As three men challenge their commutations, others brace for imminent prison transfers and the finality of a life sentence with no chance of release. In the days after President Joe Biden commuted his death sentence, 40-year-old Rejon Taylor felt like he’d been reborn. After facing execution for virtually his entire adult life for a crime he committed at 18, he was fueled by a new sense of purpose. He was “a man on a mission,” he told me in an email on Christmas Day. “I will not squander this opportunity of mercy, of life.”
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Video tour of Florida’s death row shows how inmates live as they await execution
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A tour of Florida’s death row reveals the sparest of one-person cells, lined up along one side of narrow hallways where rows of prison bars form the wall on the opposite side.
The cells are meant as a final waypoint before the death chamber, with its white hospital gurney and window of glass for witnesses in an adjacent room.
The Florida Department of Corrections provided a video recording of death row in connection with a request from the Tampa Bay Times last month for information on dealing with contraband in the state prison system.
It is a view that few people outside the prison system ever see.
Inside these cells at the Union Correctional Institution near Raiford, and in a few more at adjacent facilities, some 345 people await execution.
One of them is Tommy Zeigler, the second-longest serving death row inmate, who has proclaimed his innocence since he arrived more than 40 years ago and is the subject of “Blood and Truth,” a six-part series by staff writer Leonora LaPeter Anton appearing this week in the Times.
Since 1999, 51 people have been put to death in Florida by lethal injection. Jose Antonio Jimenez, who was convicted of killing a woman in Miami-Dade County in 1992, has an execution date set for Dec. 13.
A typical death row cell includes a thin mattress, a steel sink and toilet combination, a locker, and a small table for writing. An inmate spends an average of 23 hours a day inside the cells.
When a death warrant is signed, an inmate is moved to one of the "death watch" cells at Florida State Prison. The cells, adjacent to the execution chamber, are slightly larger than regular death row cells.
An ongoing federal lawsuit by eight inmates challenges the constitutionality of the conditions on death row. Their time there ranges from 12 to 30 years and more — a situation they describe as "permanent solitary confinement."
Source:tampabay.com, Dan Sullivan, November 26, 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
As three men challenge their commutations, others brace for imminent prison transfers and the finality of a life sentence with no chance of release. In the days after President Joe Biden commuted his death sentence, 40-year-old Rejon Taylor felt like he’d been reborn. After facing execution for virtually his entire adult life for a crime he committed at 18, he was fueled by a new sense of purpose. He was “a man on a mission,” he told me in an email on Christmas Day. “I will not squander this opportunity of mercy, of life.”
Mogadishu (HOL) — Saudi authorities executed a Somali national convicted of drug smuggling and a Saudi citizen found guilty of murder, the Ministry of Interior announced on Sunday. The Somali national, identified as Mohamed Nur Hussein Ja'al, was arrested for attempting to smuggle hashish into Saudi Arabia. A specialized court found him guilty and sentenced him to death under tazir punishment, a discretionary ruling in Islamic law for severe crimes. After an appeal, the Supreme Court upheld the sentence, and a royal decree authorized the execution, which was carried out on Sunday in Najran, southern Saudi Arabia.
His former lawyer, M Ravi, says the only recourse now is for the Malaysian government to file an urgent application to the International Court of Justice challenging the execution. PETALING JAYA: Pannir Selvam Pranthaman, the 38-year-old Malaysian convicted of drug trafficking in Singapore, will be executed on Thursday (Feb 20), according to his former lawyer, M Ravi. In a Facebook post today, Ravi said Pannir’s sister told him that she had received a letter from the prison today confirming his execution in four days. Ravi claimed that during his time representing Pannir in 2020, Singapore’s prison authorities improperly forwarded confidential information on 13 inmates to the Singapore Attorney-General’s Chambers.
SINGAPORE, Feb 19 (Bernama) -- Singapore Court of Appeal on Wednesday has granted Malaysian death row inmate Pannir Selvam Pranthaman a stay of execution just hours before he was scheduled to be executed on Thursday (Feb 20). Judge of the Appellate Division Woo Bih Li, in his judgment, said the stay was granted pending the determination of Pannir Selvam’s Post-Appeal Applications in Capital Cases (PACC) application.
“People say that executing criminals does not take away from their dignity – if it is done with dignity. But the fact of the matter is that whether you’re waiting to die by lethal injection – waiting ... for the poison to flow down your veins – or waiting for a bullet, or waiting for a rope, or waiting for gas, or waiting for the electric current – there is no difference: there is no lesser or greater dignity in dying. The practice of the death penalty is the practice of torture. And by the time people I have been with finally climb into the chair to be killed, they have died a thousand times already because of their anticipation of the final horror.” – Helen Prejean, author of the book “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.” _____________________________________________________________________ Twitter/X | Instagram | Telegram | Contact Us "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have c...
The former wife of a man whose 2004 execution in Texas has become a source of controversy has said he admitted setting the fire that killed their three daughters during a final prison meeting just weeks before he was put to death, according to a Texas newspaper. Stacy Kuykendall, the ex-wife of Cameron Todd Willingham, said in a statement to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram published Sunday that Willingham told her he was upset by threats to divorce him after the new year. The fire that killed the couple's three girls was Dec. 23, 1991. Her last threat to divorce him, she said in a statement, occurred the night before the fire. "He said if I didn't have my girls I couldn't leave him and that I could never have Amber or the twins with anyone else but him," according to the statement from Kuykendall to the newspaper. Willingham went to his death proclaiming his innocence. And over the years, she has offered differing accounts. A Tribune investigation in 2004 showed the...
Muhsin Hendricks, who claimed to be "the first openly gay imam," was shot dead Saturday near Port Elizabeth in South Africa. He was reportedly the victim of a targeted attack. He was known as "the first openly gay imam." Muhsin Hendricks, who rose to prominence when he came out as gay in 1996 while leading the Al Ghurbaah mosque in Wynberg, Cape Town, South Africa, was shot dead on Saturday near Port Elizabeth, provincial police said. "At around 10am, the deceased (58 years old), Imam Moegsien Hendricks (his first name in the civil registry) and a driver were on board (a car)," a police statement said. "Two unknown suspects with covered faces (...) began firing several shots at the vehicle."
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Rights activists in Singapore and Malaysia will hold candlelight vigils Wednesday to protest capital punishment as Singaporean authorities prepare to execute a Malaysian man for drug trafficking despite mounting pressure to halt the sentencing. Pannir Selvam Pranthaman was arrested in 2014 for having 52 grams (about 1.8 ounces) of heroin and sentenced to death in 2017. He is due to be hanged on Thursday, making him the fourth person to be put to death in the Southeast Asian country this year alone; two others were executed for drug-related crimes and one for murder.
President Donald Trump's newly installed attorney general, Pam Bondi, has ordered the transfer of a federal inmate to Oklahoma so he can be executed, following through on Trump's sweeping executive order to more actively support the death penalty. Bondi this week directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer inmate George John Hanson, 60, so that he can be executed for his role in the kidnapping and killing of a 77-year-old woman in Tulsa in 1999.
On February 13, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine postponed the three Ohio executions that were scheduled for 2025. And he predicted that no one would be put to death during the remainder of his time in office which ends in 2026. Columbus’s NBC4 reports that “the reprieves were issued due to ‘ongoing problems involving the willingness of pharmaceutical suppliers to provide drugs to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC), pursuant to DRC protocol, without endangering other Ohioans.’”