated last December.

A court in Baghdad sentenced 19 Russian women to life in prison for joining Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters in the country.

A Central Criminal Court ruling determined on Sunday the Russian women were guilty of "joining and supporting" ISIL, AFP news agency reported.

The women, many accompanied by their children, addressed the court through a translator - a Russian -language professor at Baghdad University hired by the Russian embassy.

A Russian diplomat at the hearing said the families of the women will be contacted and "informed of the verdict".

Another six women from Azerbaijan and four from Tajikistan were also given life sentences.

Most of the women on trial claimed to have been misled into making the trip to Iraq.

"I did not know we were in Iraq … I went with my husband and my children to Turkey to live there and then I suddenly discovered I was actually in Iraq," one of the accused said on Sunday.

Mass arrests


ISIL fighters surprised Iraqi forces with a lightning-quick offensive in 2014 and captured about one-third of the country, including the second-largest city Mosul, among others.

Since declaring victory over ISIL in late 2017, Iraqi authorities have arrested more than 560 women and 600 children identified as either as members of the group or relatives of fighters.

Earlier this month, an Iraqi court sentenced French national Djamila Boutoutaou to life imprisonment for joining the armed group.


Boutoutaou told authorities at the time she travelled with her husband thinking they would go on a holiday, but soon realised once in Turkey that her "husband was a jihadist".

Her husband was later killed in a military operation near Mosul along with their son. Boutoutaou subsequently surrendered to Kurdish Peshmerga forces in Iraq.

Experts estimate Iraq has detained more than 20,000 people over suspected ties to the group and has sentenced more than 300 people to death so far. Twelve ISIL widows were given the death penalty in February. 

Iraq's anti-terrorism laws empower courts to convict people who are believed to have helped ISIL, even if they were not directly involved in fighting.

Source: aljazeera.com, April 29, 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: Iraq

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Iran: Man executed in public, with children watching

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Iran Human Rights (IHR); January 15, 2019: A prisoner was hanged in Public at a square in Falavarjan City, Isfahan Province, in Iran. 
He was sentenced to death for murder and rape charges.
According to the Iranian website Mashregh News, Mohammad Javad Shams was executed on Tuesday, January 15, for murdering a five years old girl. 
Mohammad Javad Shams was arrested last October for kidnapping and murdering Melika, 5, during an ill-fated drug dealing. 
He had reportedly kidnapped Melika along with her brother and sister, killed Melika and raped her elder sister, Maryam.
His death sentence has been carried out just four months after his arrest, and it is unknown that he had a fair trial or not.
Pictures published by the Iranian media show several children among the crowd watching the execution.
According to the head of Isfahan Province Judiciary Courthouse, the defendant was “convicted to qisas (retribution in kind) for murdering Melika, sentenced to death for raping (Melika’s elder si…
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Ohio board rejects condemned man’s request for mercy

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Ohio Parole Board on Friday rejected a clemency request by a condemned man who says he’s innocent of the fatal shooting of a volunteer addiction counselor and is asking that his life be spared.
Warren Keith Henness, who goes by his middle name, was convicted of killing 51-year-old Richard Meyers in Columbus in 1992.
Myers was a lab technician at a veterans hospital in Chillicothe in southern Ohio and frequently volunteered with Alcoholics Anonymous to assist people with addictions. He had been helping Henness find drug treatment for his wife, according to authorities.
The board said in a unanimous ruling said that Henness’ claim of innocence was not persuasive and his account of the killing not reliable.
“Henness admitted he had told his attorneys so many stories that they did not know what was true,” the board said.
The inmate is set to die by lethal injection on Feb. 13 at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. Gov. Mike DeWine has the final say…
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Cruel, Not Unusual: Iran Prosecutor Backs Off Hint Of Fewer 'Divine' Amputations

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Iran's chief prosecutor has tried to walk back his own suggestion that the country's courts sometimes avoid amputations or controversial punishments when sentencing criminals due to UN human rights criticisms.
Mohammad-Jafar Montazeri was initially quoted expressing regret at a law enforcement conference in the capital that such pressure had forced Tehran to limit the number of "divine punishments" it carried out, referring to the severing of convicted thieves' hands.
Many rights groups in Iran and abroad say such punishments amount to torture.
Iran's religiously dominated system frequently organizes hangings and corporal punishments as public spectacles to discourage would-be criminals and has been called out over its rights record, including the frequent use of the death penalty and occasional reports of blindings or stonings.
The January 16 comments appeared to be a rare acknowledgement by an Iranian official that international pressure can be effective i…
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French drugs suspect facing possible death penalty escapes Indonesian jail

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An accused French drug trafficker has broken out of an Indonesian jail by sawing through bars on a second floor window and rappelling to freedom with a sarong, police said Monday (Jan 21), as they launched a manhunt to find the fugitive.
Felix Dorfin's daring escape happened Sunday evening at a police detention centre on Lombok island, where the 35-year-old was awaiting trial in a possible death penalty case.
"He escaped through the window on the 2nd floor in the detention centre and, using a sarong and curtains which were tied together, he climbed down and then escaped," West Nusa Tenggara police spokesman I Komang Suartana told AFP.
Police believe Dorfin is still on Lombok and have deployed officers to scour the island to search for him, Suartana added.
The Frenchman was arrested in September allegedly carrying a false-bottomed suitcase filled with 4kg of drugs - including cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines - at the airport on the holiday island next to Bali.
It was no…
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Proposed South Carolina bill would make electrocution main method of execution for death penalty inmates

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MYRTLE BEACH, SC (WMBF) - While many argue that death by electrocution is inhumane, South Carolina lawmakers said other options aren’t available anymore.
The main method of execution in S.C. is lethal injection, but a proposed bill would change that to electrocution.
"For the past probably 10 years, we have had the effect of the death penalty and there are a number of people sitting on South Carolina death row, but no manner or mechanism to carry it out,” said Fifteenth Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson.
According to the S.C. Department of Corrections, there are 37 inmates on death row, all set to receive lethal injection. However, Richardson said pharmaceutical companies have stopped supplying the mix of drugs used for that method of execution.
“They’re worried about people that will call them out and protest,” said state Sen. Stephen Goldfinch.
"What they’re doing is saying the electric chair is default and some other manner may be the secondary way,” said Richardson.
In…
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Third US trial finds Spaniard guilty of murdering 3

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A US jury on Saturday unanimously found a Spaniard guilty of murdering a nightclub owner and 2 dancers after the accused's 3rd trial in 21 years.
Pablo Ibar, 46, has already spent years on death row.
One of his lawyers, Benjamin Waxman, confirmed the latest conviction in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and told AFP he would appeal.
"We're very disappointed with the verdict," Waxman said.
The trial began in October.
Ibar was charged for the 1994 murders of the club manager and 2 female dancers during a robbery at the manager's home in Miramar, Florida.
Ibar and another man were both charged that year but the co-accused, after an initial conviction, was ultimately acquitted and freed at a retrial.
Ibar first went on trial in 1997 but the jury could not agree on a verdict.
At a 2nd trial in 2000 he was convicted and sentenced to death.
But in 2016, Florida's Supreme Court overturned the conviction and ordered a retrial, stating "numerous deficiencies and failure…
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The toll of 50 years on death row

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Every day, in any weather, 82-year-old Iwao Hakamada walks around the small Japanese city of Hamamatsu for up to six hours. A volunteer follows a few steps behind to be sure he doesn't get hurt and can find his way home.
Hakamada suffers from a mental condition diagnosed as "prison psychosis," the result of spending nearly five decades on death row — thought to be the world record — for a quadruple murder that evidence suggests he did not commit.
In 1966, he was a 30-year-old former professional boxer working at a miso factory, when the manager, along with his wife and two children, were found stabbed to death in their home, which was then set on fire. Hakamada lived on-site and was the only suspect. No one could corroborate his alibi that he'd been in his dorm room and rushed to the fire to help put it out.
Police detained him for about three weeks and according to records from the detention center, interrogated him for up to 14 hours a day. He alleged they beat hi…
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Death by Fentanyl: Should the Powerful Opioid Be Used in Lethal Injections?

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When it comes to executing people by lethal injection, “Fentanyl is just an obvious choice. You have unfortunately an inexhaustible supply of this drug in state custody - why can’t it be used?”
As the end drew near, Carey Dean Moore’s face turned red, and then purple. He breathed heavily, according to the witnesses who were there to see it, and coughed. Roughly 20 minutes later, he died.
In his final weeks, the two-time killer had given up efforts to seek a reprieve. He’d expressed his scant apologies and written the final words condemned men write. 
It was the 1,481st execution in the modern era of capital punishment, but Moore’s death was a first on more than one front. Not only was it the Cornhusker State’s first execution in more than two decades, but also it was the nation’s first ever lethal injection using fentanyl, the deadly drug at the center of the opioid crisis.
More than 28,000 Americans — none of whom were on death row — died in connection with the powerful painkiller in…
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Iran: Three Men Hanged in Public

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Iran Human Rights (IHR); January 15, 2019: Three prisoners were hanged in Public at a square in the city of Yasuj, capital of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province, Iran.
According to Iranian judiciary’s news agency (Mizan), three men named Keykavous Jamal Sirat, Rostam Rezaei and Abdollah Johari, were hanged at a square in Yasuj city on Sunday, January 13. 
The three prisoners were sentenced to death for armed robbery.
UN human rights experts, including the former Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran, had previously drawn particular attention to continued reports of public executions. 
“A dehumanising effect on both the victim and those who witness the execution” and ultimately reinforced the “already cruel, inhuman and degrading nature of the death penalty,” UN experts said.
According to Iran Human Rights annual report on the death penalty, 240 of the 517 execution sentences in 2017 were implemented due to murder charges. 
There is a lack of a classification of…
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Ohio Parole Board member quits, calls agency toxic and secretive

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COLUMBUS — Cleveland Democrat Shirley Smith resigned her post on the Ohio Parole Board, saying the agency is dysfunctional, secretive and toxic.
Smith, a former lawmaker who pushed through sentencing reforms, spent three years on the 12-member board but gave up the $90,000-a-year job on Dec. 31.
When she was appointed to the Parole Board in February 2015 by the Kasich administration, Smith said she quickly learned “it would be a long, bumpy ride while navigating a complex system of make-up-as-you-go policies and procedures that were not neither principled nor consistent. In my opinion and experience, the Ohio Parole Board chooses to operate as a secret society based on college roommate friendships, tenure and positions held within the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, and members’ desire to maintain absolute power.”
In a four-page opinion column distributed to Ohio media, Smith blamed DRC Court and Community director Cynthia Mausser for driving members off the board w…
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