South Carolina | Bill named for George Stinney would pay $10M to families of those wrongly executed

A South Carolina lawmaker wants the state to pay for those people it wrongfully executes, beginning with the family of George Stinney.

A bill filed in the House of Representatives ahead of the upcoming legislative session would establish the George Stinney Fund, which would provide $10 million to families of those exonerated after being executed, no matter how much time has lapsed.

The bill is named for the 14-year-old Black teen convicted in the brutal murder of 2 White girls in Clarendon County and executed by electrocution in June 1944.

A judge vacated Stinney’s conviction in 2014, finding numerous instances of his constitutional rights being violated, from his arrest to an hours-long trial and conviction by an all-White jury only months after the girls were found dead.

“We can’t do justice, because justice would be us resurrecting Mr. Stinney and allowing him to have a good life,” said state Rep. Cezar McKnight, D-Kingstree, who sponsored the bill. “But what we can do is atone for what we’ve done, and that’s what we need to do.”

McKnight said he was moved to author the bill during a ceremony to unveil a portrait for Judge Clifton Newman in the Williamsburg County Courthouse.

Newman remarked that he was honored by the portrait but not that it would share space with a picture of Judge Phillip Stoll, who presided over Stinney’s trial and sentenced him to death.

Funding for the measure, co-sponsored by Greenville Republican Mike Burns and Orangeburg Democrat Gilda Cobb-Hunter, would be created with $10 million from a Department of Administration reserve fund.

The money would be awarded in the form of a grant application to the family of anyone executed and later exonerated by a court in South Carolina, regardless of when.

Circuit Judge Carmen Mullen, in overturning Stinney’s conviction, wrote that significant progress had been made toward racial equality in the years after Stinney’s death.

“Regardless of that progress, from time to time we are called to look back to examine our still-recent history and correct injustice when possible,” Mullen wrote.

South Carolina made headlines in 2021 when lawmakers passed a bill allowing prison officials to execute death-row inmates by electric chair or firing squad amid a shortage in drugs used in lethal injection.

In a debate over the bill in April, McKnight said he agreed with the death penalty in principle but that he opposed the state carrying out executions because of cases of people known to have been wrongfully executed or where there was significant doubt over their guilt.

“It’s not one of those black-and-white issues, because I can’t sit here and tell you that I wouldn’t want someone executed for harming a loved one of mine,” McKnight told The Post and Courier. “But by the same token, we don’t have the ability to resurrect people that we execute, so I’ve got some trepidations about it. I just do.”

Source: The Post and Courier, Staff, December 31, 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 | 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.

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Florida executes Dominick Occhicone

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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.

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.

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

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USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

Iran erects iron gallows in Isfahan protest square

An iron gallows has been erected in an Isfahan square where protests erupted in January. Families of several of the 10 remaining prisoners sentenced to death have been summoned for farewell visits. An iron gallows erected in Ali-Khani Square in the central Iranian city of Isfahan has raised fears that the regime is preparing to publicly execute protesters arrested during nationwide demonstrations in January. Sources who spoke with Iran International said large numbers of security forces had been deployed in the area, while the families of several prisoners sentenced to death had been summoned to the prison for farewell visits.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

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