Death Penalty News

Palm Beach County Clerk of Court Michael Caruso, a former Republican state legislator who previously backed the death penalty for adults convicted of sexually battering children under 12, was arrested Tuesday on five felony child sex abuse charges. The 67-year-old married father of seven who was appointed by Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis faces five felony counts: kidnapping, child molestation, lewd exhibition, luring or enticing a child, and child abuse causing mental injury, an arrest affidavit shows.

Several months ago, Brandon Michael Angevine was indicted by a grand jury on a charge of sexual battery on a child younger than 12. Angevine also was charged with five counts of possession of child pornography. Under Florida law, Angevine could have faced the death penalty for the sexual battery case, but prosecutors declined to seek that punishment. If convicted at trial, Angevine would be sentenced to life in prison. On Aug. 21, Angevine appeared in front of Circuit Judge Timothy McCourt for trial priority. At the hearing, Angevine said he wanted to change his plea to guilty for the sexual battery charge and no contest for the child porn charges.

Rep Anna Paulina Luna says President-elect Donald Trump backs her effort Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., is unveiling a new set of bills that could have child sexual predators facing the death penalty. "If you are raping someone, if you're molesting someone, you are essentially murdering their soul. Those people never actually fully recover. I've actually sat on a committee with a very prominent [female House Democrat] who actually talked about the fact that she was molested as a child. And so you can see that it impacts and really hurts people," Luna said.

Idaho has passed a new bill that seeks capital punishment for child sex predators. The bill, known as HB 515, would carry out the death penalty for any conviction relating to sexual acts with children younger than 12 years old. Simultaneously, another bill, HB465, which would allow prosecutors to charge producers of child pornography using artificial intelligence (AI) with sexual exploitation, was passed alongside it.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) assembly has passed the Child Protection and Welfare (Amendment) Act 2022, imposing life imprisonment and death sentence for child abusers. Provincial Law Minister, Fazal-e-Shakoor, tabled the bill in the assembly on Tuesday.  The bill received approval from the provincial cabinet in December last year. According to the bill, convicts of child abuse cases in the province will now either get life imprisonment or a death sentence.  Those involved in child pornography will get 14 years in prison. The sentence may extend to 20 years along with a fine of Rs. 2 to 5 million. Those involved in sharing videos of child pornography will get 10 years in prison and a fine of up to Rs. 2 million.  Those involved in child trafficking will be sentenced to either 14 years, 20 years, or life in jail. Child Protection Courts will be formed and they will hear the cases related to child abuse.  These courts will complete the hearing of a case in 30 days. They...

Capital punishment has not been applied by Moscow since 1996 The moratorium on capital punishment imposed in Russia in 1997 after the country joined the Council of Europe could be lifted in the future, the chairman of the country’s Constitutional Court said on Tuesday. In a book published on the website of the court, Valery Zorkin suggested that the country return to the doctrine of national identity and that constitutional control means Moscow should make its own laws, rather than take influence from other countries in Europe.  In Zorkin’s view, the introduction of a moratorium on capital punishment was a concession to values which are not inherent in Russia. “The fact that the Constitutional Court has made a decision making it impossible to use the death penalty in Russia at this historical stage of its development does not rule out the possibility of a return to this form of punishment in the future,” Zorkin said. Russia has an indefinite moratorium on the application of capital...

South Korea is strengthening punishment for child abuse amid a growing number of cases, with the recent revision of a child abuse law now making the death penalty a possibility. On Friday lawmakers passed a bill at the plenary session of the National Assembly to revise a law dealing with penalties for child abuse, making it possible for child abusers to be convicted of murder even if they did not intend to cause death. The amendment, called the Jeong-in Act, is named after a 16-month-old girl who died after allegedly being abused by her adoptive parents. Under the revised law, those who abuse children and unintentionally cause death can face the death penalty or imprisonment for seven years to life. As it stands now, if a child is killed during abuse, the perpetrator can be sentenced to five years to life. The bill passed amid growing calls for tougher punishment after a number of high-profile cases where children died of abuse. The number of child abuse reports is increasing every yea...

Police intervened after the girls’ parents filed complaints against the teacher. Rabat – Moroccan police arrested a 44-year old primary school teacher for his alleged involvement in indecent assault and sexual harassment against eight girls in El Kelaa des Sraghna, 320.5 kilometers from Rabat. Police in the town opened a judicial investigation on the case on Wednesday evening, said a statement from the General Directorate of National Security (DGSN).  The town’s police department received complaints from the guardians of eight girls accusing the suspect of sexual harassment and indecent assault, according to the statement. Police also submitted the students to medical expertise to determine his involvement in the case. The 44-year old man has been placed in police custody, pending further investigations into the case. Death penalty Morocco’s penal code criminalizes sexual assault against children, and activists have been calling for even more severe punishment for such crimes. Arti...

The Supreme Court (SC) denied on Friday an appeal against the death penalty of a man convicted of raping an eight-year-old girl. The apex court upheld the death sentence which had previously been awarded to the accused. The appeal had been filed Ali Haider alias Pappu, a resident of Vehari. A nine-page judgment of the SC has been written by Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, in which it has been directed that the government should amend section 510 of the Criminal Law relating to chemical inspection and a copy of the decision to amend the law should be sent to the law ministry. The court ruled that the government should stop accepting any official forensic report, and that only DNA reports be used as admissible evidence in rape and murder cases. According to official statistics from 2020, at least 11 rape incidents are reported in Pakistan every day with over 22,000 cases reported to police across the country in the last six years. RELATED |  Supreme Court throws out convict’s appeal a...

Since 2016, there has been a steady increase in the proportion of death penalty cases involving sexual offences. In 2020, 50 (65%) out of 77 cases of the total death sentences imposed by trial courts involved sexual offences, making it the highest in five years, a recent report by Project 39A, a research and advocacy group in New Delhi reveals. Of the 65% cases involving sexual offences, 82% involved minors. As on December 31, 2020, a total of 404 prisoners are on death row with Uttar Pradesh having the most number of such prisoners at 59, followed by Maharashtra at 45 and Madhya Pradesh at 37. Andhra Pradesh, with two, has the lowest count of prisoners on death row. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Indian judiciary’s functioning was disrupted, with a major drop in the number of death sentences imposed by trial courts in 2020. In all 62% of the death sentences by trial courts were imposed in the first three months of the year before the lockdown was announced on March 24, 2020. The re...

Bill to be presented in Senate for approval A bill seeking to hang child rapists in public across the country was passed by the Senate Standing Committee on Interior on Tuesday. A member of the committee, PML-N law-maker Javed Abbasi, said that the bill proposes the death penalty for anyone arrested for raping a child. It wants the high courts to conduct the trial of sexual offences against children which should be completed within 30 days.  Two months should be given for adjudicating upon the appeals by the Supreme Court, it says. Under the new bill, parents of the survivors and victims will be given the option of reaching a compromise.  It was presented to the committee chairperson Rehman Malik. The law proposed an amendment in Section 377 [unnatural offences] of the Pakistan Penal Code: The amendment says “whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any boy under 18 years of age shall be punished with death or imprisonment for life without pa...

President Joko Widodo has signed a government regulation (PP) giving teeth to a controversial law on punishing convicted child molesters with chemical castration. The PP was signed on Dec. 7 but a copy of the document only circulated widely yesterday. Titled PP No. 70/2020 on chemical castration, attachment of electronic tracking devices, rehabilitation, and disclosure of the identities of culprits of sexual violence against children, the regulation most notably mandates the enforcement of heavy punishment on child sex offenders. In 2016, President Joko Widodo signed a Perppu (Presidential Regulation In Lieu of Law) introducing the death penalty and chemical castration for convicted child molesters , which was ratified into law that same year by the House of Representatives (DPR). Since then, two people have been sentenced to chemical castration, but their punishments have been delayed as the Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) have refused to be the designated executioner on the grou...

Deported after conviction from the UK, he was also convicted of trading in obscene material A Rawalpindi trial court on Wednesday sentenced ‘habitual’ paedophile Sohail Ayaz to death on 3 counts apart from awarding him 3 sentences of rigorous imprisonment for abducting and raping young boys and for recording and disseminating the heinous acts. Ayaz has previously been convicted of similar crimes in the UK and Italy before being deported to Pakistan. The Additional District and Sessions Judge Jehangir Ali Gondal on Wednesday issued a written verdict wherein the court found Ayaz and his accomplice Khurram Tahir guilty of kidnapping 3 children. The court handed 3 sentences of the death penalty to Chartered Accountant Ayaz under section 367-A of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) - for deceitfully taking the victims to his house, confining them, administering them with intoxicants such as ice (crystal methamphetamine) and then raping them. “He be hanged by neck till his death.” read the verdict...