Death Penalty News

This is the seventh judgement among the 15 cases BANGKOK: The Criminal Court on Tuesday (Aug 25, 2026) sentenced Sararat 'Am Cyanide' Rangsiwuthaporn to death for the murder of Darinee 'Fah' Thepwi, marking the seventh judgement among the 15 cases brought against her. Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn is a Thai woman at the centre of a high-profile serial cyanide-poisoning case. She is accused of fatally poisoning multiple friends and acquaintances (mostly for financial motives linked to debts and fraud), with police linking her to about 15 poisonings (14 deaths and 1 survivor) across several provinces from around 2015 to 2023.  Police tied the pattern to heavy online gambling losses and large bank transactions. The cases all involve potassium cyanide allegedly mixed into food, drinks, or other consumables. 

The condemned headed family syndicates that trapped Chinese abroad in massive scam centres BEIJING — In less than a week, China conducted a series of executions on a scale rarely seen in recent decades. In all, 16 core members of mafia-like crime syndicates were put to death for a range of crimes, from murder to fraud and human trafficking. While all the victims in the cases were Chinese nationals, many of the condemned were citizens of Myanmar, a largely Buddhist country not known for executing crime bosses.

China has executed another four members of a powerful Myanmar-based crime family that oversaw 41 pig butchering scam* compounds across Southeast Asia.   The executed individuals were members of the Bai family, a particularly powerful gang that ruled the Laukkai district and helped transform it into a hub for casinos, trafficking, scam compounds, and prostitution.  China’s Supreme People’s Court approved the executions after 21 members were charged with homicide, kidnapping, extortion, operating a fraudulent casino, organizing illegal border crossings, and forced prostitution. The court said the Bai family made over $4 billion across its enterprise and killed six Chinese citizens.

Chinese state media has reported that five people have been sentenced to death for their involvement in a violent criminal gang with fraud operations in Myanmar. Scam compounds have flourished in Myanmar, staffed by foreigners — many of them Chinese — who often say they were trafficked and forced to swindle people online. Five people have been sentenced to death in China for their involvement in a violent criminal gang with fraud operations in Myanmar's Kokang region, Chinese state media has reported.

The Wenzhou Intermediate People’s Court in China’s Zhejiang province has sentenced 11 people to death over their alleged role in a $1.4bn illegal gambling scam operation in Myanmar. At the Monday trial, the judicial body handed five other suspects death sentences suspended for two years. According to the BBC, the court found multiple members of the Ming family mafia guilty of conducting criminal activities, including murder, fraud, assault, and telecom fraud. Non-profit news firm China Perspective took to X with a video of suspects receiving the death sentence, which is commonly completed via lethal injection.

Palembang. A military court in Palembang, South Sumatra, on Monday sentenced Corporal Second Class Bazarsah to death for fatally shooting three police officers during a raid on an illegal cockfighting operation in Way Kanan, Lampung, earlier this year.  The court also ordered his dismissal from the Indonesian Army. “The court sentences the defendant to the death penalty as the main punishment and dishonorable discharge from military service as an additional punishment,” presiding judge Colonel Fredy Ferdian Isnartanto said while reading the verdict.

A woman in Thailand has been sentenced to death in the first of a string of cases in which she is accused of murdering 14 friends with cyanide. The court in Bangkok found Sararat Rangsiwuthaporn, 36, guilty of putting poison in a wealthy friend's food and drink while they were on a trip last year.

Every morning, senior members of Kudo-kai, arguably Japan's most violent yakuza gang, would scurry out of a security control room equipped with surveillance monitors and into the corridor. There, they would sit on the floor in a receiving line in traditional seiza fashion, with their knees tucked stiffly under them. Soon, the godfather, Satoru Nomura, who had just awaken, would come down from upstairs. “Good morning!” they would greet him in unison. The morning ritual at the residence of Nomura, 74, was one of the trappings enjoyed by the head of the nation’s only “special-designated dangerous gangster organization” under the law since 2011. Enclosed behind stone walls and fences, Nomura’s ostentatious mansion sits in Kita-Kyushu’s Kokura-Kita Ward in Fukuoka Prefecture. “It’s like a castle,” locals would say.  But the notorious yakuza don will be trading his palatial home for a cell on Japan's death row. RELATED |  Head of Kudo-kai Crime Syndicate Sentenced to Death  On ...

Yan Haojie, the man who killed his pregnant wife after she refused to help him repay his gambling debts, has been sentenced to death, the Shanghai No.1 Intermediate People's Court announced on Friday. Investigations revealed that Yan, who was saddled with a gambling debt of over 1 million yuan, demanded money from his wife and threatened her with a knife on the morning of March 20, 2020.  He then stabbed her to death after she refused.  He later set fire to the house to cover up his crime. The court found Yan guilty of intentional homicide and arson.  Despite confessing to his crimes, he has been given capital punishment and deprived of political rights for life. According to the investigation findings, Yan failed to obtain his degree while studying abroad and has been addicted to gambling since 2018.  He also scouted his wife's home in the Pudong New Area before making the attack. Source:  China Daily, Staff, July 31, 2021 🚩 | Report an error, an omission, ...

The men, aged 27 and 29, were whipped by five enforcers wearing hoods as onlookers filmed on their phones Two men have been caned in Indonesia's Aceh region after neighbours reported them for having gay sex. The punishment took place today [Thursday 28 January 2021] in Tamansari city park in the city of Banda Aceh with dozens of people watching and filming on their mobile devices (see video below). Homosexuality is illegal in the semi-autonomous province under Shariah law, and caning of up to 100 lashes has been used as punishment since 2015. The men, aged 27 and 29, were whipped by five enforcers wearing robes and hoods, reports ABC News.  According to the outlet, Heru Triwijanarko, Aceh's acting Sharia police chief said the men were arrested in November after neighbours became suspicious and broke into their room while they were having sex. "Islamic sharia enforcement is final" Speaking to AFP, Triwijanarko said: "Islamic Sharia enforcement is final, no matter ...

On Thursday, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement condemning the execution, earlier that same day, of a juvenile offender in the Islamic Republic of Iran. The incident stood out as a late addition to the country’s catalogue of human rights abuses for the year 2020. Three other juvenile offenders had been executed by the Iranian judiciary earlier in the year, and Thursday’s case seemed to reaffirm the clerical regime’s rejection of foreign criticisms of this practice and of other widely reported irregularities in Iranian jurisprudence.  Mohammad Hassan Rezaiee was 30 years old at the time he was hanged, but he had been on death row for more than a decade as a result of allegations that he had fatally stabbed a man when he was 16 years old. International human rights law forbids the use of the death penalty in cases where the defendant was under 18 years old at the time of the offense. But Iran routinely ignores this principle despite being a sign...

In a new blow to Iranians’ human rights, particularly the right to life, Iranian authorities plan to hang people on gambling-related charges.  On December 26, deputy chair of the Parliament (Majlis) Judicial Commission Hassan Nowruzi acknowledged that the Majlis Judicial Commission has recently drafted a bill to confront gambling websites’ admins. “This plan considers the death penalty for gambling-related offenders due to ‘corruption on earth,’” Nowruzi said in an interview with Fars news agency, affiliated to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ( IRGC ), on December 26. Execution Is the Dictatorship’s Sole Response to Society’s Dilemmas Earlier, the State Security Forces (SSF) announced that it had detained ten citizens on gambling-related charges. Colonel Mostafa Nowruzi, chief of the SSF Center for Combating National and Organized Cyber Crimes, reported this news during a press conference. (The two Nowruzis are not related.) On the other hand, the deputy chair of the Majlis J...

The Court has handed down the death penalty to the school director who shot and killed 3 people before robbing a Lop Buri gold shop in January. He was found guilty on 3 counts of murder and 1 count of attempted murder. The court says 38 year old Prasittichai “Golf” Khaokaew entered the Robinson shopping mall in Lop Buri with a pistol attached with silencer. He shot and killed a female employee and a 2 year old boy. He shot and injured another person before stealing jewelry from the Aurora Gold Shop. He then shot and killed a mall security guard whilst fleeing the shopping centre. He escaped on a Honda Scoopy with 33 gold necklaces valued at about 665,470 baht. A 600,000 baht bounty was raised to find the gunman. He was arrested 2 weeks later at his parent’s home.  Police found some of the gold jewellery in the rafters of a shed in his parent’s home. Prasittichai told police that he was “bored”. He claims he shot the child by accident.  Surveillance camer...

A former property agent killed his pregnant wife and four-year-old daughter because he "lost it" after being provoked when his wife belittled him in front of the girl, his lawyer argued in the High Court on Friday (July 3). In arguing that Teo Ghim Heng, 44, should be found guilty of culpable homicide instead of murder, Mr Eugene Thuraisingam said his client snapped as a result of his depression and the "grave and sudden provocation". But Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Han Ming Kuang argued that the methodical manner in which Teo strangled his wife and daughter in January 2017 showed that he did not lose self-control. Moreover, Teo's daughter was playing with her toys and watching TV at the time and had clearly not provoked him, the DPP said, in response to the defence's argument that the girl was "an active participant in the provocation" as she witnessed her father's shame. The DPP also argued there was no objective evidenc...

23 May 2020 | A court in Uttar Pradesh on 21 May 2020 awarded death sentence to a person in connection with the murder of six members of a family seven years ago over a property dispute. Suresh Chand Yadav and his five family members were killed while they were sleeping on the night of 26 May 2012 in Pilkhar village. A case was lodged against his younger brother, Ram Pratap, alias Tillu, additional district government counsel D K Tiwari said. Additional sessions judge Vijay Kumar pronounced Ram Pratap guilty on 21 March. They awarded him a death sentence on 21 May. The accused had sold his land to gamble and was eying his brother's property, Tiwari added.   Source:  PTI, Staff, May 23, 2020 ⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com . Opposed to Capital Punishment...