Death Penalty News

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law a bill that provides death-row prisoners relief from convictions or death sentences obtained “on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin.”

The law and home affairs ministries on Thursday (Sept 8) rebutted recent statements made by two international organisations that called for Singapore to halt executions, saying that they contained “misconceptions and inaccuracies”. The statements were made last month by the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) headquartered in the United Kingdom and the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) based in Switzerland. Both statements, issued two days apart, had called for Singapore to place a moratorium on executions with a view to abolish the death penalty. The ICJ had also called on the Singapore authorities to stop using "punitive" cost orders against lawyers representing death-row inmates. Noting that lawyers in Singapore have in recent months been ordered to pay costs for failed court challenges by death-row inmates, IBAHRI’s co-chair Mark Stephens said that such punishments “raise concerns around access to justice and effective legal representat...

They point to official numbers in their bid to show how Malays in the city-state are less likely to have their death sentence quashed or commuted to a jail term upon appeal. A group of 17 prisoners in Singapore sentenced to death for various drug offences is seeking a court declaration that the government had acted with discrimination and bias in their prosecution due to their Malay ethnicity, in a historic suit that appears set to renew debate on the treatment of Malays in the city-state. The convicts, all Singaporeans with the exception of one Malaysian, are represented by M Ravi, a prominent Singaporean lawyer known for handling high-profile cases that frequently ruffle the government’s feathers. They have named the attorney-general as the defendant, accusing him of breaching a constitutional guarantee on equal treatment under the law, adding that their investigations, trials and convictions under the draconian Misuse of Drugs Act had been arbitrary and based on the “irrelevant fact...