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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.

Tennessee Supreme Court sets 6 execution dates in next two years

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Tennessee's electric chair
The state's highest court set new execution dates in 2019 and 2020 for 6 men sentenced to death in Tennessee.

All of the men had prior execution dates set by the Tennessee Supreme Court.

Those plans were temporarily halted as a result of pending legal challenges to Tennessee's lethal injection protocol. Those challenges, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court, ultimately failed.

The new execution dates were announced Friday, a day after a federal judge in Nashville denied a request to delay the execution of death row inmate David Earl Miller.

Miller wanted the delay so his lawsuit, which argued he had the right to select a firing squad as his method of execution, could be heard.

Miller, convicted in the 1981 murder of 23-year-old Lee Standifer in Knoxville, is scheduled to be executed as originally planned on Dec. 6, according to a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Correction.

Miller's execution will mark the 3rd in Tennessee this year — and only the 8th time Tennessee has exercised the death penalty since 1960. On Aug. 9, Billy Ray Irick was executed by lethal injection. On Nov. 1, Edmund Zagorski was executed by electric chair.

Tennessee inmates scheduled for execution:


- May 16, 2019, for Donnie Edward Johnson, who was convicted in 1985 of killing his wife, Connie Johnson, in Benton County. Johnson suffocated his wife in 1984 by stuffing a plastic garbage bag into her mouth.

- Aug. 15, 2019, for Stephen Michael West, convicted in 1986 for the fatal stabbings of a mother and daughter, Wanda Romines, 51, and Sheila Romines, 15, in Union County. West was also convicted in the rape of Sheila Romines. West's co-defendant, Ronnie Martin, confessed to being the actual killer. Martin was a juvenile at the time and ineligible for the death penalty.

- Oct. 10, 2019, for Charles Walton Wright, convicted in 1985 of 2 counts of premeditated 1st degree murder for the 1984 killings of Gerald Mitchell and Douglass Alexander during a drug transaction in Nashville.

- Dec. 5, 2019, for Lee Hall, also known as Lee Hall Jr. convicted in 1993 for the murder of Traci Crozier in Hamilton County. Hall threw gasoline on Crozier, his ex-girlfriend, then set her on fire while she was inside her car. Crozier suffered 3rd-degree burns to nearly all of her body and later died.

- Feb. 20, 2020, for Nicholas Todd Sutton, convicted in 1986 for the stabbing and killing of Carl Estep in Morgan County. Sutton was in prison for the murder of his grandmother when he and another inmate stabbed Estep 38 times.

- April 9, 2020, for Abu-Ali Abdur' Rahman, formerly known as James Lee Jones, convicted in 1987 for the murder of Patrick Daniels in Nashville, where Daniels was selling marijuana.

Source: The Tennessean, Anita Wadhwani, November 16, 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: Tennessee, USA
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