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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. 

Death Sentence Issued in Gaza: PCHR Calls for Respecting Palestine’s International Obligations

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A gallows is prepared for an execution in Gaza, 2013
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR): On Tuesday, 09 July 2019, the First Instance Court issued a death sentence by hanging against J. M. (69), from Jabalia after convicting him with the murder of (A. A.) on 15 February 2018.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the ongoing use of death penalty in the Gaza Strip and calls upon the authorities to respect Palestine’s international obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights’ Second Optional Protocol, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty (Acceded in June 2018).

Since the beginning of 2019, three death sentences were issued in Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled areas. 

Thus, the total number of death sentences issued since 1994 reached 219: 30 in the West Bank and 189 in the Gaza Strip. Of the Gaza Strip sentences, 131 were issued after 2007.

PCHR confirms that any death sentence should not be executed without the Palestinian President’s ratification; and that any executions carried out without said ratification are considered an extra-judicial execution and those executing or issuing the sentence should be held accountable. 

PCHR also commends the President’s decision not to ratify any death sentence since 2005, and calls for a moratorium on the death sentence, in a prelude to its abolition from Palestinian legislations.

Since the establishment of the PA, 41 death sentences were executed: 39 in the Gaza Strip, and two in the West Bank. 

Of those executed in the Gaza Strip, 28 were carried out after 2007 without the ratification of the Palestinian President in violation of the Palestinian law.

PCHR emphasizes that issuing death sentences requires presence of the necessary litigation guarantees, particularly right to defense and not being subject to torture, and interrogation techniques that leads to having objective evidence-based convictions. 

These requirements are not available in the Gaza Strip; thus, PCHR calls upon the authorities to abstain immediately from using the death penalty.

PCHR also calls upon the Palestinian President to issue a law by decree to suspend the death penalty in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, until an elected legislative authority assumes the legislative power and abolishes it from Palestinian legislations.

Source: imemc.org, Staff, July 10, 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: Palestine
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