USA | Activists speak out against upcoming executions

“The federal death penalty and the death penalty in this country are at a state of injustice and they have been since their inception. The death penalty itself is, simply put, a bad public policy – morally, economically, socially and legally,” said Abraham Bonowitz, co-director of Death Penalty Action, a national organization mobilizing opposition to federal executions.

“These executions have been scheduled not because it's time, but because it's the political season and the president wants to have an execution under his belt as he gets into the campaign and the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention.”

The government has scheduled executions by lethal injection for Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, with inmate Daniel Lee Lewis scheduled for execution on Monday.

The Wednesday execution is currently on hold. Another execution is set for August.

The federal government's death row is at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, and it has the federal system's only functioning execution chamber.

The protest group gathered Monday afternoon at the north end of the prison complex.

Bonowitz said the decision to have the executions during the COVID-19 pandemic endangers many people as attorneys, federal officials, victim family members, chaplains, inmate family members and protesters will be brought together in a facility that is known to have cases of COVID-19 among inmates and staff.

Sister Barbara Battista, justice promoter for the Sisters of Providence at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, said there is no moral foundation for adding violence on top of violence by executing people already serving prison sentences for their crimes.

Sylvester Edwards of the Terre Haute branch of NAACP said the executions violate civil rights and human rights and disproportionately affect people of color on death row.

Juries have declared the prisoners guilty, Edwards said, and no one is trying to set those individuals free.

Arthur Feinsod, president of the Interfaith Council of the Wabash Valley, said people of great conscience and religious belief have spoken out for decades that the death penalty is immoral and unjust.

During the statements, a Bureau of Prisons employee approached the protest group to ask them to leave the BOP grounds on the west side of the busy highway.

Media representatives moved across the road while the protesters continued to make statements from the edge of the highway blacktop. Additional prison officials soon arrived at the scene in multiple vehicles, but observed the protesters from a distance.

Death penalty resistance groups have been planning protests since before the executions were first scheduled for December 2019.

Instead of mass protests nationwide in a time of COVID-19, virtual protests and petitions are being promoted instead of the mass protests. Bonowitz asked protesters to stay safe and meet in small vigil groups, but not to come to the prison area on execution days.

Bonowitz said the Bureau of Prison is providing a bus to transport protesters to designated areas on the prison grounds, but the local resistance group does not plan to be in those areas.

Karen Burkhart, coordinator of the Indiana State Death Penalty Abolition group, said the security area around the prison property is larger than for past executions, and for the first time includes security on the Wabash River at the prison's western boundary.

Local law enforcement and other agencies met with prison officials on Monday as part of the planning for the executions. The 1st execution was originally scheduled for Monday morning, but has now been pushed back to about 4 p.m.

Source: Tribune-Star, Staff, July 7, 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

Florida | 49 years on death row, killer of Bonita Springs teen learns death date

A Fort Myers man on death row for nearly five decades learned his execution date as Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his order Thursday, July 30. Harold Gene Lucas, then 24, shot and killed his 16-year-old girlfriend, Anthia Jill Piper in Bonita Springs on August 14, 1976. Lucas was 24 when he was charged in Piper's shooting death at her parents' home on Aug. 14, 1976. The execution is set for Sept. 1 in a state that has accelerated its pace under DeSantis the past two years, with a record of 19 executions in 2025. Piper was shot seven times by Lucas, who claimed to be intoxicated.

Florida executes Dominick Occhicone

Florida executes 2 men in a day. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida's death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term. STARKE, Fla. — Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, the last an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history. Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of killing a young girl.

Idaho | How Bryan Kohberger’s Guilty Plea Move Could Be His Death Sentence

If Bryan Kohberger successfully withdraws his guilty plea and goes to trial for the murders of four University of Idaho students, it could lead to him being sentenced to death, experts told Newsweek . Kohberger, 31, filed a handwritten petition on Monday from the Idaho Maximum Security Penitentiary, where he is serving four consecutive life sentences for the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen in a rental home near the university's campus in Moscow, Idaho, in 2022. Kohberger pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbings just over a year ago, a month before jury selection was set to start.

Iran executes 20-year-old protester as fears grow for other detainees

Iranian authorities executed 20-year-old protester Arvin Kheirkhah at Shahroud prison on Saturday morning, according to information obtained by Iran International, amid concerns that several other detainees could also face execution. Kheirkhah was arrested during the January protests and sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court on charges including moharebeh , or “waging war against God.” He was transferred to solitary confinement on Wednesday ahead of the execution. His family gathered outside Shahroud prison on Friday night in an attempt to stop the sentence from being carried out. According to information received by Iran International, Kheirkhah told his family in a final conversation: “Don’t let them forget me. We stood up for the liberation of our homeland. Don’t let the path we chose be silenced.”

After Nearly 30 Years and a Supreme Court Reversal: Assessing the Likely Result of Richard Glossip’s Oklahoma Retrial

DPN asked Grok for a legal analysis of Richard Glossip’s upcoming murder retrial and its likely disposition. Most likely outcome of Richard Glossip’s retrial: acquittal or a hung jury leading to dismissal or no further prosecution, rather than a conviction for first-degree murder. A conviction remains possible but is the less probable result given the severely damaged core evidence and the state’s own prior admissions. Death is off the table. Case background

Texas | New Evidence Challenges Rodney Reed Death Penalty Conviction

AUSTIN, Texas — Nearly three decades after Rodney Reed was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of Stacey Stites, prosecutors and law enforcement officials are urging Texas’ highest criminal court to fully examine new evidence they argue raises serious questions about his conviction before the state carries out an irreversible punishment. Fair and Just Prosecution, joined by the Law Enforcement Action Partnership and 29 current and former prosecutors and law enforcement officials, filed an amicus brief urging the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to fully review new evidence in Reed’s death penalty case, according to an FJP press release.

Florida executes James Duckett

Double execution: 1st of 2 inmates is put to death in Florida Florida has executed James Duckett, a 68-year-old former cop convicted of killing an 11-year-old girl in 1987. The state is set to execute an 80-year-old man 6 hours later for a 1986 murder. Florida carried out the 1st double execution in more than 60 years, executing former police officer James Duckett and later scheduling the execution of 80‑year‑old Dominick Occhicone, amid Governor Ron DeSantis’s aggressive push to increase death penalties in the state. Florida has put to death the 1st of 2 inmates in the state's 1st double execution in more than 60 years amid an aggressive death penalty push by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Doctors warn against Tennessee death penalty protocols

Tennessee’s execution protocol is medically unethical and should be revamped before further executions occur, nearly 40 health care professionals said in a letter to Gov. Bill Lee. Like the coalition of faith leaders who asked for a moratorium on executions earlier this month, the physicians, nurses, and other medical professionals who signed the July 28 letter said they were motivated to speak up after the gruesome and botched execution of Tony Carruthers in May. Carruthers spent 90 minutes bleeding and writhing in agony as an attending physician made repeated unsuccessful attempts to insert an IV into the inmate’s chest after being unable to find useable veins in the arms, legs, and feet. Lee granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve after the ordeal.

Florida | Former warden recalls botched electrocution that left him battling PTSD for 13 years and turned him into an abolitionist

Ron McAndrew anticipated it would be just another standard execution. He had been assigned to carry out the death of Cuban refugee Pedro Medina via electric chair within the confines of Florida State Prison. Fifteen years had passed since Medina's conviction for the murder of 52-year-old Dorothy James, and McAndrew's responsibility was to oversee the administration of lethal electrical currents to his brain. Having already supervised two previous executions using the identical procedure and raised in a community that strongly supported capital punishment, he expected a swift conclusion with justice delivered.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog