Death Penalty News

The president has raised the possibility that some of the fires may have been criminally set and ordered authorities to investigate their causes and identify those responsible. Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has ordered amendments to the country’s penal code to allow the death penalty to be carried out against people convicted of deliberately setting forest fires, after a wave of devastating blazes killed 12 people and caused extensive damage across the country.

The court’s decision came a little more than two months after Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita asked the justices to schedule Weisheit’s execution. State attorneys argued Weisheit had exhausted his state and federal appeals, had no active stay of execution, and could lawfully be put to death. The inmate’s attorneys opposed setting a date, saying they needed more time to pursue available legal proceedings and possible executive clemency. The defense additionally pointed to public records that it said showed the Indiana Department of Correction lacked the drugs needed to conduct an execution and had no lawful source from which to obtain them.

As a majority of the international community has abolished capital punishment. Japan and the U.S. are the only two countries in the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations that put people to death. The execution of Takami Sunao—an arsonist whose 2009 attack in Osaka killed five—on August 21, 2026, was Japan’s first use of capital punishment in just over a year. Over a Decade from Sentencing to Execution Takami Sunao was executed on August 21, 2026 , for a 2009 arson attack at an Osaka pachinko parlor that killed five people. In July 2009, Takami poured gasoline on the floor of a pachinko parlor in Osaka and set it alight, killing 5 customers and staff members and injuring 10 more. While the defense argued that he was in a state of diminished capacity, the Supreme Court finalized his death sentence in February 2016. The execution took place 17 years after the initial crime and 10 and a half years after the death sentence was finalized.

Japan on Friday announced the execution of a man convicted of killing five people after setting fire to an Osaka pachinko parlor in 2009, the first execution by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi 's government as the country faces growing calls for more transparency and the abolition of capital punishment. The Justice Ministry said Sunao Takami, 58, was hanged to death earlier Friday. Takami in 2009 set fire to the crowded pachinko parlor in Osaka by spreading gasoline and throwing a lit match, engulfing the building, killing five and injuring 10 others, Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi said.

A Miami-Dade judge sentenced Rafael Andres, a 61-year-old Cuban, to death this Friday for the murder of Ivette Fariñas, a 31-year-old waitress, also Cuban, who worked at the La Carreta restaurant at Miami International Airport, a crime committed two decades ago. According to Telemundo 51, Judge Zachary James of the Miami-Dade Circuit Court followed the jury's recommendation, which voted 9 to 3 in favor of the death penalty last November after reviewing all the evidence in the case. The jury classified the crime as "atrocious, horrifying, or cruel," although they did not conclude that it was committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner.

The two men had brought several injured protesters into a shop to provide them with medical treatment. Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 20 July 2026: Mojtaba Dehbandi and Kianush Hamzezadeh-Kazerouni have been sentenced to death by the Shiraz Revolutionary Court for providing medical help to injured protesters during the January nationwide protests. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, Mojtaba Dehbandi, 23, and Kianush Hamzezadeh-Kazerouni, 27, were sentenced to death by Branch One of the Shiraz Revolutionary Court on charges of moharebeh (enmity against God) through the arson of public buildings and burning a Quran, and action against national security by harbouring protesters. Their preliminary sentence was issued over two months ago. Both men are Shiraz natives and detained in Shiraz (Adel Abad) Central Prison.

The request comes days after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review Jeffrey Weisheit’s case, ending years of state and federal appeals. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita on Wednesday asked the Indiana Supreme Court to schedule the execution of death row inmate Jeffrey Weisheit. The filing came just eight days after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in Weisheit’s case. He was sentenced to death in 2012 for the murders of 5-year-old Caleb Lynch and his 8-year-old sister, Alyssa Lynch, who were killed in a Vanderburgh County house fire in 2010.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 1 June 2026: State media have reported the executions of Ashkan Maleki and Mehrdad Mohammadinia, two protesters arrested for the arson of a mosque and a seminary during protests in Tehran on 9 January. They were convicted of “operational actions against national security on behalf of Israel and the United States” under the newly enacted espionage law. Arman Marefati, the third defendant in the case whose charges were elevated to capital offences at trial, is now at imminent risk of execution. Since 19 March, at least 17 protesters have been executed in connection with the nationwide January protests, an average rate of one execution every 4.5 days.

FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A St. Lucie County jury recommended the death penalty for Otto Lenke on Thursday in the penalty phase of his first-degree murder trial, though the final decision rests with the judge. Lenke, 66, a former Melbourne police officer and Indian River County firefighter , was convicted earlier this month of first-degree murder and first-degree arson in the Feb. 17, 2021, killing of Richard Benson at Fast Frank’s Custom Cycle Components, Benson’s motorcycle repair shop in Fort Pierce . Prosecutors said Lenke shot Benson multiple times inside the shop, then poured a flammable liquid on him and set him on fire while he was still alive. Surveillance video from the shop captured the attack.

Oklahoma executed a death row inmate by lethal injection on Thursday morning. The inmate had been convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her baby almost two decades ago.  Raymond Johnson, 52, was pronounced dead at 10:12 a.m. Thursday following a three-drug injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, prison officials said. He was sentenced to death for killing 24-year-old Brooke Whitaker and her 7-month-old daughter, Kya, in June 2007. Johnson was the 11th person executed in the United States so far this year, and the second executed in Oklahoma. Another Oklahoma inmate, Kendrick Simpson, received a lethal injection in February for the drive-by shooting deaths of two men in 2006. Florida has carried out five executions since January, more executions than any other state.

Richard Benson was shot three times and his body was set on fire inside his Fort Pierce motorcycle shop. FORT PIERCE — Former Indian River County firefighter and Melbourne police officer Otto Lenke faces a possible punishment of death after a jury on Friday convicted him of capital murder and arson charges related to the brutal 2021 homicide of Richard Benson at his business Fast Frank’s Cycle Concepts, in Fort Pierce. Benson's charred body was discovered inside his motorcycle repair shop just after 9 a.m. on Feb. 17, 2021, when St. Lucie County Fire District crews responded to the burning building in the 800 block of South Third Street just north of the main police station.

Maryam Hodavand, a woman held in Evin Prison following her arrest during the December 2025/January 2026 uprising, has been sentenced to death by a Tehran revolutionary court in connection with a mosque fire that killed two people. Branch 26 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Tehran, presided over by Judge Afshari, issued the sentence in relation to the fire at the Seyyed al-Shohada mosque in Pakdasht, Tehran Province. The verdict was handed down while Hodavand was denied access to legal representation.

Saturday April 25th is National DNA Day , mark­ing the anniver­sary of the 1953 dis­cov­ery of DNA’s dou­ble helix struc­ture and the 2003 com­ple­tion of the Human Genome Project. Today, the Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to present a new resource exam­in­ing the con­tro­ver­sial role of ​“junk sci­ence” in cap­i­tal cas­es. When DNA test­ing became one of the most rig­or­ous­ly val­i­dat­ed tools in foren­sic sci­ence, its devel­op­ment also prompt­ed greater scruti­ny of oth­er foren­sic tech­niques. Many dis­ci­plines that were long accept­ed in U.S. court­rooms have now been found to lack ade­quate sci­en­tif­ic foun­da­tion and have become known as ​“junk science.”

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); 21 April 2026: State media reported the execution of Amir Ali Mir Jafari, a protester arrested in relation to the January 2026 protests in Tehran. He was accused of setting fire to the Gholhak Jame Mosque and attacking officers while carrying a cold weapon. Yesterday, following the executions of two political prisoners, IHRNGO once again warned of further executions of political prisoners and protesters in the coming days and weeks. Hundreds of protesters are currently facing death penalty charges, with at least 30 having already been sentenced to death. IHRNGO reiterates that a complete halt to all executions must be a central demand in any negotiations or agreements with the Islamic Republic.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Governor Ron DeSantis has directed the Florida Department of Corrections to move forward with two executions scheduled for late April 2026, marking a significant ramp-up in the state's use of capital punishment. The scheduled deaths of Chadwick Willacy and James Ernest Hitchcock follow a series of landmark judicial rulings that have kept both men on death row for decades.

Jason Jones will join 11 men on Nebraska’s death row after a three-judge panel unanimously decided on Friday that he should be sentenced to death for a quadruple murder in 2022 that stunned the small town of Laurel. District Court Judge Bryan Meismer, who presided over Jones’ trial, read from the sentencing memorandum at the Cedar County Courthouse on Friday afternoon. The other two judges on the panel, Timothy Burns of Douglas County and Patrick Heng of Red Willow County, sat on either side of Meismer.

OSAKA – The Osaka High Court ruled Tuesday that a defendant's withdrawal of his appeal against a death sentence in the Kyoto Animation arson-murder case is valid. Shinji Aoba, 47, was sentenced to death by the Kyoto District Court in January 2024 and appealed the sentence the following month.  However, he retracted the appeal in January 2025. His lawyers then filed an appeal with the high court to contest the validity of his decision , claiming that a death sentence should not be made final on impulse. In Tuesday's ruling, presiding Judge Hisashi Ito said that Aoba clearly understood the meaning of his decision.

A man convicted of the 1990 murder of his neighbor while burglarizing her home is scheduled to be the 6th person executed in Florida this year. Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday, March 13, issued a death warrant for Chadwick Willacy, 58.  Willacy was in Marlys Sather's home when she arrived home from work unexpectedly. He struck her several times, tied her up, attempted to strangle her, and then set the house on fire after removing the smoke detectors and dousing her with gasoline, prosecutors said. Willacy's record to that point included some minor offenses in New York and Florida, mostly drug-related.

A confessed killer is set to be executed May 14 for murdering his former girlfriend and her infant daughter at their home in Tulsa in 2007 after a breakup.  Raymond Eugene Johnson, 51, has said in interviews from prison that he is remorseful.  "I try to wake up every day and better myself," he said in a 2023 interview posted online by Death Penalty Action, a not-for-profit organization that opposes executions.  "The thing that I committed ... was bad, and I don't want it to be in vain," he said. "I recognize it and I have to be better." 

At times rocking his chair, tilting his head back and closing his eyes, a shackled Marcelle Jerrill Waldon was sentenced to die by lethal injection for the 2020 murders of a former Lakeland city commissioner and her husband in their Lakeland home. Circuit Judge J. Kevin Abdoney handed down the sentence Jan. 5 in a Bartow courtroom, more than five years after the stabbing deaths of Edie Yates Henderson and David Henderson inside their home in the quiet Lake Morton neighborhood.