Death Penalty News

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (AP) — A juror in Scott Peterson’s two-decade-old murder trial will be granted immunity before testifying at a hearing that could determine whether a new trial is granted, authorities said. The offer to Richelle Nice will come before she testifies at a Feb. 25 evidentiary hearing, Stanislaus County District Attorney Birgit Fladager announced Monday. Nice was Juror 7 in the trial that ended in 2004 with Peterson’s conviction for killing his pregnant wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn son. Prosecutors say Peterson took his wife’s body from their Modesto home on Christmas Eve 2002 and dumped her from his fishing boat into the San Francisco Bay, where her body and that of her unborn son washed ashore separately in April 2003. Peterson’s lawyers want to overturn his murder conviction on grounds of bias and misconduct. They contend that Nice lied on a jury questionnaire when she denied having been the victim of a crime or involved in a lawsuit. Attorneys say Nice did ...

Iran has sentenced a Kurdish political prisoner to death on charges of membership with a Kurdistan Region-based opposition group and murder of a paramilitary force member, according to a Paris-based Iran human rights monitor – despite earlier assurances from Iranian authorities that he would be immune from punishment. Shakir Behrooz was sentenced to death by Branch 2 of the Urmia Revolutionary Court on September 10, on charges of “taking up arms against the state” with the Komala Party, the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) quoted a source familiar with Behrooz's case as saying. Behrooz's lawyer "was officially notified of the death sentence today," the source told KHRN on Sunday. He was part of the Komala Party in the Kurdistan Region for over 8 months, before he left and returned to Iran towards the end of 2018. Behrooz, who is from Urmia in West Azerbaijan province, "presented himself to the Urmia Intelligence Office in the fall of 2018 when he returned ...