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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.

Serial killer who terrorized San Francisco Bay area found dead at San Quentin

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Anthony McKnight
California’s executioner has been beaten to the punch — again.

A convicted serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay area was found dead in his tiny cell on death row at San Quentin last week.

Former sailor Anthony McKnight, 65, was the sixth doomed man on death row to die in 2019.

Officials didn’t release the cause of death.

McKnight had spent 11 years on death row. The Golden State hasn’t executed a killer since triple murderer Clarence Ray Allen got the needle on Jan. 17, 2006.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the U.S. Navy lifer was in jail for the rape and attempted murder of three women in the 1980s.

But DNA linked him to a slew of sickening cold cases. Cops tied McKnight to the horrific murders of five young women and girls.

Betty Stuart, 22, was discovered with her throat slashed on Sept. 22, 1985; Diane Stone, 17, was found a week later, also with a slashed neck; Talita Dixon, 13, was the youngest victim and was found nine days later, stabbed to death; Monique Davis, 18, was found Dec. 9, 1085, dead from blows to the head; and Beverly Bryant, 24, was beaten to death and found on Christmas Eve in 1985.

But at the time he was arrested in January 1986, prosecutors could only link McKnight to living victims.

He was charged with brutal sex attacks on three Oakland prostitutes. In 1987, he was sentenced to 63 years behind bars.

Three survivors testified at his 2008 murder trial where he was found guilty and sentenced to death.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom placed a moratorium on the state’s death penalty in March claiming it disproportionately affected people of colour and those with mental health disorders.

Source: Toronto Sun, Brad Hunter, October 21, 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: California, USA
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