FEATURED POST

Japan | Hakamada found religion, but then felt under attack by ‘the devil’

Published
Image
Editor's note: This is the last in a four-part series on letters that Iwao Hakamada wrote while on death row. About a decade after cursing God, Iwao Hakamada was baptized Catholic at the Tokyo Detention House on Dec. 24, 1984. “Since I have been given the Christian name Paul, I am keenly feeling that I should be aware of the greatness of Paul.” (June 1985)

Alabama: 8 death row inmates request execution by nitrogen gas

Published
Nitrogen
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A lawsuit challenging Alabama’s lethal injection process took an unexpected turn Tuesday after eight inmate plaintiffs asked to be put to death by the state’s new execution method: inhaling nitrogen gas.

The Alabama attorney general’s office and lawyers for inmates submitted a joint motion Tuesday to dismiss the litigation. Lawyers said the inmates’ claims challenging the state’s lethal injection process as inhumane are now moot, “because their executions will be carried out at the appropriate time by nitrogen hypoxia.”

Breathing the inert gas causes oxygen depletion in the blood stream.

Alabama had previously carried out executions by lethal injection and electrocution. Alabama in March added nitrogen to the list, becoming the third state to authorize executions by nitrogen. No state has yet used the method.

According to the motion, the eight inmate plaintiffs in the lawsuit had a June 30 deadline to request execution by nitrogen and all did so.

“The plaintiffs in this case, and anyone else who elected the new method, cannot now be executed by lethal injection,” said John Palombi, an attorney with the Federal Defenders Program, who is representing inmates in the lawsuit.

It’s not clear how many inmates had the choice or how many altogether have requested nitrogen.

A spokesman for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said his office did not have additional comment. A spokesman for the Department of Corrections could not immediately be reached for comment late Tuesday.

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said it could be some time before the inmates see a death chamber with nitrogen.

“At least for the prisoners who elected nitrogen gas over lethal injection, there will be no executions until Alabama has an approved nitrogen-gas protocol in place. It will take time for that to happen and, because the gas protocol will also be untried, it will face its own set of legal challenges,” Dunham wrote in an email.

Dunham said the eight inmates also may “prefer the unknown risks of nitrogen hypoxia to the known risks” of lethal injection drugs while Alabama avoids having to litigate the lethal-injection issue by voluntarily dismissing the case.

Palombi said the eight inmates did not waive their rights to eventually challenge the humaneness of execution by nitrogen and urged the state to make the protocol public when it is developed.

“While the best way to reduce the risks of botched executions would be to abolish the death penalty, if the death penalty does exist, it must be carried out in a constitutional manner with the respect and dignity that is required of such a solemn event,” Palombi said.

Source: The Associated Press, July 11, 2018


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

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!



"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: Alabama, USA
Related content:

Most Viewed (Last 7 Days)

First Third Of 2024 In Saudi Arabia: Executions Rise By 189% And Portend Another Bloody Year. At Least 71 Currently Facing Execution.

Published
Image
Since the beginning of 2024 until the end of April, the Ministry of Interior in Saudi Arabia announced the execution of 55 individuals. This figure constitutes a 189% increase compared to the executions in the first third of 2023, which witnessed 19 executions. The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights views these numbers as a clear indication of the Saudi government's continued approach towards executing and issuing death sentences, and that the promises made in recent years have become elusive.
Read more

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

Published
Image
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 written 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 writ
Read more

Cruel and Unusual: Documentary explores epicenter of Texas’ prison system

Published
Image
Every few years, from childhood until my late teens, my granddad would take me along with him to the small Texas town where he grew up—Normangee, population 522—to visit old relatives and even older graves. The drive took us up I-45, beyond the Houston sprawl, past pine forests, and eventually through Huntsville, epicenter of the state prison system. One of the city’s seven prisons was just off the interstate, and as we passed by I’d stare at the guard towers and barbed wire before turning my attention across the street to the Texas Prison Museum, which had its own mock guard towers in the parking lot. (“Prison” and “museum” were words that never seemed to go together.) Later, I learned that the museum’s central attraction was the wooden electric chair the state used for executions until 1964.
Read more

Saudi authorities agree to postpone execution of Kenyan national

Published
Image
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 13 – Saudi Arabia has acceded to Kenya’s request to postpone the execution of Stephen Munyakho that was set for Wednesday to allow for further negotiations between all parties. According to Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing’Oei, Kenya will be engaging stakeholders in Nairobi and Riyadh, including religious leaders, to agree on the next urgent steps.
Read more

Tennessee | New law allows death penalty for child rape

Published
Image
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has approved legislation allowing the death penalty in child rape convictions, a change the Republican-controlled Statehouse championed amid concerns that the U.S. Supreme Court has banned capital punishment in such cases. Lee, a Republican, quietly signed off on the legislation last week without issuing a statement.
Read more