California | Scott Peterson transferred from death row ahead of resentencing

Peterson expected to receive life sentence without possibility of parole after state Supreme Court overturned death penalty

Scott Peterson, who spent more than 15 years on death row in the 2002 murders of his pregnant wife and unborn son, was transferred from death row, officials confirmed Monday.

Ahead of his resentencing where he is expected to receive a life sentence without the possibility of parole, a spokesperson with San Mateo County's Superior Court told KCRA 3 Peterson was moved to a jail in the county on Monday. He is not able to post bail.

Peterson was convicted in 2004 for the murders of his wife Laci and unborn son Conner. Laci was 28 years old and eight months pregnant at the time of her killing.

He originally received a death sentence but that was overturned last year by the California Supreme Court because jurors who personally disagreed with the death penalty but were willing to impose it were improperly dismissed.

He will no longer face the death penalty, but he continues to try to have his conviction overturned, his attorneys claiming a juror was untruthful when she filled out a juror questionnaire.

The woman, known as Juror 7, did not reveal during jury selection that she had been beaten by a boyfriend while pregnant in 2001. She also didn't disclose that during another pregnancy she had obtained a restraining order against a boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend, whom she feared would hurt her unborn child.

The juror later said she didn't think her cases were similar to Peterson's murders, and that it didn't occur to her to disclose that information.

A hearing on the alleged juror misconduct claim is scheduled late February.

Prosecutors said Peterson took his wife's body from their Modesto home on Christmas Eve 2002 and dumped her in San Francisco Bay from his fishing boat. The body of his wife and the boy's fetus washed ashore in April 2003.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, November 29, 2021

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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

Florida | Tampa Bay man who killed wife, 3 family members sentenced to die

Shelby Nealy will be executed by the state for bludgeoning his wife’s family to death in 2018, a judge decided Friday. During a two-week sentencing trial in July, jurors heard how Nealy, 32, ended a volatile relationship with his second wife by killing her, then murdered her parents and brother a year later in an effort to never be caught. He pleaded guilty to the crimes in 2023. On July 25, the jury of three men and nine women deliberated for about two hours and voted 11-1 that Nealy should be sentenced to death. He stared straight ahead as the verdict was read.

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20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

Singapore executes man for trafficking 1kg of cannabis

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