Death Penalty News

Two senior Iranian Supreme Court judges were killed and another wounded in an armed attack in Tehran on Saturday, state media reported.  They were identified as Mohammad Moghiseh and Ali Razini, both high-ranking officials. A third judge was injured and is receiving medical treatment. The attacker used a handgun to carry out the shootings before taking his own life, Fars news agency reported.  Initial investigations found that the attacker did not have a case before the court, nor any other connections, the judiciary's press service reported. The Supreme Court is the highest judicial authority in Iran, with its head appointed by the supreme leader. Headquartered in Tehran, it has branches throughout the country.

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.

The state of Florida executed six inmates last year, including one from Palm Beach County. Four of them, including the one from Palm Beach County, lived longer than the judges who condemned them.  Duane Owen was 25 when he was sentenced to death in 1986 by Palm Beach Judge Richard Burk. He was convicted of killing a 14-year-old babysitter and a 38-year-old mother of two in separate attacks months apart in 1984 while children were sleeping in the homes he targeted. He was 62 when he was executed last June. By then, Burk had been dead four years. Burk was 87 when he passed away.

Retired Judge James Brogan began his legal career in 1967 as an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in Montgomery County. He was elected in 1980 and served five terms on the Ohio Second District Court of Appeals before retiring in 2011. My involvement with the death penalty runs deep. I dealt with capital punishment cases as a prosecutor and judge in Montgomery County. In 2011, I was appointed by the then-chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court to serve as chairman of the Joint Task Force on the Administration of Ohio’s Death Penalty. I do not oppose the death penalty in concept, but because it fails as an effective public policy, I support current legislation to repeal Ohio’s capital punishment statute. When Ohio reinstituted the death penalty in the late 1990s, both the electric chair - 'Old Sparky" - and a bed for lethal injection were available in the death chamber at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility outside of Lucasville. Now both methods have been ruled out, leaving st...

“Mr. Murdaugh’s right to have his appeal heard by an impartial judge will be violated if Judge Newman proceeds to hear his motion for a new trial,” a new motion says. As Alex Murdaugh’s legal team pushes for a new murder trial, they have a bold request for the South Carolina Supreme Court: ban Judge Clifton Newman from having anything to do with the case. In a Wednesday filing, defense lawyers argued that Newman should be removed from future hearings related to Murdaugh’s double homicide case, claiming that the judge who presided over the murder trial cannot be impartial.

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.

Judge Elizabeth Scherer's handling of the case drew praise from Parkland families but criticism from Cruz's defense team. FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The Florida judge who gained a national profile while presiding over the Parkland school shooting trial announced Wednesday that she is resigning June 30 to pursue unspecified career opportunities. Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer rose in prominence when she oversaw the televised penalty trial of Nikolas Cruz. He received a life sentence last year after a divided jury was unable to agree on the death penalty for the 2018 mass killing of 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. “It has been a privilege to serve the people of the State of Florida for over 10 years,” Scherer wrote in her brief resignation letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis. The resignation was first reported by Court TV.

In the request, death row inmate Randy W. Tundidor cited Judge Elizabeth Scherer’s actions after the Parkland school shooter was sentenced. The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday granted a death row inmate’s request to disqualify a Broward County circuit judge from his case because of actions after Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz was sentenced to life in prison last year. The Supreme Court unanimously agreed that Judge Elizabeth Scherer should be disqualified from the case of death row inmate Randy W. Tundidor. The request came after Scherer on Nov. 2 sentenced Cruz to life in prison in the 2018 murders of 17 students and faculty members at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Scherer could not sentence Cruz to death because a jury did not unanimously recommend the death penalty.

Iran’s government is doubling down on repression to stamp out the months-long uprising bent on its ouster. At the heart of these efforts: a small circle of judges connected to the country’s clerical leaders and security services, meting out long prison terms and death sentences to protest supporters.

Aubrey Trail says he's ready to be executed, though he's also seeking the dismissal of 1 of the 3 judges appointed to decide whether he receives a life sentence or the death penalty. Convicted murderer Aubrey Trail says he’s ready to be executed “in a timely fashion” for his crime. But meanwhile, he is seeking to disqualify a judge from deciding whether he deserves the death penalty or life in prison. Trail, in a recent email to The World-Herald, said he doesn’t doubt that ultimately he’ll be sentenced to die in Nebraska’s execution chamber. “The public and the family must be appeased and believe it or not I understand that,” he wrote. “If I am sentenced to death, I will file a suit to try and force the state to carry out the sentence in a timely fashion. “I have no desire to sit on (death row) for years while the state drags its feet.” Trail, 63, is awaiting a sentencing hearing after being found guilty in July of 1st-degree murder, conspiracy to com...

Nearly 26 years after a woman was beaten and stabbed to death in her Miami-Dade County home, Gov. Rick Scott on Wednesday said her murderer should die by lethal injection on Aug. 14. Scott signed a death warrant for inmate Jose Antonio Jimenez, who was convicted in the October 1992 killing of 63-year-old Phyllis Minas, whose neighbors heard her shout, "Oh God! Oh my God!" during the attack, according to court documents. Jimenez, now 54, would be the 1st inmate put to death by lethal injection in Florida since Feb. 22, when Eric Branch was executed in the 1993 murder and sexual assault of University of West Florida student Susan Morris. Jimenez also would be the 28th inmate executed since Scott took office in 2011 - the most of any Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, a state Department of Corrections list shows. Scott signed the death warrant after the Florida Supreme Court on June 28 rejected an appeal by Jimenez, who was convicted ...

“I wondered whether the system I have been a part of for so long was, simply, barbaric.” The execution was set for 6 p.m. I knew because I set the date and time myself. With a little more than an hour to go, I sat alone by the phone in my office. More than three decades had passed since the defendant was first convicted of murdering a police officer. I had been the judge at his final trial, and now there was a chance I’d be called on to spare his life. Higher courts and the Texas governor had already denied the man’s last-ditch appeals. His lawyers had tried to broker a deal with prosecutors to keep him alive, but that had failed, too. Now he was down to his last shot: The defense could present some new argument or evidence to convince me to intervene and stop the execution. If they did, I would have to make a life-or-death decision with essentially no time for research or discussion. I waited. As the minutes passed, I felt a familiar sense of unease. In the years si...