Death Penalty News

Former President Donald Trump was injured Saturday evening during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in what the FBI says was an assassination attempt. The gunman and at least one audience member are dead, the Secret Service said, and two other attendees are critically injured. Trump said on social media that he was shot and hit by a bullet in the “upper part of my right ear.” The Secret Service said the former president is safe after he was rushed off the stage with blood on his face.

A man was sentenced to 23 years in prison on Monday on charges related to a attack on Halloween night 2021 in which he stabbed a man and lit a fire on a Tokyo train while dressed as the Joker. The Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo District Court handed down the sentence on Kyota Hattori, 26, who was charged with attempted murder and arson offenses. He admitted to stabbing a male passenger and starting the fire on a moving express train. Prosecutors demanded 25 years, arguing that he planned to kill indiscriminately with the stated intent to get the death penalty and that "his motive was extremely selfish and deserving of strong condemnation."

TOKYO — Prosecutors have sought a 25-year jail sentence for a man charged with attempted murder and arson while dressed in a Joker costume on a Tokyo train in 2021. During a trial at the Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo District Court, the prosecutors argued the actions of Kyota Hattori, 26, were premeditated and "his motive was extremely selfish and deserving of strong condemnation."

A 26-year-old man, whose trial in a 2021 arson and stabbing case on Tokyo’s Keio Line began Monday, admitted to the actions and attempting to murder the man he stabbed, but denied having intended to murder anyone by starting the fire. In the first court hearing at the Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo District Court, Kyota Hattori, 26, who wore a costume resembling that of “Batman” villain the Joker during the incident , admitted to both stabbing a man and lighting a train carriage on fire, injuring 12 others. However, he denied parts of the indictment, saying that there was no intent to murder when he lit the carriage on fire. “I don’t know if the arson can be considered attempted murder,” Hattori said.

NEW YORK (AP) — Salman Rushdie’s agent says the author has lost sight in one eye and the use of a hand as he recovers from an attack from a man who rushed the stage at an August literary event in western New York, according to a published report. Literary agent Andrew Wylie told the Spanish language newspaper El Pais in an article published Saturday that Rushdie suffered three serious wounds to his neck and 15 more wounds to his chest and torso in the attack that took away sight in an eye and left a hand incapacitated. Rushdie, 75, spent years in hiding after Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 edict, a fatwa, calling for his death after publication of his novel “The Satanic Verses,” which some Muslims consider blasphemous.  Over the past two decades, Rushdie has traveled freely. Hadi Matar, 24, of Fairview, New Jersey, has been incarcerated after pleading not guilty to attempted murder and assault in the Aug. 12 attack on Rushdie as he was being introduced at the Chau...

12 March 1963: Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry attempted to assassinate General De Gaulle following the president’s decision to accept Algerian independence from France From the Guardian archive Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, the leader of the conspiracy against President de Gaulle on August 22, was executed by a firing squad at 6:42 this morning at Fort d’Ivry, where military executions usually take place. The sentences on the other two men who were condemned to death, Alain Bougrenet de la Tocnaye and Jacques Prevost have been commuted by President de Gaulle to life imprisonment. Bastien-Thiry was roused a little before five this morning and told for the first time that his petition to the President to commute his sentence had been rejected, and that the execution was to take place at dawn. He asked about the fate of his two comrades and was told they were not to die. He wanted to hear Mass before his execution and also made two new legal objections which he recorded in wr...