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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. 

Upwards of 100 inmates executed in Iran since January 2020

More than 100 inmates have been executed in Iran from January to mid-June 2020.

At least 30 of these executions have been announced by official and semi-official press and media, and the other 79 were carried out in secret.

At least two women were hanged in January 2020.  One of them was identified as Maliheh Haj Hassani, hanged in Adelabad Prison in Shiraz, capital of Fars Province, southern Iran.

The state-run press identified the other woman by her first name, Sara. The women, 32, was hanged in the Central Prison of Mashhad, capital of Razavi Khorasan Province, northeastern Iran.

The execution of a juvenile on April 21, 2020 caused outrage around the world over basic rights abuse in Iran.

Shayan Saeedpour was hanged in the Central Prison of Saqqez in the Iranian Kurdistan for committing murder when he was under 18 years of age.


The victims of death penalties carried out since January 2020 also included political prisoners.

On June 10, the father of political prisoner Hedayat Abdollahpour announced that his son had been executed 20 days earlier. He found out about the shocking execution of his son upon referral to the Justice Department’s unit in charge of implementing the verdicts in Urmia, capital of West Azerbaijan Province, northwestern Iran.

The Iranian authorities did not give advance notice to Mr. Abdollahpour’s lawyer, nor did they grant a last visit to his family.

Political prisoner Mostafa Salimi, 53, was also hanged in the Central Prison of Saqqez on the morning of April 11, 2020 after 17 years of detention. Mr. Salimi’s execution was widely covered by the state-run press in Iran.

The Iran Human Rights Monitor urges the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Iran, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and other international human rights organizations to take action to stop the death penalty in Iran.

Source: iran-hrm.com, Staff, June 14, 2020


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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

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