Death Penalty News

The governor also signed bills that eliminate parole for adults who commit crimes after Aug. 1 and dramatically cut the availability of good behavior credits in prison NEW ORLEANS — Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law Tuesday a bill allowing executions by nitrogen gas and electrocution, opening the door for Louisiana to revive capital punishment 14 years after it last used its death chamber.

A former sheriff's deputy has been found not guilty of failing to protect students when a gunman opened fire at a Florida high school in 2018. Scot Peterson stayed outside during the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, near Miami. Mr Peterson, the school's resource officer, was found not guilty of 11 charges including felony child neglect, culpable negligence and perjury.

Nov 20, 2021 -- Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal on murder charges on Friday opened yet another front in America's longstanding fight over gun rights: Is it acceptable for a teenager to bring an assault-style rifle to a protest? Conservatives hailed Rittenhouse as a hero for exercising his right to self-defense when he fatally shot two demonstrators and wounded a third who he said attacked him last year at a racial justice protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Gun control advocates warned the jury's verdict could inspire a new wave of armed vigilantism, after Rittenhouse traveled in August 2020 from his Illinois home to Kenosha after demonstrations erupted following the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake. Guns have long been a potent political issue in the United States, where permissive laws have led to the highest rate of civilian firearm ownership in the world. Mass shootings, which are far more rare in other wealthy nations, have plagued the country for decades. Rittenhou...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amy Coney Barrett paid homage to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her White House speech Saturday as a shatterer of glass ceilings. She said she would be mindful of the woman whose place she would take on the Supreme Court. She even commented that her children think their father is the better cook, much as Ginsburg used to talk about her husband's prowess in the kitchen. But the replacement of the liberal icon Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court, by Barrett, who would be the fifth, would represent the most dramatic ideological change on the Supreme Court in nearly 30 years and cement conservative dominance of the court for years to come. Barrett, a judge on the federal appeals court based in Chicago, made clear in her Rose Garden address that she looks to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she once worked, and not Ginsburg, on matters of law. “His judicial philosophy is mine, too. Judges must apply the law as written. Judges are not po...

Americans grappling with the rapidly-spreading coronavirus purchased more guns last month than at any other point since the FBI began collecting data over 20 years ago. Why? With the death toll climbing every day and most of the country under some form of lockdown, many Americans seem to be turning to guns as part of their response. And it's not just about fears over social disorder, say experts. What do the figures show? The FBI conducted 3.7m background checks in March 2020, the highest total since the instant background check programme began in 1998. The figure represents an increase of 1.1m over March 2019. On 21 March alone, 210,000 checks were done, the largest one-day record ever. According to US media, the FBI data indicates that over two million guns were purchased in March alone. Illinois led with nearly a half million sales, followed by Texas, Kentucky, Florida, and California. Gun shops across the country report that they are unabl...

Thirteen people died over Labor Day weekend as a result of mass shootings. Eight were killed on Saturday when a 36-year-old gunman rampaged through Midland and Odessa , in West Texas. On Monday, five members of the same family were killed in Elkmont, Alabama ; a 14-year-old boy — who was also a relative — confessed to shooting them all. Both shootings occurred roughly a month after two previous back-to-back massacres: the killing of 22 mostly Hispanic people by a white supremacist at an El Paso  Walmart on August 3, and that of nine more the next day in Dayton, Ohio , including the shooter’s sister. The shootings and their immediate aftermath are linked by three components: Aggrieved young men, easy access to firearms, and thus-far empty promises from President Trump to curtail their recurrence. The first of these factors calls for a societywide overhaul of how boys are conditioned to handle frustration. But the latter two are less intractable: After years of Democratic effo...

Washington (CNN) -- The Trump administration is preparing a package of legislative measures responding to a spate of recent mass shootings, aides said Monday, even as White House and congressional staffs remain far apart on the best path forward. The package will include legislation that would expedite the death penalty for people found guilty of mass killings, Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff told reporters. But it's unlikely to include new provisions expanding background checks on gun sales after President Donald Trump backed off support for such steps following outcry from the National Rifle Association and warnings about the political consequences. The issue assumed new attention following another shooting over the weekend in West Texas, which killed seven people and wounded almost two dozen others. Trump told reporters afterward that the latest massacre -- one in a string of deadly episodes this summer -- was unlikely to change the calculus in Wash...

There’s an ongoing and uncivil war between many Republicans and Democrats. But two former Ohio governors have called a truce and created a friendship. And though they’re from different parties, Republican Bob Taft and Democrat Ted Strickland have a lot of views in common. Bob Taft became governor in 1999. His first year in office, Cleveland killer Wilford Berry became the first inmate to die since Ohio revised its death penalty after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and resumed executions.  Two dozen people were put to death in Taft’s eight years in office. But he said he felt it was part of the job. “I felt that unless there really was a mistake in law or evidence that it should proceed pursuant to law. But having gone through that experience and having examined the death penalty after being out of office, I’m developing growing reservations about it,” Taft said. Taft’s successor Ted Strickland took over in 2007. Seventeen people were executed during his four years – inc...

(CNN) -- A series of new firearm laws will go into effect in Texas next month -- further loosening gun restrictions in a state that's had four of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern US history. The laws -- passed before a gunman massacred 22 people and injured dozens in El Paso last weekend -- will make it easier to have guns in a state with some of the most lax weapons restrictions in the nation. Here are the key firearm laws going into effect on September 1: Weapons on school grounds House Bill 1143 says a school district cannot prohibit licensed gun owners, including school employees, from storing a firearm or ammunition in a locked vehicle on a school parking lot -- provided they are not in plain view. Kris Brown, president of gun violence prevention advocacy group Brady, criticized the bill going into effect September 1. "Many states took the opportunity in the last two years to learn lessons from the tragedies in Las Vegas, Sutherland...

A spate of tragic shootings in the United States over the weekend has left the Swiss media perplexed and asking – why is the US paralysed when it comes to protecting its citizens? If two deadly shootings in less than 24 hours don’t move the country, what will? The Swiss media expressed shock at the attacks in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas over the weekend that left more than 30 people dead. Several noted that these were two more mass murders on an “ever-expanding list”. But while some saw this as the result of fundamental flaws in US society and politics, other papers viewed it as the tragic result of white nationalism and a warning message to Europe.    A “racial crisis” TagesAnzeiger Washington correspondent Martin Kilian reflected on President Trump’s speech to the American public on Monday, equating today’s climate in the US to the racial crisis of the 1960s civil rights period.  While praising President Trump’s condemnation of racism and big...

On Valentine's Day of last year, a 19-year-old armed with a military-style assault rifle walked into his old high school in Parkland, Florida and slaughtered 17 people. That spasm in America's epidemic of gun violence gave new impetus the debate on controlling firearms, prompting marches across the country and a fresh round of hand-wringing in cable news studios. Many of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivors such as David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez remain national figures a year on -- a testament to their tenacity in keeping the atrocity in the headlines -- yet concrete reform has remained limited and local. Meanwhile America risks becoming inured to the carnage: four months before Parkland a gunman killed 58 people at a festival in Las Vegas while, 16 months earlier, a massacre at a gay night club in Orlando left 49 dead. And with 37 mass shootings -- those with at least four victims, not including the assailant -- recorded already in the US this ye...