India | First executions in five years condemned

(New Delhi, Paris) -- India’s execution by hanging early this morning of four men in Tihar prison in New Delhi, after five years without executions, is a step in the wrong direction and must be strongly condemned, FIDH and its member organization People’s Watch said today.

In 2013, the four men – Akshay Thakur, Vinay Sharma, Pawan Gupta, and Mukesh Singh – were found guilty of the gang rape and murder of a young woman in a New Delhi bus in 2012, and sentenced to death.

Their executions were postponed several times, as the defendants exercised all legal remedies available to them.

The case drew much-needed attention to the widespread trend of sexual and gender-based violence in India.

“By not carrying out any executions for the past five years, the Indian authorities were taking steps towards joining the list of countries that were making progress towards the abolition of the death penalty. This morning’s executions are a step in the wrong direction, which do nothing to effectively address the issue of sexual and gender-based violence in India.” -- Adilur Rahman Khan, FIDH Secretary General

FIDH and People’s Watch are particularly concerned that rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence continue to occur at an alarming rate in India, without substantive efforts being undertaken by the authorities to increase proven methods to reduce these crimes.

“No matter how heinous the crime is, the death penalty is never the answer. The only way to reduce rape and sexual violence is by strengthening the criminal justice system, and introducing measures that aim at eliminating impunity for perpetrators and facilitating the reporting of sexual crimes to the authorities.”

In 2018, the Indian Parliament approved a Cabinet ordinance that introduced the death penalty for cases of rape of girls under the age of 12, increasing the number of offenses punishable by the death penalty to 54.

In 2015, the Law Commission of India recommended the abolition of the death penalty for all crimes, except terrorism-related offenses and waging war. In addition, during its consultations, a general consensus emerged among members of the Law Commission that courts were unable to adopt a fair and non-discriminatory approach to the death penalty.

India is party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which guarantees right to life and requires a progression towards the abolition of the death penalty. However, during its third Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of India in May 2017, the Indian government refused to accept all the recommendations it received with regard to the abolition of the death penalty. The government also voted against the 2018 United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution in favor of a global moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

In 2019, courts in India imposed 102 death sentences, bringing the total number of prisoners on death row to 378 by the end of December 2019. No executions took place in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 and the last execution in the country, prior to this morning’s executions, was carried out in 2015.

FIDH, a founding member of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP) and a member of the WCADP Steering Committee, and People’s Watch reiterate their strong opposition to the death penalty for all crimes and in all circumstances.

Source: fidh.org, Press release, March 20, 2020

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

California | Becerra vows to extend moratorium despite past support for capital punishment

SACRAMENTO—Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the death penalty while serving as California’s attorney general, a punishment his office actively sought in the case of a gunman convicted of an Orange County mass shooting, but as the front-running candidate for governor, he has vowed to block executions if elected in November. Becerra said he will extend the blanket reprieve for all death row inmates that Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted by executive order in 2019, saying he supported “moving our state away from a costly, flawed system that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities and too often gets it wrong.”

Iran | Afghan Citizen Executed in Wheelchair Due to Severe Mobility Disability

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Iranian authorities have reportedly executed an Afghan citizen, identified as Valijan Nourzay, at the central prison in Rafsanjan, according to the human rights organization Hengaw. Hengaw said in a statement on Sunday, September 6, that Nourzay was executed early Wednesday last week at Rafsanjan Central Prison. According to the organization, Nourzay had a severe mobility disability and was executed while in a wheelchair. Hengaw, citing informed sources, reported that Nourzay had been pursued by Iranian authorities three years ago over an alleged murder. He was reportedly seriously wounded after Iranian security forces opened fire on him in Rafsanjan before being arrested and later sentenced to death.

Egypt TV presenter and 11 others sentenced to death in major drugs case

Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa and 11 others have been sentenced to death by hanging after being convicted of drug trafficking and rape, while nine defendants received life sentences and seven were acquitted. Egyptian television presenter Sarah Khalifa, 39, has been sentenced to death by hanging along with 11 other defendants after being found guilty in a drugs case involving a criminal gang accused of importing ingredients used to manufacture narcotics for sale.

He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?

23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola Prison—and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free. Jimmie “Chris” Duncan wiped the sweat off his forehead as he assessed his temporary home from the parking lot of a rundown motel in central Louisiana. Sure, there’s drug dealing and prostitution, he said on a recent summer afternoon. And he suspected his neighbors were cooking meth on a floor below the room he paid $350 a week to rent.

California | He spent 19 years on death row. His conversion to Judaism helped him endure

Johnny Morales struggled to find sleep. He dozed off for a few moments, but officers came to his death row cell and woke him a little after midnight. They needed to inventory and box up his belongings. He was leaving San Quentin. Hands cuffed behind his back, he walked across the empty upper yard in the dim gray hours before daylight. An officer walked alongside him step for step, black latex-gloved fingers holding onto Morales’s arm. For almost 20 years, Morales could only experience the world outside his 4-by-11 foot cell in the condemned housing unit like this—chained and escorted by officers. Security protocols required all death row residents be handcuffed or shackled any time they were out in open space with staff.

Ex-corrections officials urge governor to commute Kansas death sentences

Former Kansas corrections officials are urging Governor Laura Kelly to grant clemency to the state's death row inmates. Former Kansas Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz has several reasons why he thinks the state should abolish the death penalty. Werholtz, who served as secretary from 2002 to 2010 and returned on an interim basis in 2019, uses his discussions with peers and family members of victims as well as experiences of seeing wrongly convicted people getting exonerated as his guiding points.

Florida executes Harold Gene Lucas

Florida state officials executed 74-year-old Harold Gene Lucas by lethal injection on Tuesday evening, concluding a 50-year legal saga stemming from the 1976 murder of a 16-year-old girl in Bonita Springs. STARKE, Fla. -- A man convicted of killing a teenage girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends was put to death Tuesday in the first of three executions planned this month in Florida. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, authorities said. He was sentenced to death for the 1976 shooting attack on Jill Piper and the wounding of her friends, Richard Byrd Jr. and Terri Rice.

Florida executes Daniel Owen Conahan Jr.

In Florida’s 15th execution this year, man put to death for killing linked to ‘Hog Trail Murders’ A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year. Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a 3-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least 6 people over a 3-year span.

Arizona AG seeks execution date for man convicted in 1995 trooper killing

Trooper Bob Martin was killed during a traffic stop on the Beeline highway; execution for his killer could be as soon as January PHOENIX (AZFamily)—The Arizona Attorney General is asking for an execution date to be set for a man convicted in the killing of an Arizona State Trooper over 30 years ago. On Aug. 15, 1995, Trooper Bob Martin was shot and killed while performing a traffic stop along the Beeline Highway.

Florida set to carry out 14th execution this year in the nation's busiest death chamber

MIAMI (AP) — A Florida man convicted of fatally shooting a 16-year-old girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends is set to be executed Tuesday in the first of three lethal injections scheduled this month in the state. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, is set to receive a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke starting at 6 p.m. He would be the 14th prisoner put to death this year in Florida, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has already signed death warrants for two more executions set for later this September.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog