USA | Health of US Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg fuels anxiety, preparations

Washington (AFP) -- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a darling of the US left and an increasingly frail octogenarian, is taking center stage ahead of this year's presidential election, with the Supreme Court's balance hanging on her seemingly faltering health.

Ginsburg's liver cancer -- and recent repeat trips to the hospital due to bile duct infection -- has Washington's political class on tenterhooks, with her every medical procedure causing major hand-wringing, not to mention a variety of contingency plans.

Ginsburg was hospitalized yet again on Wednesday to "revise a bile duct stent," as her doctors assured the public that such things were "common occurrences."

Should the 87-year-old, who is currently undergoing chemotherapy, leave the bench, President Donald Trump would move quickly to name a successor, with the Republican-led Senate likely to confirm the nomination in equally record speed as the November 3 election draws near.

This would cement a conservative majority on the court, which has final say on a number of the touchiest subjects dividing America -- from abortion to firearms, civil rights to the death penalty.

Although five of the court's nine justices are conservative, it is not uncommon for at least one of them to vote with the progressive bloc, resulting in several recent decisions favorable to liberals.

Just a few examples: The court recently struck down a restrictive abortion law, and extended rights to gay and transgender workers.

Such decisions, Trump tweeted in June, meant one thing to the president: "we need NEW JUSTICES of the Supreme Court."

He has promised to publish a list by September 1 of conservative candidates from which he would choose if elected to a second term -- but also, no doubt, should Ginsburg leave her post in the meantime.

Hugely popular with Democrats, Ginsburg has become a feminist hero and an unintentional social media icon fondly known as "The Notorious RBG," a riff on slain rapper The Notorious B.I.G.

Despite assurances from the court that the justice is "resting comfortably and expects to be released from the hospital by the end of the week," the left's anxiety is palpable.

Prayers and warm wishes have flooded social media, with fans crossing their fingers that Ginsburg will be able to hold on at least until November, when Democrats hope to elect former vice president Joe Biden to the White House.

'Wrongly decided'

The right is pushing for Trump's list to include candidates even more conservative than those he suggested during his 2016 campaign.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley told The Washington Post that he would "vote only for those Supreme Court nominees who have explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade is wrongly decided," referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court case legalizing the right to an abortion.

A series of rare leaks from the Supreme Court to CNN revealed some of the justices' recent deliberations.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was appointed by Trump in 2018, for example, did not immediately support his conservative colleagues in two big recent cases. He even went so far as to try to convince them to avoid making a decision altogether.

Chief Justice John Roberts, another conservative, meanwhile made it clear the he would not support further extension of the right to carry firearms.

The leaks made some observers believe they were meant to push the right into calling for even further conservative justices.

"What's the purpose of these leaks?" Houston lawyer Raffi Melkonian asked on Twitter, speculating that they were meant to scare conservatives into supporting stauncher candidates, part of a quest he said was meant to bring in justices "who-have-committed-on-abortion."

Not to be outdone, Biden has indicated that he will also make available a shortlist of candidates for the Supreme Court. His criteria? Diversity.

"We are putting together a list of a group of African American women who are qualified and have the experience to be on the court," he said.

Source: Agence France-Presse, Staff, July 31, 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

Boston Marathon bomber’s appeal of death sentence marked by delays and secrecy

As the city marks the 12th anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sits on federal death row for admittingly detonating bombs at the finish line that killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Yet, his fate remains uncertain after a decade of legal wrangling, as his lawyers continue to challenge his death sentence. The federal judge who presided over his 2015 trial was ordered by an appeals court in March 2024 to investigate defense claims that two jurors were biased and should have been stricken from the panel. If he finds they were, then Tsarnaev is entitled to a new trial over whether he should be sentenced to life in prison or death, according to the appeals court.

Singapore executes man for 2017 murder of pregnant wife and daughter

Teo Ghim Heng, who strangled his pregnant wife and four-year-old daughter in 2017 before burning their bodies, was executed on 16 April 2025 after exhausting all legal avenues. His clemency pleas were rejected and his conviction upheld by the Court of Appeal in 2022. Teo Ghim Heng, who was convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and their four-year-old daughter in 2017, was executed on 16 April 2025. The Singapore Prison Service confirmed that Teo’s death sentence was carried out at Changi Prison Complex. In a news release on the same day, the police stated: “He was accorded full due process under the law, and was represented by legal counsel both at the trial and at the appeal. His petitions to the President for clemency were unsuccessful.”

USA | They were on federal death row. Now they may go to a supermax prison.

A group of federal prisoners filed a lawsuit this week accusing the Trump administration of seeking to move them to a supermax prison to face tougher conditions as punishment for having their death sentences commuted by President Joe Biden. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life in prison without parole. After his inauguration, Trump ordered that the former death row prisoners be housed “in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.”

USA | Who are the death row executioners? Disgraced doctors, suspended nurses and drunk drivers

These are just the US executioners we know. But they are a chilling indication of the executioners we don’t know Being an executioner is not the sort of job that gets posted in a local wanted ad. Kids don’t dream about being an executioner when they grow up, and people don’t go to school for it. So how does one become a death row executioner in the US, and who are the people doing it? This was the question I couldn’t help but ask when I began a book project on lethal injection back in 2018. I’m a death penalty researcher, and I was trying to figure out why states are so breathtakingly bad at a procedure that we use on cats and dogs every day. Part of the riddle was who is performing these executions.

Indonesia | British grandmother who has spent 12 years on death row hugs grandchildren for first time as they visit Bali prison

Lindsay Sandiford, 68, reportedly shared 'cuddles and kisses' with her loved ones for the first time in years A British grandmother who has been stuck on death row in Bali for more than a decade has been reunited with her loved ones for the first time in years. Lindsay Sandiford has been locked up in Indonesia's notorious Kerobokan Prison since 2013 after being found guilty of trying to smuggle £1.6million of cocaine into the country.

Indiana Supreme Court sets May 20 execution date for death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie

The condemned man has exhausted his appeals but is likely to seek a clemency plea. Indiana Supreme Court justices on Tuesday set a May 20 execution date for death row inmate Benjamin Ritchie, who was convicted in 2002 for killing a law enforcement officer from Beech Grove. The high court’s decision followed a series of exhausted appeals previously filed by Ritchie and his legal team. The inmate’s request for post-conviction relief was denied in Tuesday’s 13-page order, penned by Chief Justice Loretta Rush, although she disagreed with the decision in her opinion.

Louisiana to seek death penalty for child killer despite Biden’s commutation

CATAHOULA PARISH, La. — While a federal death row sentence has been reclassified by former President Joe Biden to life without parole, the State of Louisiana still seeks the death penalty for a man convicted of the kidnapping, torturing and murdering a child in Catahoula Parish. According to a statement by the Seventh Judicial District of Louisiana District Attorney Bradley Burget, on Monday, a Catahoula Parish Grand Jury indicted Thomas Steven Sanders for the first-degree murder of 12-year-old Lexis Kaye Roberts in 2010.

Texas executes Moises Mendoza

Moises Sandoval Mendoza receives lethal injection in Huntsville for death of 20-year-old Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson A Texas man convicted of fatally strangling and stabbing a young mother more than 20 years ago was executed on Wednesday evening. Moises Sandoval Mendoza received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville and was pronounced dead at 6.40pm, authorities said. He was condemned for the March 2004 killing of 20-year-old Rachelle O’Neil Tolleson.

Afghanistan | Four men publicly executed by Taliban with relatives of victims shooting them 'six or seven times' at sport stadium

Four men have been publicly executed by the Taliban, with relatives of their victims shooting them several times in front of spectators at a sport stadium. Two men were shot around six to seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the centre of Afghanistan's Badghis province, witnesses told an AFP journalist in the city. The men had been 'sentenced to retaliatory punishment' for shooting other men, after their cases were 'examined very precisely and repeatedly', the statement said. 'The families of the victims were offered amnesty and peace but they refused.'

In Alabama, a Volunteer to Die

James Osgood has been executed by the State of Alabama. Read an eyewitness account. There were no protestors today on the side of Highway 21 in Atmore, Alabama, outside Holman Correctional Facility where the state would soon begin its execution of James Osgood. Instead, under a cloudy spring sky, a few guard trucks were parked at the prison’s first gate, lonely in the grassy plains. Before, at the state’s previous killings, protestors have often flanked the roadside nearest those trucks, their dissenting bodies one of the few signals in the landscape of the death about to occur inside the prison’s gates.

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