Death Penalty News

Iranian authorities have executed Hadi Hasanlou on “drug-related” charges at Shiraz Central Prison and Nemat Maghami on a charge of “premeditated murder” at Sepidar Prison in Ahvaz. According to information received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Hadi Hasanlou, a 36-year-old Turkish prisoner from Maragheh, was executed at dawn on Sunday, September 20, 2026, at Shiraz Central Prison (Adelabad Prison).

The news of that day has passed, but its meaning remains with us today. "That Day, Today" reads the present through the records of the past. — Editor's note On Sept. 21, 2006, a serial killer who murdered 13 people and gravely injured 20 others was sentenced to death.  He did not lower his head even after hearing the verdict of death. Instead, he shifted the blame, saying that if the state and society had helped him, such a tragedy would not have happened.  During the trial, he went so far as to say he could quit smoking but could not quit killing. This was a man who gave up alcohol and cigarettes and kept himself fit so that he could kill.

The identities of the six Islamic State group suspects remain unclear, but they are part of a group of 47 French citizens transferred from Syria last year. BAGHDAD: Six French nationals went on trial on Sunday, as Iraq moves to prosecute thousands of suspected Islamic State (IS) group members. Iraq’s prisons, already packed with IS suspects, have received thousands more detainees transferred since last year from neighboring Syria.

William Reaves is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison on Oct. 20th. It's the 18th death warrant Gov. DeSantis has signed this year. Reaves shot Deputy Sheriff Richard Raczkowski in September 23, 1986. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his 18th death warrant of the year Friday. William Reaves, convicted of the 1986 killing of an Indian River County Sheriff's deputy, is set to be executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Starke on Oct. 20.

An Israeli settler was shot dead in the West Bank on Sunday on the eve of the Yom Kippur holiday, and the military said it arrested the suspected gunman. Israel’s military also reported a car-ramming attack attempt in the West Bank, in which the perpetrator was killed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the shooting as a “murderous attack” carried out ahead of the most important holiday for Jews, which will start on Sunday evening.

A physician uses a cartoon lawsuit to question the burdens US execution law places on condemned prisoners. As a physician, I have spent a career on the far side of a fact pattern I did not choose. This is the moment when something prescribed or administered goes wrong inside a body that trusted it not to. I have seen that more than once. It would be more comfortable to cast myself as the one who gets hurt. It is more honest to say I am the supplier. The drug, the dose, the device, and the airway all enter the body through me. In the cartoon, I am not the coyote. I am Acme.

AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Under current Supreme Court precedent, states cannot execute someone for raping a child if the victim survives. That’s not stopping State Rep. Jeff Leach, R-McKinney. “We’re going to have a debate in this building behind me about the death penalty being on the table for any Texan who rapes a child,” Leach, the chair of the Texas House Committee on Judiciary & Civil Jurisprudence, said. Leach made the comments while hosting a news conference supporting his client, abuse survivor Cindy Clemishire.

In a single page of a verdict issued by Abolqasem Salavati, presiding judge of Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, the official count of Molotov cocktails listed as evidence changes three distinct times: from 20 to 22, and finally to 25. This deeply flawed document ultimately imposed death sentences on two protesters detained following the January 2026 demonstrations, alongside 10-year prison terms for all three co-defendants.

Hengaw – Friday, September 18, 2026 Rezvan Asgharzadeh, a 45-year-old woman and mother of six who had been sentenced to death on drug-related charges, has been executed in Dastgerd Prison in Isfahan.  Her husband, who was sentenced to death on similar charges, remains imprisoned at the same facility and is at risk of execution.

A man was executed in Iran for passing information about Iranian missile sites to Israeli intelligence services during the war, the judiciary reported Saturday. ’’The death penalty was carried out against Hossein Pedaran, who had provided the Mossad with information on missile sites in Isfahan province,’’ in central Iran, Mizan, the Iranian judiciary’s news outlet, reported. The judiciary accused Pedaran of ‘‘espionage and intelligence cooperation’’ on behalf of Israel but did not provide information about the date of his arrest or his trial. It said the death sentence had been ‘‘confirmed by the Supreme Court.’’ The case had not previously been reported by Iranian media.

A Sri Lankan Tamil migrant worker, Sivarasa Anojan, is facing the death penalty in Saudi Arabia after an appeal against a five-year prison sentence over a Facebook post deemed insulting to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. Former Foreign Minister Ali Sabry has urged Saudi Arabian authorities to grant clemency to Sri Lankan national Anojan Sivarasa following reports that his five-year prison sentence has been escalated to a death sentence over an offensive social media comment. Expressing deep concern over the reported development, Sabry said Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry had not confirmed the death sentence and that the formal written judgment was still awaited. “Respect for Saudi Arabia’s sovereignty and legal system does not require silence in the face of disproportionate punishment,” Sabry said.

SINGAPORE: A 36-year-old Malaysian man and a 35-year-old Malaysian woman were arrested after trying to cross into Singapore on a motorcycle with drugs, including more than 10 kg of cannabis. If convicted, they may face the death penalty. In a media release on Friday (Sept 18), the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) said its officers discovered four bundles of “vegetable matter” believed to be controlled drugs underneath the seat of the Malaysia-registered motorcycle.

A 29-year-old man charged with stalking and murdering his 31-year-old ex-girlfriend in Mito City, Ibaraki Prefecture, on Dec 31, 2025, told a court on Thursday that he first hit her with a hammer and then stabbed her with a kitchen knife because he "wanted to finish her off." According to the indictment,Takumi Ouchi is accused of stalking his ex-girlfriend, Haruka Komatsumoto, by attaching a location-tracking tag to her car and subsequently killing her at her home between 5:20 p.m. and 7:15 p.m. on Dec 31.

An Australian national accused of murdering a Thai teenager and concealing her body inside a suitcase appeared in a Thai court on Friday, formally entering a not guilty plea to all charges. Simon Peter Carman, 45, faced the Pattaya Provincial Court following his indictment by prosecutors. He has been held at the Pattaya Remand Prison since late June, following an investigation into the death of 17-year-old Tunchanok Donhomla. Carman was formally indicted on multiple counts, including murder, concealing a corpse to hide the cause of death, abduction of a minor over 15 years of age for indecent purposes, and two counts of committing indecent acts on a minor.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WBMA) — Alabama has executed Jeffery Lee, nearly three decades after he was convicted in the 1998 killings of two people during a pawnshop robbery in rural Dallas County. Lee, 49, was put to death by lethal injection Thursday evening at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. His execution came three months after a federal judge blocked Alabama's plans to execute him using nitrogen gas. He was pronounced dead at 6:22 p.m. Central Time, according to the office of Governor Kay Ivey. 

Convicted murderer Stacey Humphreys was not executed Wednesday night as scheduled after the Georgia Supreme Court upheld a Cobb County judge’s order temporarily halting the execution. The pause is for Humphreys to receive a hearing under the Georgia Survivor Justice Act, which Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law last year. The state law is intended to allow abuse victims to petition for reduced sentences if their abuse led them to commit a crime. “Given the important and novel questions regarding the newly enacted SJA raised by this litigation, this appeal will be considered in the ordinary course of business and according to a forthcoming scheduling order,” the justices wrote in an order Wednesday. “We leave undisturbed the stay order issued by the Cobb County Superior Court.”

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 17 September 2026: In a new report on the deadly crackdown on the January 2026 protests, IHRNGO has published a list of more than 4,200 people killed.  The list is the result of months of collecting information, cross-checking sources and verifying victims’ identities, providing an extensive body of documentation on the killing of protesters in Iran. Among those identified are at least 420 women and 281 children under the age of 18.  Twenty-five of the children were under 14, and the youngest victim documented was just four and a half months old.

Georgia prison physician Carlo Musso was one of the rare doctors who’d openly talked about his role in lethal injections . After he stepped away from that work last decade, the state has made it difficult to determine who replaced him. The role Musso held is so controversial that more than a dozen states have made it illegal to disclose the names of those involved with lethal injections. Georgia is among them. The state, through its Lethal Injections Secrecy Act, has gone to great lengths to hide the details around how it carries out lethal injections.

Texas kills man by lethal injection in state’s fifth execution this year A man convicted over the shooting deaths of 3 people was executed on Wednesday in Texas, while another execution scheduled for the same time in Georgia was halted by a judge.  It’s the 5th execution in Texas this year. Georgia has yet to put anyone to death this year. The nation’s busiest death chamber is in Florida, which accounted for more than 1/2 the 25 executions already carried out in the US this year. 

LeJames Norman would become the 5th inmate put to death by the state this year barring a U.S. Supreme Court reprieve. His codefendant is scheduled for execution a week later.  LeJames Norman, 1 of 2 men sentenced to death for killing three people in a robbery, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday barring a final reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court.  In 2005, Norman and Ker’sean Olajuwa Ramey broke into a neighbor’s home in Edna intending to steal cocaine, according to court records. The 2 then got into an altercation with the occupants of the home and killed Celso Lopez, Tiffani Peacock and Sam Roberts. While Norman initially fled to Mexico after the killings, he was apprehended by Border Patrol when he re-entered the country and subsequently cooperated with police, including by testifying at Ramey’s trial. 

Lawyers for Christa Pike, the only woman on Tennessee’s death row, filed a 226-page clemen­cy peti­tion with Governor Bill Lee, ask­ing him to com­mute her death sen­tence to life in prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole ahead of her September 30 exe­cu­tion date. Ms. Pike’s clemen­cy peti­tion out­lines the case her team has built over decades of appeals: her actions at 18 years old can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from a child­hood marked by repeat­ed rape, sex­u­al abuse, and neglect that went unad­dressed by the adults and state sys­tems meant to pro­tect her. Once incar­cer­at­ed, Ms. Pike was diag­nosed with bipo­lar dis­or­der and post-trau­mat­ic stress disorder.

Iranian authorities have executed Kurdish prisoner Fereydoun Akbarzadeh at Ilam Central Prison. He had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder.” According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Akbarzadeh, from Sarableh County in Ilam Province, was executed at dawn on Tuesday, September 15, 2026, at Ilam Central Prison. Hengaw sources said Akbarzadeh had previously been arrested on charges of premeditated murder and was subsequently sentenced to death by the Iranian judiciary.

State prosecutors say decision takes family’s wishes into account; Nick Reiner, 33, pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder charges over killing of late Hollywood icon and his wife LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — The Los Angeles County District Attorney said on Tuesday his office has chosen not to seek the death penalty against Nick Reiner, the son of Hollywood filmmaker Rob Reiner, who has pleaded not guilty to murdering his parents in their home in December. District Attorney Nathan Hochman told reporters outside a downtown Los Angeles courthouse that prosecutors took into account the wishes of the surviving Reiner family members in reaching their decision.

A man convicted in the shooting deaths of three people is set to be executed Wednesday in Texas. Meanwhile, another execution that was scheduled for the same time in Georgia has been halted by a judge. This would be the fifth execution in Texas, while Georgia has yet to put anyone to death this year. The nation’s busiest death chamber is in Florida, which accounted for more than half the 25 executions already carried out in the U.S. this year.

British consular incidents involving suspected ‘drug mules’ grew from 80 in 2023 to above 340 in 2025.  The number of British nationals detained overseas on drug trafficking charges has surged more than 4-fold over 3 years, official figures show, alongside a government warning that penalties include life imprisonment and the death sentence.  Consular incidents involving suspected "drug mules" grew from 80 in 2023 to above 340 in 2025, with at least 160 recorded so far this year.  Over 200 UK citizens are presently held in foreign custody for smuggling cannabis originating in Thailand. Around 60% of those caught since 2024 are aged between 16 and 30. 

CLEARWATER, Fla. — A former plastic surgeon accused of killing an attorney involved in a lawsuit against his former employer will put his fate in the hands of a judge. Tomasz Kosowski has waived his right to a jury trial in the murder of attorney Steven Cozzi, according to court records. He has also waived his right to have a jury determine his sentence if he is convicted and the case proceeds to a penalty phase. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Kosowski plans to represent himself.

Death row inmate Lin Wang-jen (林旺仁), who was convicted of setting fire to a karaoke bar in 2004, killing five people, yesterday died of an illness, authorities confirmed. The number of inmates on death row has fallen to 34, correctional authorities said late yesterday, after local media reported that Lin had died in hospital. Lin, a Yilan County resident, was sentenced to death for murder in 2004. In 2011, the Supreme Court upheld his sentence. Lin set fire to a karaoke bar in Keelung on June 16, 2004, because he was upset with his wife for accepting a job there, court rulings said.

Alabama plans to execute Jeffery Lee on Thursday via lethal injection after a down-to-the-wire decision by the federal courts halted his death by nitrogen hypoxia in June. In response, Gov. Kay Ivey set the 30-hour window for the execution to be carried out by lethal injection beginning at 12 a.m. on Thursday, September 17, and expiring at 6 a.m. on Friday, September 18. Barring any further court action, the execution will take place at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

Every resident of a building on Tehran’s Sheikh Hadi Street was arrested after several stones were thrown from its rooftop at repressive forces during the January protests. Months later, four of those detained were sentenced to death, and the Supreme Court has now rejected the appeal of one of the defendants. Information obtained by IranWire confirms that Branch 9 of the Supreme Court has rejected the appeal of Mohammad Reza Majidi-Asl, putting him at immediate risk of execution.

On Sept. 11, Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a death warrant for William Thompson, convicted of the 1976 kidnapping, rape, and murder of 23-year-old Sally Ivester. Thompson, now 74, and another man were staying in a Miami Beach hotel room with Ivester and another woman, according to court records. After Ivester was unable to get money from her mother, the men beat and tortured her, prosecutors said. She died from internal bleeding and multiple injuries. Thompson was convicted in 1978 of kidnapping, rape, and first-degree murder.

Iranian authorities executed Abdolrahim Narouei Rouzaneh, a 47-year-old Baloch prisoner from Zabol, in Isfahan Central Prison (Dastgerd Prison). He had previously been sentenced to death on drug-related charges. Based on information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Narouei Rouzaneh, a married father of nine from Zabol, Sistan and Baluchistan Province, was executed at dawn on Monday, September 14, 2026, in Dastgerd Prison.

An Iranian court has handed down a death sentence to a man detained in connection with the January 2026 protests in the northeastern city of Shandiz, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported on Sunday. Hossein Rasouli-Nasab was sentenced by the Mashhad Revolutionary Court on charges including “ moharebeh ,” or waging war against God, HRANA said. The rights group said authorities had alleged that he committed moharebeh through participation in the destruction of public property and setting fire to religious centers. He was also accused of assembly and collusion against national security.

At least eight women are facing death sentences in prisons across Iran, including four in cases linked to the nationwide January protests, the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) rights group reported on Sunday. HRANA said the women had been sentenced in separate political, security, and protest-related cases on charges including “armed rebellion,” “enmity against God," and “corruption on earth,” offenses that can carry the death penalty under Iran’s Islamic penal code. The cases were heard by branches of the Revolutionary Courts in Tehran, Isfahan, Rasht, and Bandar Abbas, the group said.

Marziyeh “Sevda” Ebrahimi Shamsabadi, a 33-year-old blogger from Bandar Abbas who has been detained since March, has been sentenced to death, according to information obtained by Iran International. Branch 3 of the Bandar Abbas Revolutionary Court convicted her on charges including insulting Iran's supreme leader, media and propaganda activity against national security, intelligence and security activity on behalf of hostile governments, and taking and sending photographs to Persian-language media abroad, according to the information.

Iran has executed at least 29 people arrested in connection with the widespread protests in January, more than half of whom were not accused of killing anyone, with some put to death in public in what rights groups describe as a campaign to deter further dissent. The findings are contained in a new joint report by Human Rights Watch and the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran examining executions following the nationwide protests that erupted in late 2025 and January 2026.

Kneeling next to a ditch, deep in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan, a 22-year-old woman draws her last breath in a 'desert court' before she is shot in the back with an AK-47. Her executioner? Likely her hardline militant husband, in what the Taliban consider an 'honour killing'.  It took less than an hour to decide Najiba had been adulterous – although it has been suggested this accusation was fabricated to protect her husband's reputation. Adultery is a crime that deserves capital punishment under the Taliban's strict interpretation of Sharia law. Fourteen years on from her death, little is known about her story, like many women slowly being erased from the fabric of Afghan society. 

There are 25 people on Alabama Death Row, despite their juries asking for life sentences. Gov. Kay Ivey could change that. A jury said they should live. A judge in Alabama decided they would die anyway. Now, it’s up to Gov. Kay Ivey to decide who the state should listen to. In Alabama, a jury’s decision wasn’t always the final word. And even though the state fixed that nine years ago, it’s still honoring old cases where a judge set aside the work of the jury—the only state in the nation to do so.

Prosecutors sought the death penalty for singer and YouTuber A, who was brought to trial on charges of assaulting and neglecting his teenage biological daughter, causing her death. On the 10th, the criminal division 1 of the Changwon District Court Jinju Branch (Lee Seung-il Director General) sought the maximum sentence allowed by law, the death penalty, at the sentencing hearing for the 40-year-old A, who was detained and indicted on charges including murder.

The Ministry of Home Affairs says discussions with the Israeli government involved the sharing of best practices in emergency response, crime prevention, and forensics. Issues relating to the death penalty “were never part of the meeting and were not discussed."  SINGAPORE: The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday (Sep 11) refuted claims by an Israeli media outlet that the death penalty was discussed during a visit by an Israeli delegation in May. The Haaretz newspaper reported on Sep 7 that a delegation comprising representatives from the Israel Prison Service and National Security Ministry made a “secret visit” to Singapore that month.

Iranian authorities secretly executed three prisoners, including a Baloch man, in Isfahan Central Prison (Dastgerd Prison). The three had been sentenced to death in separate cases on drug-related charges. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Mohammad Yousef Issazahi (Rigi), Shahrokh Pouresmaeili, and Hossein Ghasemzadeh were executed at dawn on Wednesday, September 9, 2026. Issazahi (Rigi), a 40-year-old Baloch man from Iranshahr, Sistan and Baluchestan Province, was married and the father of five children. He was arrested in Isfahan in 2022 on drug-related charges and subsequently sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court.

In Florida’s 15th execution this year, man put to death for killing linked to ‘Hog Trail Murders’  A Florida man convicted in one of a series of suspected killings that became known as the “Hog Trail Murders” in the 1990s was put to death Thursday, becoming the state’s 15th person executed this year.  Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. after receiving a 3-drug lethal injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. He had been sentenced to die for the 1996 kidnapping and strangling of Richard Allen Montgomery, whose mutilated body was found in a wooded southwest Florida area where authorities found the remains of at least 6 people over a 3-year span.

Johnny Morales struggled to find sleep. He dozed off for a few moments, but officers came to his death row cell and woke him a little after midnight. They needed to inventory and box up his belongings. He was leaving San Quentin.  Hands cuffed behind his back, he walked across the empty upper yard in the dim gray hours before daylight. An officer walked alongside him step for step, black latex-gloved fingers holding onto Morales’s arm. For almost 20 years, Morales could only experience the world outside his 4-by-11 foot cell in the condemned housing unit like this—chained and escorted by officers. Security protocols required all death row residents be handcuffed or shackled any time they were out in open space with staff.

Muscat: Oman has enacted a new Law on Combating Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances under Royal Decree No. 67/2026, introducing severe penalties for drug trafficking, smuggling, possession and personal use, including the death penalty and life imprisonment in certain cases. Under the new law, importing, exporting, producing, or manufacturing narcotic drugs or psychotropic substances for the purpose of trafficking is punishable by imprisonment and a fine ranging from RO 35,000 to RO 60,000. The death penalty applies to drug smuggling carried out for the purpose of trafficking in specified aggravated circumstances, including repeat offences, abuse of official authority, licences or legal immunity, using a person lacking legal capacity or with diminished capacity, and participation in or cooperation with international gangs involved in drug smuggling.

His judgment also contained observations about alleged threats, pressure on the judiciary, and the influence of gangsters and mafia in western Uttar Pradesh MEERUT Additional district and sessions judge Ravi Kumar Diwakar, while pronouncing his 23rd capital punishment in the last five months in a murder case on Monday (September 7), said in his verdict that he would prefer death to being called a “coward judge."

D4vd has been hit with a wrongful death lawsuit from the family of Celeste Rivas Hernández, opening a new legal front against the singer and several people and companies tied to him as he awaits trial on murder and child sexual abuse charges. Celeste’s parents, Mercedes Martinez and Jesus Rivas, filed the case in Los Angeles County Superior Court against D4vd, whose legal name is David Anthony Burke, along with his mother, management company, finance manager, live-in security guard, and several businesses connected to his music career.

Hua Hin Provincial Court has sentenced a man accused of killing and robbing a hotel employee in January to death, ruling that the crime was so serious and shocking that there were no grounds for leniency despite his guilty plea. The court handed down the sentence on Tuesday in a case involving the killing of a hotel employee during a robbery in Hua Hin district of Prachuap Khiri Khan province.

SACRAMENTO—Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the death penalty while serving as California’s attorney general, a punishment his office actively sought in the case of a gunman convicted of an Orange County mass shooting, but as the front-running candidate for governor, he has vowed to block executions if elected in November. Becerra said he will extend the blanket reprieve for all death row inmates that Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted by executive order in 2019, saying he supported “moving our state away from a costly, flawed system that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities and too often gets it wrong.”

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Iranian authorities have reportedly executed an Afghan citizen, identified as Valijan Nourzay, at the central prison in Rafsanjan, according to the human rights organization Hengaw. Hengaw said in a statement on Sunday, September 6, that Nourzay was executed early Wednesday last week at Rafsanjan Central Prison. According to the organization, Nourzay had a severe mobility disability and was executed while in a wheelchair. Hengaw, citing informed sources, reported that Nourzay had been pursued by Iranian authorities three years ago over an alleged murder. He was reportedly seriously wounded after Iranian security forces opened fire on him in Rafsanjan before being arrested and later sentenced to death.

Sheriff Vic Regalado and Father Bryan Brooks, pastor at the Church of Saint Benedict, are two men of influence in Tulsa County. They live different lives—one enveloped in faith, the other elected to lead a law enforcement agency of more than 600. Both were brought together by the death penalty. The men believe it is their duty to support families of victims but land on different sides of the aisle when it comes to executions. Regalado is in support of the death penalty, saying it is part of the criminal justice system and brings closure to the families of murder victims. 

Celeste Rivas Hernandez’s relatives speak out on the eve of her 16th birthday, revealing what justice should look like for the singer accused of her murder. On what would have been Celeste Rivas Hernandez’s 16th birthday, her family delivered a chilling message about the man accused of killing her. Relatives of the 14-year-old say they back the harshest possible sentence for singer D4vd, real name David Anthony Burke, should he be convicted of her murder. The timing was hard to ignore. Instead of marking a milestone birthday, Celeste’s loved ones spent the day publicly weighing in on the fate of the man accused of ending her life before it truly began, a detail that has only intensified attention on an already high-profile case.