Death Penalty News

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); April 16, 2025: A Kurdish and a Baluch man named Yadegar Rahimnejad and Abubakr Shehbakhsh were executed for drug-related offences in Kerman Central Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, two men were hanged in Kerman Central Prison on 15 April 2025. Their identities have been established as Yadegar Rahimnejad, a Kurdish man from Baneh, and Abubakr Shehbakhsh, a 36-year-old Baluch man from Sarjangal in Zahedan.

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.

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. 

Beijing, April 17 (Jiji Press)--A man sentenced to death in China over an attack on two Japanese people that left a Chinese woman dead has been executed, people familiar with relations between Japan and China said Thursday. The Chinese Foreign Ministry informed the Japanese Embassy in China of the execution on Wednesday.  The specific date and time of the execution remain unknown. The man, Zhou Jiasheng, was convicted of intentional murder over the incident last June, in which he attacked with a knife a Japanese woman and her child waiting at a bus stop for a Japanese school bus in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, eastern China.

April 16 (UPI) -- Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed the death warrant for a man convicted of killing a 34-year-old mother of two in 1995 in a southern Hillsborough County motel room. The Republican governor signed the death warrant for 62-year-old Glen Rogers on Tuesday, setting his execution for 6 p.m. EDT on May 15. It is the fifth death warrant DeSantis has signed so far this year. Rogers, a so-called drifter suspected of being responsible for several killings around the country, was convicted of first-degree murder in May 1997 for the stabbing death of Tina Marie Cribbs. He was sentenced to death in the case that July.

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.

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.”

As attorney general of Oklahoma, Gentner Drummond has personally attended nine executions. Since taking office in 2023, he's approved of every death row case in the state — except one. "I believed it my duty to look at…every person on death row," he told CBS News. "When I stumbled across Richard Glossip, it was different. This is an individual who didn't murder the victim."   Glossip was convicted in the 1997 murder of a man who had been beaten to death. When Drummond examined the case, he learned the state knew its key witness lied during Glossip's trial. 

The method is a vivid reminder of the brutality of state killing. That undermines the pro-capital-punishment narrative On 11 April, South Carolina executed Mikal Mahdi by firing squad . Mahdi had been convicted and sentenced for the 2004 killing of an off-duty law enforcement officer. One month before his execution, South Carolina put Brad Sigmon to death using the same method. He was the first person since 2010 to be killed by the firing squad. Both Mahdi and Sigmon chose the firing squad from a menu of three ways to die, the others being lethal injection and the electric chair.

As the state resumes executions of death row prisoners, a bill in the legislature aims to cut back on the time people convicted of crimes can spend trying to reduce or overturn their sentences, and it would vest more power over the process with the attorney general's office. The move also comes seven months after state lawmakers took action against Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams over deals he made through the post-conviction relief process to reduce the sentences of long-serving inmates.

Saudi authorities have executed Afghan national Badshah Qul Suleimani in Mecca after he was convicted of smuggling heroin into the Kingdom by ingesting it. Saudi Arabia's interior ministry announced on Sunday the execution of Afghan national Badshah Qul Suleimani in the Mecca region, after he was convicted of attempting to smuggle heroin into the kingdom. According to the ministry, Suleimani was apprehended by border security while trying to bring the drug into the country by ingesting it - a method commonly referred to as "body packing".

House Bill 36, introduced in the Ohio Legislature by Republican Reps. Brian Stewart and Phil Plummer, proposes adding nitrogen hypoxia as a method of execution, replacing oxygen intake with pure odorless and colorless nitrous gas. Plummer and Stewart were not available for comment. Although Gov. Mike DeWine said no executions will occur during his time as governor, many have expressed worries due to his term ending in 2026, according to the Associated Press. Earlier this year, Attorney General David Yost, an outspoken supporter of the bill, announced his bid for Governor. 

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); April 14, 2025: Ali Dehani, a Baluch man on death row for murder, was executed in Zahedan Central Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a Baluch man was hanged in Zahedan Central Prison on 14 April 2025. His identity has been established as Ali Dehani, a conscript soldier from the village of Genk in the Sib and Soran County. He was sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder.

Japan has taken a major step toward revising the country's retrial system, which has been criticized as making the process of overturning a wrongful conviction excessively lengthy. But the prospects of swift reform are unclear, with fierce opposition from within the Justice Ministry to one of the key proposed changes -- restricting objections from prosecutors against court decisions ordering retrials. On March 28, the Legislative Council, a ministry advisory body, was asked by Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki to look into the issue.

A new book by a national expert explores the failures of the United States’ favored execution method. Texas was the first U.S. state to execute someone by lethal injection, but the idea for the novel method came from Oklahoma. Our northern neighbor was the first to adopt the plan to replace the spectacle of the electric chair with something more palatable for witnesses and the public. Texas was just the first to test it out on a person.  Since 1982, when state officials injected Charlie Brooks—convicted of murder in Fort Worth—with a lethal cocktail of drugs dreamt up by Oklahoma’s medical examiner but untested in any research setting, Texas has led the country in lethal injections. Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection (NYU Press, April 2025)—a new book by law professor, former prosecutor, and death penalty expert Corinna Barrett Lain—brings readers into the death chamber to bear disturbing witness to the reality of lethal injection.

Introduction: 49 Lives on the Brink of Death Imagine a 12-year-old child, with small hands and eyes full of dreams that never had the chance to blossom, confined for years in a cold cell with the shadow of the gallows looming overhead. Recall a 70-year-old father, his body worn by illness and the scars of torture yet unyielding, standing tall with a heart full of hope for justice, awaiting execution. These are real glimpses into the lives of 49 freedom-seeking individuals across Iran—from Kurdistan to Baluchistan, from Ahvaz to Tehran, and from Khorasan to Isfahan.

Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers A man facing the death penalty for committing two murders was executed by firing squad on Friday, the second such execution in the US state of South Carolina this year. Mikal Mahdi, 42, was executed for the 2004 murder of 56-year-old James Myers, an off-duty police officer, and the murder of a convenience store employee three days earlier. According to a statement from the prison, "the execution was performed by a three-person firing squad at 6:01 pm (2201 GMT)," with Mahdi pronounced dead four minutes later.

Although mandatory death penalty was abolished in 2023, many death sentences in Malaysia still involve drug offences. Concerned about the situation, Amnesty International (AI) calls for a moratorium, highlighting human rights violations. For AI Interim Executive Director Vilasini Vijandran, the country’s credibility is undermined. The gap between lower and higher courts on this matter is growing.

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.'

South Carolinian Randy Poindexter writes about the effects 16 years of solitary confinement had on him ahead of South Carolina’s planned execution of Mikal Mahdi , who spent months in solitary as a young man. For 16 years, I lived in a concrete cell. Twenty-three hours a day, every day, for more than 3,000 days, South Carolina kept me in solitary confinement. I was a young man before I was sent to solitary — angry, untreated and unwell. I made mistakes. But I wasn’t sentenced to madness. That’s what solitary did to me. My mental health worsened with each passing day. At first, paranoia and depression set in. Then, hallucinations and self-mutilation. I talked to people who weren’t there. I cut myself to feel something besides despair. I could do nothing as four of my friends and fellow prisoners took their own lives rather than endure another day of torturous isolation.

South Carolina plans to execute Mikal Mahdi on Friday for the murder of a police officer, draping a hood over his head and firing three bullets into his heart. The choice to die by firing squad – rather than lethal injection or the electric chair – was Mahdi’s own, his attorney said last month: “Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi has chosen the lesser of three evils.” If it proceeds, Mahdi’s execution would be the latest in a recent string of events that have put the spotlight on the firing squad as a handful of US death penalty states explore alternatives to lethal injection, by far the nation’s dominant execution method.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); April 9, 2025: Farhad Shakeri, Abdolhakim Azim Gorgij, Abdolrahman Gorgij, Taj Mohammad Khormali and Malek Ali Fadayi Nasab, five political prisoners on death row for security-related charges, were executed in Mashhad Central Prison without last family visits. Iran Human Rights condemns the executions and warns of a significant rise in executions, particularly of political prisoners, and calls on the international community to take appropriate action to prevent further executions.

The number of executions in Saudi Arabia doubled in 2024 as the Middle East led a global surge, according to a new report by Amnesty International . Rights groups say the trend has continued into 2025. Recorded executions in the kingdom doubled in comparison with 2023, largely for terrorism and drug related offences, Amnesty International said in a new report. Saudi Arabia carried out at least 345 death penalty executions in 2024, compared to 172 in the previous year, marking the highest recorded number by the monitoring group in any given year. The only two countries that executed more people were China and Iran. It said Iran had executed at least 972 people and China was believed to have executed thousands, but it did not have a figure.

Florida on Tuesday executed a death row inmate described by one local detective as a "fledgling serial killer" for the murder of a beloved Miami Herald employee. Florida executed Michael Tanzi on Tuesday, 25 years after the murder of beloved Miami Herald employee Janet Acosta, who was attacked in broad daylight on her lunch break in 2000.   Michael Tanzi, 48, was executed by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison in Raiford and pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. ET. 

Mikal Mahdi, 48, who was found guilty of killing an off-duty police officer and a convenience store worker, is the second inmate scheduled to executed by South Carolina's new firing squad A murderer who ambushed and shot an off duty police officer eight times before burning his body in a killing spree is set to become the second person to die by firing squad. South Carolina's highest court has rejected the last major appeal from Mikal Mahdi, 41, who is to be put to death with three bullets to the heart at 6pm on April 11 at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. Mahdi's lawyers said his original lawyers put on a shallow case trying to spare his life that didn't call on relatives, teachers or people who knew him and ignored the impact of weeks spent in solitary confinement in prison as a teen.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); April 6, 2025: Zoheir Shamsi, a man on death row for murder, was executed in Ahvaz Sepidar Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was hanged in Ahvaz Sepidar Prison on 5 April 2025. His identity has been established as 32-year-old Zoheir Shamsi from Dezful. He was a tiler prior to arrest and was father to a five-year-old girl. Zoheir was arrested for the murder of his male (maternal) cousin four years ago and sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind).

Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia executed 1,380 people last year—highest in decade Amnesty International’s monitoring of the global use of the death penalty recorded 1,518 executions in 2024, an increase of 32% from 1,153 in 2023. For the second consecutive year, executing countries reached the lowest number on record. The global spike in known executions was due to a considerable rise in the numbers recorded in Iran , Iraq and Saudi Arabia , where executions increased altogether from 1,041 in 2023 to 1,380 in 2024. This constitutes approximately 91% of all known executions globally.

The Attorney General's office cites the complexity and length of the case as reasons for needing an extension until August 8th The South Carolina Attorney General's Office is seeking more time to respond to convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh's Supreme Court appeal brief, but Murdaugh's attorneys are strongly contesting that request. On April 3, S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson's office filed a motion for a second extension in Murdaugh's state Supreme Court appellate case, and the same day, Murdaugh's legal team promptly responded in opposition.

South Carolina resumed executions with the firing squad killing of Brad Sigmon last month. Mikal Madhi’s execution date is days away. The curtain shrieked as it was yanked open to reveal a 67-year-old man tied to a chair. His arms were pulled uncomfortably behind his back. The red bull’s-eye target on his chest rose and fell as he desperately attempted to still his breathing. The man, Brad Sigmon, smiled at his attorney, Bo King, seated in the front row before guards placed a black bag over his head. King said Sigmon appeared to be trying his best to put on a brave face for those who had come to bear witness.

Federal prosecutors were directed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi this week to pursue the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year in New York City. Mangione allegedly shot Thompson as the executive was headed to a health care conference on Dec. 4, killing the father of two on the street. The 26-year-old faces federal murder and stalking charges and 11 state charges, including murder and terrorism charges, which are not eligible for the death penalty.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); April 4, 2024: In March 2025, at least 59 people including five women, were executed in Iranian prisons. Three Afghan nationals, seven Baluch and one Kurdish minority were amongst those executed. The number of executions in the first three months of 2025 were more than double for the same period in 2024. Iran Human Rights expresses concern about the potential rise in executions in the coming weeks. It urges Iranian civil society and the international community to focus more on the issue of executions in Iran and to take action to stop this trend. 

Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security has proposed abolishing the death penalty for several crimes, including receiving bribes and embezzlement, as part of a revision to the nation's Penal Code. The draft amendment, which is expected to be presented to the National Assembly this October, suggests replacing capital punishment with life imprisonment for eight specific crimes. Under the proposed changes, the death penalty would no longer apply to eight crimes -- receiving bribes, embezzlement, espionage, actions against the government, sabotage, trading counterfeit medicines, illegal transportation of narcotics, and incitement to war.

KUALA LUMPUR, April 5 — Within two years year of the Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim administration abolishing the mandatory death penalty, the number of death row inmates has plunged by nearly 90 per cent, the clearest sign yet that Malaysia is moving away from capital punishment — even as it remains legal. Data presented in Parliament during the February-March sitting this year showed a sharp increase in commutations of existing death sentences in the six months after Putrajaya repealed the mandatory death penalty. This comes as death row inmates filed appeals for resentencing and judges granted them.

As the Church's liturgical readings recall Jesus’ encounter with the woman caught in adultery, the Director of the US-based Catholic Mobilizing Network explores the Lord’s rejection of capital punishment. This Sunday’s Gospel reading for Year C describes the event traditionally called the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11). My friends have helped to give it new relevance for me this year. In our work at Catholic Mobilizing Network, we strive to end the death penalty, advance justice, and begin healing.

As Louisiana prepared its first execution in 15 years, a team of lawyers from Loyola Law were working to save Jessie Hoffman’s life. “I was a young lawyer three years out of law school, and Jessie was almost finished with his appeals at that time, and my boss told me we needed to file something for Jessie because he’s in danger of being executed,” Kappel said. Kappel and her boss came up with a civil lawsuit to file that said since they wouldn’t give him a protocol for his execution, he was being deprived of due process, and the lawsuit was in the legal process for the next 10 years.

In a rare ruling with broad implications for jury deliberations and the death penalty in California, the California Supreme Court on April 3, 2025, reversed the murder convictions and death sentence of Timothy Joseph McGhee, a reputed gang leader convicted of multiple homicides and attempted murders in Los Angeles. Writing for a unanimous court in People v. McGhee (S169750), Justice Goodwin Liu found that the trial court had committed a “clear abuse of discretion” by improperly removing a dissenting juror during guilt-phase deliberations, undermining the defendant’s constitutional right to a unanimous jury.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); April 1, 2025: Mahnaz Kakaei and Ali Soufian, a woman and man on death row for murder and drug-related charges, were executed in Isfahan Central Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a woman and a man were hanged in Isfahan (Dastgerd) Central prison on 29 March. The woman’s identity has been established as 24-year-old Mahnaz Kakayi who was arrested for the murder of her fiancé four years and seven months ago and sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) by the Criminal Court.

Bruce Ward, a convicted murderer who was the longest-serving inmate on Arkansas’ death row, has died, the state Department of Corrections said. He was 68.  The state Department of Corrections said Ward was pronounced dead Tuesday from natural causes. He had been held on death row at the Varner SuperMax unit in Gould, located 67 miles (108 kilometers) south of Little Rock.  Citing confidentiality, the department declined to provide any further details on Ward’s health or the circumstances surrounding his death. 

The United Arab Emirates sentenced to death 3 Uzbek nationals who killed Chabad Rabbi Zvi Kogan last November.  The 3 are suspected of having carried out the killing at the behest of Iran.  The murderers are believed to have tracked the rabbi, monitored his daily activities, and ultimately kidnapped and killed him.  Following the abduction, Kogan’s car was discovered with evidence of violence and blood. 

Convict’s relatives continue to threaten slain man’s family A judge in Pakistan sentenced to death a Muslim who murdered a 20-year-old Christian in the presence of his family, sources said.  Saima Riyasat, additional sessions judge of Pasrur, Sialkot District, handed the country’s maximum punishment for murder to Muhammad Zubair for killing Farhan Ul Qamar on Nov. 9, 2023, said Christian attorney Lazar Allah Rakha. The court also imposed a fine of 500,000 Pakistani Rupees ($1,785 USD), he said. 

The direction came as the bench of Justice Gurvinder Singh Gill and Justice Jasjit Singh Bedi held that the case did not fall within the ‘rarest of rare’ category warranting capital punishment A father, who raped and murdered his six-year-old daughter, has escaped the gallows after the Punjab and Haryana High Court commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment for the “remainder of his natural life” without remissions. The direction came as the bench of Justice Gurvinder Singh Gill and Justice Jasjit Singh Bedi held that the case did not fall within the ‘rarest of rare’ category warranting capital punishment.

“Individuals increasingly find themselves in cages unfit for lab mice and subjected to conditions with less scrutiny than that of invertebrate species kept in aquariums.” One hundred and thirty-five years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged the devastating effects of solitary confinement. In an 1890 ruling declaring that Colorado had improperly subjected a man named James Medley to isolation, the court noted the practice had deleterious effects on the human psyche, including turning people “violently insane.” The court noted that others committed suicide, while “those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity.” 

On March 19, I served as a witness to the execution of a man named Aaron Gunches, Arizona’s first since 2022. During his time on death row, he begged for death and was ultimately granted what is likely more appropriately described as an emotionless state-assisted suicide. This experience has profoundly impacted me, leading to deep reflection on the nature of death, humanity, and the role we play in our final moments. When someone is in the end stages of life, we talk about hospice care, comfort, care, easing suffering and humane death. We strive for a “good death” — a peaceful transition. I’ve seen good ones, and I’ve seen bad, unplanned ones. 

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles.  The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Tuesday that she has directed prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, the man accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, following through on the president’s campaign promise to vigorously pursue capital punishment. It is the first time the Justice Department has sought to bring the death penalty since President Donald Trump returned to office in January with a vow to resume federal executions. Bondi’s decision to do so in the high-profile case against Mangione, who has drawn a following of supporters upset with the health care industry, underscores the attorney general’s commitment to carrying out the president’s push for new death penalty cases.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); March 30, 2025: Yasser Roshani, man on death row for murder, was executed in Arak Central Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was hanged in Arak Central Prison on 29 March. His identity has been established as Yasser Roshani from Arak. He was arrested for murder four years ago and sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) by the Criminal Court.

Florida's death penalty system has faced numerous criticisms and controversies over the years - from execution methods to the treatment of Death Row inmates The Sunshine State remains steadfast in its enforcement of capital punishment, upholding a complex system that has developed since its reinstatement in 1976. Florida's contemporary death penalty era kicked off in 1972 following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia , which temporarily put a stop to executions across the country. Swiftly amending its laws, Florida saw the Supreme Court affirm the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976's Gregg v. Georgia case.