Death Penalty News

The federal jury deciding on the punishment for Sayfullo Saipov, convicted last month of killing 8 people with a truck, has heard from more than 20 witnesses. A little girl standing on her toes to place her palm on her deceased father’s image on a television screen. A mother who has left her son’s bedroom exactly as it was on Halloween 2017. A man married to a woman who lost her legs who clutches a pair of her socks in bed every night, yearning for the contact of her feet. The federal jury deciding on a death penalty for Sayfullo Saipov, the man convicted last month of killing 8 people and injuring many others in a truck attack inspired by the Islamic State, has heard from more than 20 witnesses, including victims, relatives and bystanders. On Wednesday, the prosecution rested its case and Mr. Saipov’s lawyers began trying to save his life.

Satoshi Uematsu, 32, was sentenced to death in March 2020 for killing 19 people at a care home for the mentally disabled in 2016. Ahead of a judicial decision in the coming weeks on whether a retrial should be granted, Japan’s overwhelming public support for capital punishment is again in the spotlight. A Japanese man sentenced to death for murdering 19 people at a facility for the mentally disabled in 2016 has appealed his conviction, triggering renewed debate over the death penalty in a country where public support for capital punishment remains high. Satoshi Uematsu, 32, was convicted in March 2020 of the murder of 19 residents at the Tsukui Yamayuri-en care centre in Sagamihara city outside Tokyo, and sentenced to death. Uematsu, a former caretaker at the facility, used knives to injure another 26 people, leaving 13 of them severely injured. Immediately after the death sentence was meted out at the Yokohama District Court, Uematsu withdrew the automatic legal appeal to higher court...

The Madras high court on 3 December 2021 commuted the death sentence awarded to a man to 30 years of imprisonment in a case where the man had sexually assaulted and caused the death of a 17-year-old mentally challenged boy in Pudukottai district in 2019. The convict, hailing from Gujarat was working as a daily wage labourer in a stone crushing unit. In December 2019, he kidnapped the victim and sexually assaulted him. The boy who sustained severe injuries was admitted to the Pudukottai Government Medical College Hospital where he died 19 days later due to septicemia. Police booked the man under sections of IPC and Pocso Act and arrested him. In 2021, the Pudukottai district mahila court convicted and awarded death penalty to the man. The case was referred to the HC Madurai bench for confirmation of sentence while the accused also preferred an appeal challenging the conviction and sentence. A division bench of justices S Vaidyanathan and G Jayachandran said that the accused’s intention ...

YOKOHAMA (Kyodo) -- A Japanese man sentenced to death for the 2016 murder of 19 mentally impaired people at a care home near Tokyo withdrew his appeal on Monday, a district court said. Satoshi Uematsu, 30, a former caretaker at the Tsukui Yamayuri En facility in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, also injured 26 people in the rampage, in what the Yokohama District Court called incomparable to other incidents. His defense counsel had filed an appeal on Friday, but Uematsu had told Kyodo News two days after the March 16 verdict that he would drop the appeal since it would be "wrong" to continue the trial at higher courts. Uematsu also said he expected to receive the death penalty but was "not convinced" that he deserved it. RELATED  | Man sentenced to death over 2016 Japan care home mass murder He said during his trial that disabled people who are unable to communicate "create unhappiness in society." At the heart of the trial was wh...

A Japanese man who was sentenced to death over the 2016 murder of 19 mentally impaired people at a care home near Tokyo said Wednesday he will not appeal the ruling. Satoshi Uematsu, a 30-year-old who formerly worked at the Tsukui Yamayuri En care facility in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, told Kyodo News even if his defense counsel files an appeal by the March 30 deadline, he will request it be dropped. "I kind of expected (the death penalty) but I'm not convinced (I deserve it)," Uematsu said. The Yokohama District Court ruled Monday that Uematsu is competent to be held criminally liable for his actions, in which 26 people were injured in addition to the 19 killed. "I think it is wrong to continue my trial at higher courts. I have found my own answer," Uematsu said, adding he feels "heavy-hearted" when he thinks of how difficult it will be for him to receive visitors once his death sentence has been finalized. Uematsu expres...

YOKOHAMA – A man on trial for murdering 19 residents and injuring 26 other people in 2016 , at a knife rampage at a care home for the mentally disabled, said Wednesday he would not launch an appeal regardless of the ruling. During the trial at the Yokohama District Court in Kanagawa Prefecture, the defense team for Satoshi Uematsu, a 30-year-old former employee of the facility, argued in a closing statement that he should not be held responsible for his actions due to mental incompetence. The defense cast doubt on the results of a psychiatric assessment, pointing out that the doctor who performed it had not taken into account a marijuana-induced psychotic disorder. Uematsu was diagnosed with “personality disorder” in the assessment, leading prosecutors to determine that he could be held criminally responsible. But the defense team said that due to the use of marijuana, Uematsu’s “personality changed drastically from 2015” and he began to think disabled people were wo...

TOKYO: Japanese prosecutors on Monday (Feb 17) called for a 30-year-old man to be given the death penalty for allegedly murdering 19 disabled care home residents in one of the country's worst mass killings. Satoshi Uematsu, a former care home employee, did not dispute his involvement in the 2016 stabbing rampage during his first court appearance last month in Yokohama. RELATED |  'I had to do it for society': Conversations with accused Japan care home mass murderer But his lawyers entered a plea of not guilty, saying their client was suffering a "mental disorder" linked to his use of marijuana. Prosecutors have argued Uematsu was capable of taking responsibility for the attack, adding the rampage was "inhumane" and left "no room for leniency." Hearings are to be concluded later this week, with the verdict expected on Mar 16, according to the local court. Uematsu had reportedly said he wanted to eradicate all people with...

The Court of Cassation chaired by Judge Ahmad Al-Ajeel ruled in favor of the Court of Appeals to execute a Kuwaiti man accused of beating and torturing a child to death in a vehicle, and to imprison the mother of the child for 10 years with hard labor. The case file indicates the crime dates back to early August 2018 when the Operations Room received a communication from the mother claiming that her child was motionless after having a fall, and when security and medical emergency men examined the child, they discovered traits of beating and torture.  The mother during investigation revealed that she was accompanied by a male friend who had beaten the daughter until she succumbed to her injuries. The Public Prosecutor confirmed before court that the Kuwaiti man proposed to the child's mother that her daughter should be killed because of the circumstances of her disability, indicating the child was preventing them from enjoying their life. The man had promised to m...

"Singapore -- Disneyland with the death penalty." - William Gibson SINGAPORE, Sept 10 — The first major review of the Penal Code in more than a decade has yielded calls for sweeping changes — 169 to be exact — with a key focus on beefing up laws on sexual and abuse offences to protect women and vulnerable victims including children. On top of that, the wide-ranging review covered other areas, and most notably suggested a repeal of two laws: removing marital immunity for rape to provide equal access to protection for sexually abused wives, and decriminalising attempted suicide to recognise that treatment, and not prosecution, is the appropriate response. Among other things, the committee also proposed creating a new offence of fraud, which focuses more on the intent of the offender than the effects of deception on the victim. Two years after it was convened in 2016, the Penal Code Review Committee has submitted its 506-page report to the Ministry of Law and the ...