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Arkansas Supreme Court Decision Allows New DNA Testing in Case of the ​“West Memphis Three,” Convicted of Killing Three Children in 1993

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On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decided 4-3 to reverse a 2022 lower court decision and allow genetic testing of crime scene evidence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men convicted in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after taking an Alford plea, in which they maintained their innocence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended sentence. 

European Council 'Strongly Condemns' Secret Execution In Belarus

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Alyaksandr Zhylnikau and Vyachaslau Sukharka BELARUS
The Parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has "strongly condemned" the reported secret execution of a Belarusian while his case was still under consideration by the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHCR).

PACE’s general rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty, Titus Corlatean, said in a statement on June 17 that by executing Alyaksandr Zhylnikau in recent days "Belarus has once again shown that it does not fully subscribe to basic European standards, and its use of the death penalty continues to prevent the development of deeper relations with the Council of Europe."

"I reiterate my call on the Belarusian authorities to introduce a moratorium on the death penalty, as a matter of urgency, and as a first step towards its full abolition. It is the only way forward,” Corlatean said.

The Minsk-based human rights center Vyasna (Spring) quoted Zhylnikau's relatives on June 13 as saying that his death penalty verdict had been implemented.

It remains unclear if the second convicted person in the case, Vyachaslau Sukharka, was also executed.

Sukharka and Zhylnikau were convicted of murdering three people and sentenced to life in prison in December 2015.

In July 2017, the Supreme Court upheld an appeal by prosecutors and the case was sent for retrial, where the two men were sentenced to death.

At the same time, Zhylnikau filed a complaint with the UNHCR, which had subsequently asked Belarusian authorities to take "urgent measures and to avoid carrying out the death sentence" prior to the consideration of the convict's complaint by the committee.

Andrej Paluda, coordinator of the campaign Human Rights Defenders Against Death Penalty in Belarus, said the case shows that Belarus "does not share the human rights values and remains the last country in Europe and the former Soviet Union where people are executed by shooting."

Belarus is the only country in Europe and Central Asia to carry out the death penalty.

According to rights organizations, more than 400 people have been sentenced to death in Belarus since it gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Two convicts were reportedly executed in November and two in May last year.

Source: rferl.org, Staff, June 17, 2019


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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: Belarus
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