Death Penalty News

MONROE TOWNSHIP, Ohio — One year ago, three young brothers were shot and killed outside their home in New Richmond, Ohio.  Their father has been charged in their deaths. Chad Doerman was arrested last June after investigators said he shot and killed his three sons, 3-year-old Chase, 4-year-old Hunter and 7-year-old Clayton.

The man charged with murdering his three small sons should be excluded from the death penalty if convicted “due to serious mental illness at the time of (the) offense,” his lawyers contend in a new motion. CLERMONT COUNTY, Ohio — Attorneys for Chad Doerman, the man accused of shooting and killing his three sons, are requesting the court exclude the death penalty "due to serious mental illness." The motion as filed by the defense along with Doerman's plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. In response to Doerman's plea, the state requested a second evaluation of Doerman's mental condition on the day of the shooting.

For the first time in at least five years, Supreme Court justices last week issued dissents from the Court’s denial of review in two capital cases on the same day.  Both cases involved official misconduct. One alleged that Texas prosecutors illegally struck 13 women from Dillion Compton’s jury because of their gender. 

Chad Doerman was charged with murdering his sons, ages 3, 4 and 7 Even after a judge tossed the alleged confession of an Ohio dad accused of executing his three sons and shooting their mother's hand, he could still face the death penalty, experts say. Ohio law makes capital punishment a possibility in certain murder cases – including when there is a child victim. "The confession isn’t a mitigating or aggravating factor, so it doesn’t affect the death penalty one way or another," said Neama Rahmani, a Los Angeles-based attorney and former federal prosecutor.

The justices of the Supreme Court of California reviewed a direct appeal from the appellant, Alfred Flores, III, who was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death, and upheld the Superior Court’s conviction. In 2001, defendant Flores was arrested and tried for the murders of three teenage boys, identified as Torres, Ayala and Van Kleef, for refusing to join the El Monte Trece gang. Flores sought to recruit the victims because they were friends with another teenaged member of the gang. The prosecution theorized that the first victim, Torres, was killed after “disappointing” Flores by failing to show up at his initiation ceremony. The second victim, Van Kleef, was killed because he witnessed the Torres murder. The last victim, Ayala, was killed out of Flores’ fear that Ayala would implicate him for the Torres murder. The cause of death of all three victims was by gunshot. The jury convicted on all three counts of murder and Flores was sentenced to dea...

The day after Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was charged with desertion in 2015 after being held captive in Afghanistan for nearly 5 years, Donald Trump tweeted that the former Taliban prisoner should "face the death penalty" for abandoning his post and endangering his unit. On Friday, a military judge gave Bergdahl no prison time, a move that now-President Trump criticized on Twitter as "a complete and total disgrace to our Country and to our Military." Earlier this week, as the clock approached midnight, the President tweeted that the suspect who killed 8 by driving a truck down a Manhattan bike path "SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!" -- the 1st time he tweeted a call for capital punishment as sitting President. Legal experts said the President's comment, followed by a subsequent tweet repeating his call the next day, could entangle prosecutors as they seek to seat an unbiased jury and deliberate over what punishment to seek. For the last 1/2 decade ...

In "Case in Point," Andrew Cohen examines a single case or character that sheds light on the criminal justice system. An audio version of Case in Point is broadcast with The Takeaway , a public radio show from WNYC, Public Radio International, The New York Times, and WGBH-Boston Public Radio. Pretend for a moment that you are an 18-year-old black man in Louisiana in 1995 and you've been charged with murdering a white police officer and 2 others, the children of the owner of the restaurant where the crime took place. It's sensational news in New Orleans in part because you have a co-defendant in the case, herself a police officer, Antoinette Frank, who immediately implicates you in the crime. Prosecutors seek the death penalty against you and your judge sets your capital case for trial just over 4 months after the crime. You have a defense attorney who has never tried a death-penalty case before and who agrees to do so in exchange for your family's promi...

So why do so many suspects confess to crimes they didn't commit? "You have the right to remain silent." If you've ever watched any of the tens of thousands of hours of television devoted to crime dramas, you know the 1st warning given to suspects who are arrested and questioned. And the 2nd: "Anything you say can and will be used against you." The Miranda warnings - named for Miranda v. Arizona , the 1966 Supreme Court decision that required them - celebrate their 50th anniversary on June 13. In that period, they have become so ubiquitous that it's easy to forget their origin and purpose. Miranda was the culmination of 30 years of Supreme Court cases that were designed to protect criminal suspects from abuse in police interrogations. The earliest of these decisions prohibited violence and torture. The 1st concern was to prevent confessions that are "unreliable"- that is, false. In 1966, false confessions seemed like a rare p...

NCRI - An Iranian juvenile offender along with his mother and three other prisoners were hanged on Saturday (August 9, 2014) in a prison in the south-eastern city of Zahedan. 20-year-old Osman Dahmardeh was 17 at the time of his arrest. The reports received identified the other three men executed as Rasoulbakhsh Delshadi, 28, Ali Basham Narouee, 32, and Kamran Bameri, 35. All five victims were part of a group of six who were transferred to solitary confinement in the quarantine section of the main prison in Zahedan last Friday. At the time of the execution, the henchmen refrained from executing the sixth prisoner, Hossein Mishkar, after putting the noose around his neck. This practice is frequently used in the Iranian regime's prisons to psychologically torture the prisoners. The execution of a mother and son together is one of the most heinous crimes committed in the past 35 years by the criminals ruling Iran. The silence of the world community, especial...

DENVER -- Police officers who arrested James Holmes moments after the Colorado theater shootings will be allowed to tell jurors that when they asked Holmes if he had an accomplice, he replied, "No, it's just me," the judge ruled Friday. The officers also say Holmes told them he had four guns and that he had left bombs in his apartment that would go off if wires were tripped. The judge ruled the arresting officers' testimony about Holmes' statements can be used as prosecution evidence, even though police had not read Holmes his Miranda rights advising him he could remain silent. The judge said officers were allowed to question Holmes without reading him his rights under a public safety exception to the Miranda rule because they needed to know about any accomplices. The testimony could help prosecutors in their effort to undermine Holmes' claim that he was insane at the time of the July 2012 shootings, which left 12 dead and 70 injured. Ho...