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U.S. | 'I comfort death row inmates in their final moments - the execution room is like a house of horrors'

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Reverend Jeff Hood, 40, wants to help condemned inmates 'feel human again' and vows to continue his efforts to befriend murderers in spite of death threats against his family A reverend who has made it his mission to comfort death row inmates in their final days has revealed the '"moral torture" his endeavor entails. Reverend Dr. Jeff Hood, 40, lives with his wife and five children in Little Rock, Arkansas. But away from his normal home life, he can suddenly find himself holding the shoulder of a murderer inside an execution chamber, moments away from the end of their life. 

Trial for Men Charged With Plotting Sept. 11 Attacks Is Set for 2021

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This article was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

WASHINGTON — A military judge on Friday set Jan. 11, 2021, as the start of the joint death-penalty trial at Guantánamo Bay of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four men charged as plotters of the attacks that killed 2,976 people in New York, Washington and a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001.

The judge, Col. W. Shane Cohen of the Air Force, set the date for the start of the selection of a military jury at the war court compound at the Navy base in Cuba called Camp Justice.

It was included in a 10-page trial scheduling order that set deadlines toward reaching that trial date. 

The timetable includes a list of materials the prosecutors must provide the defense teams by Oct. 1 as the first step to achieving that start date.


This is the first time that a trial judge in the case actually set a start-of-trial date, despite requests by prosecutors since 2012 to two earlier judges to do so.

The five men were arraigned in this case on May 5, 2012, inside a special national security courtroom at Guantánamo that lets people sitting behind the court in a spectator’s gallery watch live but hear the proceedings on a 40-second delay.

Source: The New York Times, Carol Rosenberg, August 30, 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: United States
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U.S. | 'I comfort death row inmates in their final moments - the execution room is like a house of horrors'

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Reverend Jeff Hood, 40, wants to help condemned inmates 'feel human again' and vows to continue his efforts to befriend murderers in spite of death threats against his family A reverend who has made it his mission to comfort death row inmates in their final days has revealed the '"moral torture" his endeavor entails. Reverend Dr. Jeff Hood, 40, lives with his wife and five children in Little Rock, Arkansas. But away from his normal home life, he can suddenly find himself holding the shoulder of a murderer inside an execution chamber, moments away from the end of their life. 
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Oklahoma prepares to kill another man who says he's innocent

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Florida | Jury recommends death penalty for man who killed five women in Florida bank

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