Death Penalty News

SAHIWAL: Two men were awarded a death sentence on Thursday for making a blasphemous post on Facebook in 2024. Along with the death penalty, AntiTerrorism Court Special Judge Ziaullah Khan also awarded the convicts seven-year imprisonment and a fine of Rs1.5 million each. According to the police, both men were booked in the FIR under the PPC Section 295-C, sections 7 and 9 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (1996), and sections 10 and 11 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (2016). 

Saber Ben Chouchane has been granted a presidential pardon after he was sentenced to death over posts deemed offensive to President Kais Saied. A Tunisian man sentenced to death over Facebook posts deemed offensive to President Kais Saied has been granted a presidential pardon, his lawyer said on Tuesday. Saber Ben Chouchane, 51, had been sentenced on multiple charges including "spreading false news", defence lawyer Oussama Bouthelja told AFP. The Paris-based Tunisian human rights group CRLDHT had said the verdict set "a serious precedent" and that the North African country had "reached unprecedented levels of human rights violations".

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — A court in Tunisia has sentenced a 51-year-old man to death over Facebook posts deemed offensive to President Kais Saied and a threat to state security, his lawyer said Friday. Saber Chouchen was convicted on Wednesday of three charges: attempting to overthrow the state, insulting the president and spreading false information online. Judges said the posts incited violence and chaos and violated Tunisia’s penal code as well as the controversial 2022 cybercrime law, Decree 54.

A federal judge in Boston is vigorously denying the marathon bomber’s last-ditch accusation that another magistrate must reexamine the killer’s death penalty sentencing.  In a stinging rebuke, Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. states he won’t step aside as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev fights for his life.  Tsarnaev was convicted in 2015 of all 30 charges against him and remains locked up for life in the Colorado supermax prison ADX Florence.  Tsarnaev’s lawyers allege 2 jurors were biased when they agreed to sentence the bomber to death in June of 2015 for “using weapons of mass destruction” at the marathon finish line. The First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston has instructed O’Toole to take another look at the alleged bias of those jurors. 

As the city marks the 12th anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sits on federal death row for admittingly detonating bombs at the finish line that killed three people and injured more than 260 others. Yet, his fate remains uncertain after a decade of legal wrangling, as his lawyers continue to challenge his death sentence.  The federal judge who presided over his 2015 trial was ordered by an appeals court in March 2024 to investigate defense claims that two jurors were biased and should have been stricken from the panel. If he finds they were, then Tsarnaev is entitled to a new trial over whether he should be sentenced to life in prison or death, according to the appeals court. 

LAHORE, Pakistan — Federal agents in Pakistan arrested a young Christian man under a blasphemy law mandating the death penalty for comments posted in Facebook chat groups under his name by unknown persons, his family said.  Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officials took 24-year-old Arsalan Gill of Railway Quarters in Mughalpura, Lahore, into custody on March 17 as he returned home from his work as a sweeper, said his brother, Suleman Gill.

TOKYO - A Japanese high court judge was impeached Wednesday for posting on social media in 2017 messages that were found offensive to the bereaved family of a high school girl murdered two years earlier, marking the first time a judge has been dismissed over the expression of views. The Judge Impeachment Court deemed the series of posts made by Kiichi Okaguchi of the Sendai High Court, who is currently suspended from duty, constituted "gross misconduct" beyond the scope of freedom of expression.

Blasphemy is a sensitive issue in Pakistan, where anyone deemed to have insulted Islam or Islamic figures can face the death penalty. A Pakistani court has handed down death sentences to four youths for committing blasphemy on social media, the country's top investigating agency said on Tuesday. Additional District Sessions Judge (Rawalpindi) Ahsan Mahmood Malik sentenced the four to death on Monday for posting blasphemous material on Facebook. 

ANAHEIM, Calif. (CN) — Homicide detectives arrested an Orange County, California Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Ferguson late Thursday in the shooting death of his wife. Just after 8 p.m. Thursday night, Anaheim police officers responded to reports of a shooting in the 8500 block of E. Canyon Vista Drive in the affluent Anaheim Hills neighborhood. They found 65-year-old Sheryl Ferguson "suffering from at least one gunshot wound," according to an Anaheim Police Department press release. Shortly thereafter, she was pronounced dead. Police arrested Judge Ferguson for murder "without incident," and booked him into the police department's detention facility, with bail set at $1 million. "Detectives are not disclosing any additional details at this time because the investigation is ongoing," the department said in the statement.

Poland’s hardline conservative government has opened up a new front in its increasingly fractious relationship with the rest of the EU, after its Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said he backed a return of the death penalty, which is banned in the bloc. Mr Morawiecki said the country needed a “rethink” of its position, describing the post-Cold War abolition of capital punishment “was a premature innovation of the 1990s”.

The picture has been shared on social media in a tearful tribute penned by his niece. A picture of a Malaysian death row prisoner clutching a copy of the Quran before his execution yesterday has been shared by his niece in a tearful farewell which she posted on Facebook. The picture shows Rahmat Karimon holding a Quran at his chest in what is believed to be part of his final photo shoot at Changi Prison, a bizarre practice carried out by prison authorities in the run-up to execution day.  "You will be missed, Abang Rahmat. We all love you. Your place is paradise, insha Allah.  "May you find peace there. We love you, Abang," said Nur Hidayu, who also shared past family pictures showing a younger Rahmat. Rahmat was arrested at the Woodlands Checkpoint in 2015 as he was travelling back to Malaysia with his wife and three children, after delivering a green bag to a person in Singapore. According to court documents, Rahmat had been instructed by his employer, an illegal money...

Social media users are sharing a video created by satirical publication The Onion and claiming it shows a new death penalty procedure introduced in Ohio. The chyron of the news segment reads: “OHIO INTRODUCES NEW DEATH PENALTY PROCEDURE”. The anchor in the video mentions: “Facing mounting criticism that lethal injection is cruel and outdated, Ohio has replaced it with a system that quickly and humanely rips off the heads of death row inmates using powerful robotic arms. The new device is designed to be as humane as possible, emitting soothing white noise and putting prisoners on a cushioned seat before its metallic talons dig into their necks and painlessly wrench their heads off…” The video continues to discuss the procedure. However, the logo of the news station seen on the bottom right is “ONN”, also known as the Onion News Network ( here ). The Onion is a satirical website. The video is available on The Onion’s website ( here ) and was published on May 5, 2014. Reuters reported in ...

Malaysian lawyer Zaid Abd Malek was on Jul 6 served a 24-month conditional warning by the Singapore police for the offence of contempt of court over his statements about the dismissal of lawsuits filed by two Malaysian drug traffickers, said the Singapore Police Force (SPF). The statements were published in a Malay Mail article on Feb 14, 2020. Mr Zahid, in his capacity as director of the non-governmental organisation Lawyers for Liberty, had commented on the dismissal of lawsuits filed by 2 convicted Malaysian drug traffickers, Gobi Avedian and Datchinamurthy Kataiah, over the alleged execution methods by prison authorities. "Mr Zaid’s statements had suggested that the Singapore Courts had been unfair and ignored due process by rushing the hearing, and that the Singapore Courts were 'bent on dismissing the suits and proceeding to execution'," said SPF in the media release on Saturday (Jul 9). "These statements were published online and accessed by members of the...

A young mother who got more than $10,000 from sympathetic social-media followers more than 2 years ago after the death of her baby is now being held in jail on $500,000 bond after she and her boyfriend were arrested for her child's death. Brandon Gardner, 26, and Brooke Stringer, 22, were charged with capital murder and booked into the Jones County Adult Detention Center on Friday morning. They made their initial appearance in Jones County Justice Court that afternoon, where Judge David Lyons set their bonds at $500,000 each. Rosalee Stringer died in late October 2019 — less than a month after her mother entered into a relationship with Gardner, according to her Facebook page — and the cause of death was suspicious to investigators at the time, but there was no proof that a crime had occurred. Stringer was reportedly in the shower while the baby was on a pallet on the floor in Gardner’s care. He brought the baby to her, saying something was wrong. The baby was taken to University M...

Bangladesh sentenced 20 university students to death on Wednesday for the 2019 murder of a young man who criticised the government on social media. The battered body of Abrar Fahad, 21, was found in his dormitory hours after he wrote a Facebook post slamming Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for signing a water-sharing deal with India. He was beaten with a cricket bat and other blunt objects for six hours by 25 fellow students who were members of the ruling Awami League's student wing, the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL). "I am happy with the verdict," Fahad's father Barkat Ullah told reporters outside court after the sentencing. "I hope the punishments will be served soon." The remaining five perpetrators were handed life imprisonment. Chief prosecutor Mohammad Abu Abdullah Bhuiyuan told AFP that the murder was premeditated. All those given death sentences were between 20 and 22 years old at the time of the murder and attended the elite Bangladesh University of ...

At the same time, the AGC is also demanding that Nagaenthran’s lawyer remove two Facebook posts on the grounds of Contempt of Court, including a live video wherein the lawyer talked about Nagaenthran’s case. Singapore — The family of a Malaysian convict on death row whose case has received international attention of late will be taking Singapore’s Attorney-General, Lucien Wong, to court due to reported “negligence” by the criminal justice system. Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, 33, who has an IQ of 69 and is said to suffer from intellectual disability, was scheduled to be judicially executed on Nov 10, but was given a temporary stay of execution after testing positive for Covid on Nov 8. He was arrested for drug trafficking over a decade ago at the age of 21, and was sentenced to death for importing 42.72g of heroin into Singapore. He said at his trial that he had been coerced into committing the offence by a man who not only assaulted him but also threatened to kill his girlfriend. Malays...

The petition was started as Naga's execution date looms closer, and after Nagaenthran's mother received a letter (left) from the Singaporean government informing her of it The letter was made public in a Facebook post by Nagaenthran's Singapore-based lawyer M Ravi, who called the execution "despicable", especially with Deepavali drawing close. "How insensitive [are] the prison authorities to tell his family to come to Singapore and prepare for his funeral during Deepavali?" Ravi questioned. RELATED |  Singapore | Intellectually disabled Malaysian to be hanged on 10th Nov. It is unclear if he understood his arrest, charges and impending execution. The letter, dated 26 October from the Singapore Prison Service and addressed to Panchalai Supermaniam who lives in Ipoh, has since gone viral. It reads: "Please be informed that the death sentence passed on your son, Nagaenthran A/L K Dharmalingam, will be carried out on 10 November 2021 (Wednesday)....

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand authorities imprisoned a man inspired by the Islamic State group for three years after catching him with a hunting knife and extremist videos — but at a certain point, despite grave fears he would attack others, they say they could do nothing more to keep him behind bars. So for 53 days from July, police tracked the man's every move, an operation that involved some 30 officers working around the clock. Their fears were borne out Friday when he walked into an Auckland supermarket, grabbed a kitchen knife from a store shelf and stabbed five people, critically injuring three. Two more shoppers were injured in the melee. On Saturday, three of the victims remained hospitalized in critical condition and three more were in stable or moderate conditions. The seventh person was recovering at home. The youngest victim was a 29-year-old woman, the oldest a 77-year-old man. Court documents named the attacker as 32-year-old Ahamed Aathil Mohamed Samsud...