Death Penalty News

Former President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on Tuesday morning following the issuance of an arrest warrant against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Lawyers and complainants, however, believe this is only the start of a long legal battle before the international tribunal.  Malacañang confirmed Tuesday that former President Rodrigo Duterte is under the custody of authorities after getting arrested for crimes against humanity. In a statement, the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) said that when the former president arrived in Manila, authorities served the warrant of arrest from the International Criminal Court (ICC) against him.

(CNN) -- President Donald Trump told the nation's governors in a video teleconference on Monday to aggressively go after violent protesters after three nights of unrest in dozens of cities across the country. "You have to dominate or you'll look like a bunch of jerks, you have to arrest and try people," the President told governors in a call from the basement White House Situation Room. In the conversation, which also included law enforcement and national security officials, Trump also emphasized it was his belief the violence is being brought on by forces from the "radical left". "It's a movement, if you don't put it down it will get worse and worse," Trump said. "The only time its successful is when you're weak and most of you are weak." Trump said the "whole world was laughing at Minneapolis over the police station getting burned," referring to the city where protests began last week after the d...

The former vice president has been renouncing much of his past, leaving little of his record to run on. Every presidential candidate runs on some combination of two things: what they’ve already done, and what they plan to do next. More experienced candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders can lean on both equally, while relative newcomers like Beto O’Rourke or Pete Buttigieg tend to focus on the latter. The calculus for Joe Biden is a little different. The former vice president entered American politics more than four decades ago, and his experience comes at a cost. Since announcing his presidential bid last week, he’s spent most of his time trying to explain, rationalize, or express regret over key moments in his career. So far, he’s avoided rolling out any new policies or initiatives. That raises an obvious question for voters: What exactly is he running on? No part of Biden’s record has received more scrutiny than the decades he spent championing tough-on-cr...

Trump Reverses Restrictions on Military Hardware for Police WASHINGTON — Police departments will now have access to military surplus equipment typically used in warfare, including grenade launchers, armored vehicles and bayonets, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on Monday, describing it as “lifesaving gear.” The move rescinds limits on the Pentagon handouts that were put in place by President Barack Obama in 2015 amid a national debate over policing touched off by a spate of high-profile deaths of black men at the hands of the police, including the shooting death in 2014 of 18-year-old Michael Brown , in Ferguson, Mo., by a white officer. Some local residents viewed police use of military equipment during the ensuing protests as an unnecessary show of force and intimidation. In a speech to the Fraternal Order of Police in Nashville, Mr. Sessions said Mr. Obama had made it harder for the police to protect themselves and their neighborhoods. “Those restrictions...

More than 50 organizations linked to the Black Lives Matter movement came together to draft its 1st policy platform, released Monday.  "We seek radical transformation, not reactionary reform," Michaela Brown, a spokeswoman for Baltimore Bloc, an organization that worked on the platform, said. "As the 2016 election continues, this platform provides us with a way to intervene with an agenda that resists state and corporate power, an opportunity to implement policies that truly value the safety and humanity of black lives, and an overall means to hold elected leaders accountable."  The platform demands reparations for slavery, investment in education and jobs, an end to the death penalty, the "demilitarization" of police departments, and decriminalization of prostitution and drug-related offenses. Source: theweek.com, August 2, 2016 ⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; send a submission; recomm...

Presidential hopeful Donald Trump Portsmouth, New Hampshire (CNN) - Donald Trump announced Thursday that if elected president, he would sign an executive order to mandate the death penalty for convicted cop killers. Trump announced his latest legally questionable policy proposal after accepting the endorsement of the New England Police Benevolent Association, a police union representing more than 4,000 law enforcement officials -- an endorsement Trump characterized as a "lifetime improvement award." "One of the first things I do, in terms of executive order if I win, will be to sign a strong, strong statement that will go out to the country -- out to the world -- that anybody killing a policeman, policewoman, a police officer -- anybody killing a police officer, the death penalty. It's going to happen, OK?" Trump said in brief remarks to the several hundred police union members gathered for the endorsement. Trump did not explain the legality of ...

America's racist practices - including police violence and the implementation of its criminal justice system - have human rights implications and face international scrutiny. The United Nations has reviewed the country's human rights record and the international body slammed the U.S. for its racial profiling and use of deadly force, and its implementation of the death penalty. Of the 343 recommendations made by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, the U.S. accepted 44 recommendations for eliminating racial discrimination and addressing excessive use of police force and racial bias in the death penalty, as Al Jazeera America reported. In addition, the U.S. supported another 20 recommendations "in part" and rejected 1 - calling for an independent commission to prosecute racially motivated crimes. During the peer review process - in which 117 UN member states participated, and each state must undergo every four years - the international communit...

Criminal justice reform is the 1 issue that just about everyone seems to agree on right now. There are certainly disagreements over the details, but from the Koch Brothers to ThinkProgress, from Rand Paul to Bernie Sanders, from Newt Gingrich to Al Sharpton, from the Heritage Foundation to Black Lives Matter, nearly everyone agrees at least in principle that the system needs to be reformed. Oddly though, criminal justice is all but absent on the websites most of the major contenders for the 2016 election. I just reviewed the sites for all of the announced candidates. (I know, I'm a glutton for punishment.) The 1st thing that struck me odd is just how little discussion there is of any issue on the candidates' sites. Everyone has a bio, links to donate, links to volunteer, and a schedule. Some sites list the candidate's major pieces of legislation and accomplishments in office, which does at least give some indication of what issues are important and where they stand o...