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Tennessee execution: Billy Ray Irick tortured to death, expert says in new filing

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Editor's note: Reporter Dave Boucher was one of seven state-required media witnesses at Irick's execution. 
Billy Ray Irick felt searing pain akin to torture before he died in a Tennessee prison in August, but steps taken in carrying out his execution blocked signs of suffering, according to a doctor who reviewed information about the lethal injection.
In new court filings entered late Thursday amidst an ongoing legal challenge of Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol, Dr. David Lubarsky said statements from people who witnessed the execution indicated the controversial drug midazolam failed to ensure Irick could not feel pain during his death.
As a result, the death row inmate “experienced the feeling of choking, drowning in his own fluids, suffocating, being buried alive, and the burning sensation caused by the injection of the potassium chloride,” Lubarsky wrote in the filing.
The document also says the state did not follow its own lethal injection protocol, raising questio…

Iran: Two Executions in Urmia

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Public execution in Iran
Iran Human Rights (Jul 4, 2018): Two prisoners were executed at Urmia Central Prison.

According to close sources, on the morning of Wednesday, July 4, two prisoners, sentenced to Qisas, were executed at Urmia central Prison. 

It should be noted that three prisoners were scheduled to be executed today, but one of them was able to win the consent of the plaintiffs at the last moment.

The execution of these prisoners has not been announced by the state-run media so far.

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 murder by degree in Iran which results in issuing a death sentence for any kind of murder regardless of intensity and intent.

Considering the fact that the number of drug-related executions has been reduced in recent months due to the enforcement of the new drug law in 2018, most of the executed prisoners were those sentenced to Qisas (retribution in kind). 

Source: Iran Human Rights, July 5, 2018


Iran reduces death penalty, life sentence against 1700 drug convicts


Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi, the Tehran prosecutor general, announced on Tuesday that 1,700 sentences of narcotic-related cases have been commuted from capital punishment and life sentence to less severe forms of punishment.

The change in the law on narcotics-related punishments have revolutionized the country's policies in fighting against narcotics, Jafari-Dolatabadi told a meeting on social harms caused by narcotics, IRNA reported.

He further said out of 3000 requests made to commute narcotics-related sentences, 1700 have been reviewed and 1300 remain to be reviewed very soon.

Source: Tehran Times, July 4, 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: Urmia, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran

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Idaho Department Of Correction Can Keep Lethal Injection Drugs Secret, Judge Says

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The Idaho Department of Correction doesn't have to release information about which drugs it used to execute 2 inmates or where it got them from - at least for now.
In May, an Idaho judge ruled state correction officials had to hand over records and receipts of any drug used in the executions of Paul Ezra Rhoades and Richard Leavitt.
The order also required the department to release records of drugs bought for future executions to a University of Idaho law professor and the ACLU of Idaho who filed the suit.
Monday morning, Judge Lynn Norton ordered a new trial to determine whether the state has to disclose these records.
"We'll go to trial and once again prove that secrecy around lethal injection in particular is harmful to the public interest," says Ritchie Eppink, legal director for ACLU of Idaho.
In court records, Department of Correction Deputy Director Jeff Zmuda said releasing this information would "jeopardize" future executions.
That's because d…
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Double Dose: 2 executions in Texas next week

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Two inmates face executions next week. Troy Clark is scheduled for lethal injection on Wednesday, Sept. 26. Daniel Acker is due the following evening.
Both men claim they had no hand in the murders for which they were convicted, but for Clark, that insistence seems to have fallen on deaf ears. 
The most recent filing in his case was last November when the U.S. Supreme Court denied his appeal. 
Clark, from Tyler, Texas, was found guilty of the 1998 murder of Christina Muse, who was beaten and drowned in a bathtub, before her body was shoved into a barrel of lime and cement mix. 
According to the Houston Chronicle, Clark and some friends dumped the barrel in a remote area of the property that he lived on. 
When law enforcement found Muse's remains, they located a 2nd body decomposing nearby.
Clark's original appellate lawyer Craig Henry argued that Clark's trial lawyer was "deficient" in his counsel, but Clark's second appellate attorney Jeffrey Newberry argued…
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Florida: Trial for man accused of throwing daughter from Pinellas County bridge delayed

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PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. Jury selection in the John Jonchuck murder case will not begin on Monday after all.
Monday afternoon, the judge in the case reluctantly decided to delay the trial's beginning.
Judge Chris Helinger told prosecutors and defense attorneys in the courtroom that people around the courthouse have been giving her a hard time about whether or not the trial would begin.
"You know, people have been coming up to me for two weeks, [saying] 'it's not going to go. I's not really going to go is it?'"
"I said, 'yeah, it's going to go.' No, it's not going to go."
John Jonchuck is accused of throwing his 5-year-old daughter Phoebe to her death back in Jan. 2015 off of the Dick Meissner Bridge that leads to the Sunshine Skyway.
The issue?
What was Jonchuck's mental state at the time of the incident.
Defense attorneys filed a motion on Jonchuck's behalf, asking the judge to exclude the testimony of one of the state'…
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Virginia: Convicted killer, already facing death penalty, admits slaying 2 girls in Illinois in 2005

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The horrific rampage of former Marine Jorge Torrez began in a park in his hometown of Zion, Illinois, when he was just 16 years old. In May 2005, he fatally stabbed Laura Hobbs, 8, and her friend Krystal Tobias, 9, in a case that attracted national attention, particularly after Laura's father was wrongfully charged with the girls' murder.
Jorge Torrez graduated from high school a year later, never a suspect in the killings, and joined the Marines. By 2010 he was stationed at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia, while working at the Pentagon. That's when he attacked 2 women coming home from a Saturday night out, bound them with electrical cords inside their apartment, then took one of the women in his SUV, raped her, choked her and left her for dead. Police soon found Torrez, took his DNA and entered it into a national databank. And then the full scope of his crimes became apparent.
First, in July 2010, the DNA linked him to the killing of Laura and Krystal 5 years earlier.
T…
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Belarus: the Last Refuge for the Death Penalty in Europe

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Highly controversial and widely criticized in the EU and around the world, the death penalty continues to be legal under the Belarusian constitution and justified by the Belarusian people in cases of grave crimes. Whether it is morally acceptable or ethically wrong, the issue of capital punishment has thrown a spanner in the works of Belarusian politicians vying for a seat in the Council of Europe, with Belarus being the only European country to allow the executions of its prisoners.
History of the death penalty in Belarus
The death penalty has been a part of the country’s policy since it gained independence from the Soviet Union. Article 24 of the National Constitution prescribes this punishment for “grave crimes” that occur against the state or against individuals. A number of non-violent crimes can also be punishable by death. Under the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus these crime include terrorism (both domestic and international), treason, sabotage, conspiracy to seize s…
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Malaysian death sentences commuted for 3 Mexican brothers

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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — The deaths sentences against three Mexican brothers convicted of drug trafficking in Malaysia have been commuted to prison terms, a lawyer said Friday.
Lawyer Hisyam Teh Poh Teik said the prison department confirmed the sentences had been commuted by the state sultan on March 26.
They are serving new sentences of 30 years in prison, starting from the date of the royal pardon. 
Teh was one of two lawyers for the brothers during their trial but said he didn't handle their bid for a royal pardon.
The brothers from Mexico's Sinaloa state were arrested at a secluded Malaysian drug factory in 2008 and said they had been cleaning the place.
Police found more than 29 kilograms (63 pounds) of methamphetamine at the factory.
Malaysia's High Court convicted the brothers — Jose Regino, Simon and Luis Alfonso Gonzalez Villarreal — of drug trafficking in May 2012. 
The crime carries a mandatory penalty of death by hanging.
Their appeals to higher courts ha…
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'No Time To Sleep' to depict last day of death penalty inmate

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In a first, a play titled No Time To Sleep will be a ground-breaking 24-hour long performance that will be streamed live around the world.
The play charts the final days of Prisoner Z, played by acclaimed actor Sarmad Khoosat. No Time To Sleep promises to be an intense, unedited media scrutiny for 24 hours. There will be no breaks. The camera will never look away, stated a press release.
Set inside a replica of an actual death cell, Prisoner Z's journey will begin on 26 September, 2018 at 12:00 PM (PST), when his mercy petition is rejected.
A social media prologue will depict rolling coverage of the execution warrant and the wheels that are set in motion to carry out his execution. Petitions are filed in court, the media is alerted, the family is notified and scrambles to make the harrowing trip to visit him for the last time.
Zulfiqar spent 17 years on death row. In that time, his execution was scheduled and stayed more than 20 times. During his incarceration, prisoner Z educate…
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The Machinery of Death Is Back on the Docket

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Two Supreme Court cases this fall pose hard questions about the death penalty.
"From this day forward,” Justice Harry Blackmun announced in 1994, “I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.” Blackmun had voted to restore the death penalty and even to approve mandatory death sentences. But after 25 years, he said, “I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed … the problems that were pursued down one hole with procedural rules and verbal formulas have come to the surface somewhere else, just as virulent and pernicious as they were in their original form.”
Another quarter-century has passed, and the machinery of death chugs on, patched with judicial duct tape and legislative Crazy Glue. States have adopted new “more humane” execution methods (which sometimes require them to acquire lethal drugs on the black market); Congress has made it nearly impossible for federal courts to help most state death defendants. …
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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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Death penalty sought for SC man accused of ‘brutally’ molesting, killing toddler

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LAURENS COUNTY, SC - Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the South Carolina man accused of molesting his girlfriend’s 2-year-old son and beating the toddler to death.
Eighth Circuit Solicitor David Stumbo and Laurens County Sheriff Don Reynolds announced Tuesday that the state will seek a death sentence for William Ryan Looper, who is charged with murder in the death of 2-year-old Brantley Justin Smith, according to a release from the solicitor’s office.
Brantley was found dead in a Clinton home in June, McClatchy reported previously. 
The boy had been “brutally beaten” and was “brutally sexually assaulted before his death,” the Laurens County Sheriff’s Office said at the time.
The death penalty notice was filed Monday, according to Laurens County online court records. 
Looper faces charges of murder, criminal sexual conduct with a minor under 11 years of age and two counts of unlawful neglect of a child.
South Carolina law provides several aggravating circumstances under w…
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