Death Penalty News

The Rome-based Community of Sant’Egidio is organizing its annual international campaign “Cities for life day” to raise awareness on death penalty. Four US cities will join the initiative. On November 30, 2,446 cities across the world will join “Cities for life day”, the annual campaign against death penalty organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio, the Italian  lay Catholic association dedicated to the provision of social services and arbitrating conflicts.  Four US cities joining On that day, starting from the Colosseum in Rome, they will all light up a symbolic monument and organize events in order to raise public awareness on death penalty and on the right to life. Joining the event are also cities in countries where death penalty is still practiced, including Berkeley (CA), Boston (MA), Carrboro (NC), West Hollywood (CA). 30 November 1786, an historical date The date chosen for this annual event is of particular significance: on that day, in 1786, the Grand Duchy of Tusca...

In July 2013, then-US president Barack Obama sat down with his Vietnamese counterpart, Truong Tan Sang, to talk about Thomas Jefferson. It was Jefferson, Sang said, who had inspired the words of Ho Chi Minh's Proclamation of Independence, which carried as its opener a passage of America's Declaration of Independence. Just 2 weeks after this high-minded discussion on autonomy and liberty, Vietnam executed a young man named Nguyen Anh Tuan. It was thought to have been one of the first executions in Vietnam since it changed to death by lethal injection years earlier. But because Vietnam was banned from purchasing "authorized" lethal drugs, Tuan was administered with a home-made concoction that reportedly took 2 hours to kill him. Between the month of Tuan's death, August 2011, and June 2016, Vietnam executed 439 people, according to one estimate by its Ministry of Public Security, which normally doesn't publish such lists. In early 2013, one co...

Gopal Krishna Gandhi The process to elect the Vice-President of the country has started. There is a straight fight between the NDA candidate Venkaiah Naidu, and Opposition’s Gopal Krishna Gandhi. But this piece is not about the election. It is about the place of death penalty in a civilised country like ours, in the context of the protests against Gopal Gandhi on the ground that he had asked for Yakub Menon’s death penalty to be commuted to life imprisonment in the Mumbai blasts case, which had killed many innocent citizens. Headlines were flashed to say that Gopal Gandhi wanted mercy to be given to the terrorists. This was an incorrect interpretation of what he had said. It is not denied that Gopal Gandhi has been a long time opponent of death penalty. Around two years ago, the Law Commission of India had held a seminar on death penalty. I was one of the speakers there. I am for the abolition of death penalty. A near unanimous resolution was passed there for the abolition of deat...

'We are prepared to kill, and have done so more than most people thought.' Beware Vietnam's Death Machine One Thursday in July 2013, Barack Obama and his Vietnamese counterpart, Truong Tan Sang, sat down in the Oval Office to discuss Thomas Jefferson. Sang brought to this historic meeting between the 2 nation's presidents a letter Ho Chi Minh had sent Harry Truman, prior to the Vietnam War, seeking cooperation with the United States. Uncle Ho's words, said Obama, were "inspired by the words of Thomas Jefferson." In fact, when the Proclamation of Independence was read by Ho in 1945, he chose to begin with an extract from America's Declaration of Independence, its principal author being Jefferson. While a visit to the White House by the Vietnamese president was an occasion for historical reflection, the here-and-now was what really mattered. Indeed, diplomacy and trade were the main talking points, signaling the start of an emboldened relation...

The bottom line on the death penalty deserves to be at the top of any discussion of the death penalty, so here it is: To support the death penalty, you must be willing to take the chance that the state will execute an innocent person. The development of DNA technology proved how often the criminal justice system can go awry. Scores of death row inmates have been released after they were cleared by DNA evidence. 1 of them was Ray Krone, who spent 10 years in prison, including 3 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. At least 1 of the votes in the Legislature to repeal the death penalty came after the senator talked with Krone. If it happened to Krone, a former Air Force sergeant with no criminal record, "It can happen to anybody," Krone says. Could you sit across a desk from Krone and tell him you don't care if the occasional innocent person is executed? Nebraskans know how fallible the criminal system can be. The "Beatrice 6...

Rome's Coliseum Tuscany governor says still long way to go from 1786 abolition Rome, November 30 - Cities around Italy and internationally will be illuminated on Monday as part of the Cities for Life initiative, organised by the Rome-based Community of Sant'Egidio for the International Day of Cities Against the Death Penalty. The initiative has been observed every November 30 since 2002 to mark the anniversary of the first abolition of the death penalty on the part of a state, that of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany on November 30, 1786. "Cesare Beccaria said in 1764 that the death penalty hasn't made us better. It isn't a solution, rather, it represents the failure of a community," said Ettore Rosato, MP and head of the Democratic Party (PD) in the Lower House, on his Facebook page, adding that Italy was the 1st to propose an international moratorium on the death penalty at the UN General Assembly in 1994, which was approved in 2007. "Cap...