Death Penalty News

A bill to ban the use of capital punishment by the federal government was reintroduced in Congress, where it faces steep odds for passage. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who is also Senate majority whip and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee; and Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., reintroduced July 13 their bill, the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act, bicameral legislation that would prohibit the use of the death penalty at the federal level and require re-sentencing for those individuals currently on death row. In a statement, Durbin called the death penalty “deeply flawed and disproportionately imposed on Black and Brown and low-income people in America.”

This article was originally published in The Globe Post on December 11, 2020. At 24 years old, the Iranian Saba Kordafshari is currently serving a sentence matching her age for merely taking off her hijab on the streets of Tehran. She will spend her youth in prison for standing up for women’s rights in a country that regulates every aspect of a woman’s life. Soon after her arrest, she was joined by her mother, Raheleh Ahmadi. Raheleh, who had spent the previous two months seeking justice for her daughter, found herself in prison as a way of pressuring her daughter to make a false televised confession. Charged with “inciting and facilitating corruption and prostitution” for taking off their hijabs in public, mother and daughter were serving their respective 31 months and 24 year imprisonment sentences together in Evin Prison, until Saba was transferred to another prison (Qarchak) Wednesday. Raheleh begged the authorities to transfer her with Saba. They refused. Iranian Human Rights Def...

Click here to Google translate this story into your own language. El caso de Pablo Ibar ha vuelto a poner sobre la mesa el debate sobre la pena de muerte. Si nos planteáramos constituir un estado democrático y nos tomáramos en serio los derechos humanos, la pena capital no tendría cabida en la organización de nuestra convivencia. Y es que si la democracia significa algo es establecer límites al poder . A menudo se identifica la democracia con votar, elegir a nuestros líderes y elaborar leyes por medio de nuestros representantes. Y está claro que todo eso también lo es. Pero no se remarca lo suficiente que el ADN de la democracia está precisamente en establecer límites al poder. En las democracias modernas, las y los ciudadanos cedemos el poder al Parlamento para que nuestros representantes organicen la vida colectiva. Así las cosas, a menudo prevalece la norma de la mayoría en cuanto a las decisiones que deben adoptarse. Pero no todo debe decidirse así. En una democrac...