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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.

Florida: Judge To Decide Whether Or Not To Delay Trial Of Confessed Parkland Shooter Nikolas Cruz

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FORT LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) – A Broward County judge may decide Thursday to delay the start of confessed Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz’s murder trial.

Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer is considering a defense motion to delay the late January start date of his trial.

Defense lawyers claim the case is moving far too rapidly and runs the risk of legal errors that would result in a reversal on appeal and trigger yet another high-profile trial.

Prosecutors want the trial to start with jury selection on January 27.

Judge Scherer has previously insisted on keeping that date for probably the biggest trial in the county’s history.

In a court filing Wednesday, however, prosecutors “in an abundance of caution” said they would not object if the trial starts a few months later, in May.

Cruz, 21, faces 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in the Valentine’s Day 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. He faces the death penalty if convicted, although his lawyers say he will plead guilty in return for a life prison sentence.

In their motion, defense lawyers noted that of 38 capital punishment cases in Broward County since 1994, the average time they remained pending between arrest and trial was 52 months, or a little over four years.

On the current schedule, Cruz’s trial would begin less than two years after the mass shooting on Feb. 14, 2018. He was arrested that same day. Defense lawyers say that is far too fast for them to adequately prepare a defense in a case of such magnitude.

The defense motion also points out there are at least 1,000 witnesses identified by prosecutors in the case, and each of them must be interviewed by Cruz’s lawyers. There are about 4 million pages of evidence, thousands of photos, videos, and social media posts and much more.

Source: miami.cbslocal.com, Staff, December 14, 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: Florida, USA
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