Death Penalty News

Tyrone Noling's fate is now up to Ohio's governor. The state Parole Board on Tuesday recommended that Gov. Mike DeWine spare the 54-year-old from execution by commuting his sentence to life with a chance at parole as soon as 2029.  NBC News reports one of the eight board members backed a full pardon, which DeWine—who in June called for ending the death penalty in the state—can still grant.  Five members voted in favor of commuting his sentence, while two were against. The Akron Beacon Journal reports there is no deadline for DeWine's decision. Noling, who was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1990 murders of Cora and Bearnhardt Hartig, has long maintained his innocence; no physical evidence tied him to the crime, and the teen witnesses who implicated him later recanted, saying police pressured them.  The Ohio Innocence Project points to suppressed evidence and alternative suspects, including a man later executed for another killing. Noling, for his part, had requested a ...

Earlier, while convicting Chenthamara, the court had asked whether he wished to say anything before sentencing. He initially replied that he had "nothing to say." PALAKKAD: In a significant judgment, the Additional District and Sessions Court-IV, Palakkad, on Monday sentenced Chenthamara (62) to death for the brutal double murder of his neighbours Sudhakaran and his 75-year-old mother Lakshmi at Boyan Unnathi in Pothundy, Nenmara in 2025. In addition to the death penalty, the court imposed a fine of Rs 20 lakh and ordered that this amount be paid as compensation to the victims' family.

Case termed ‘rarest of rare’ In a landmark verdict, a court in Tamil Nadu on 6 April sentenced nine police personnel to death in the 2020 Sathankulam custodial deaths case, holding them guilty of the brutal killing of a father-son duo. First Additional District and Sessions Judge G Muthukumaran classified the case as the “rarest of rare”, observing that those entrusted with protecting citizens had committed a crime that “shook the collective conscience of society”. The court awarded capital punishment to all nine convicted personnel for the murder of P Jayaraj and his son J Bennix.

An execution date has been set for a former Mascotte police officer who, in May 1987, assaulted and murdered an 11-year-old girl.  Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a death warrant for James Aren Duckett on Friday. He’s scheduled to be executed on March 31. It’ll be the state’s 5th execution this year, following a record 19 executions in 2025.  Duckett was convicted in the murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee about a year after her death. According to officials, Duckett took the 11-year-old to a lake, where he sexually battered, strangled and drowned her. 

Police observer Poengky Indarti has called for strict criminal sanctions against police personnel involved in drug cases to create a deterrent effect and prevent similar misconduct by other officers.  “The imposition of severe criminal penalties, including the death penalty and life imprisonment, is expected to provide a shock therapy,” she said in Jakarta on Tuesday.  According to Poengky, law enforcement should also apply multiple charges so that perpetrators are not only sentenced to prison terms but also financially impoverished. 

Shizuoka – Iwao Hakamada, a former death row inmate who was acquitted in a retrial for the 1966 murder of a family in Shizuoka Prefecture, on Thursday filed a damages lawsuit against the central and prefectural governments. Hakamata, 89, sought some ¥600 million in damages, a record amount against the government in a suit over a retrial case. He pursued the responsibilities of police, public prosecutors and courts. His complaint says that investigative authorities intentionally failed to record pertinent facts and evidence, instead concealing them. Despite knowing that police had fabricated evidence, public prosecutors went ahead and charged Hakamada, it says. It further claims that courts failed to explore the possibility of evidence fabrication.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge has ordered a new trial for an Alabama death row inmate after tests showed it was another man’s DNA on the victim’s body. Chief U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks last week ruled that Christopher Barbour must get a new trial. Barbour, now 56, was convicted of the 1992 stabbing death of Thelma Bishop Roberts in Montgomery.  Barbour initially confessed that he killed Roberts after helping another man rape her, but he later recanted and said his confession was coerced by police. He has maintained that he is innocent.

A man who served seven years in prison after being found guilty of the 1986 murder of a junior high school student was acquitted Friday at the conclusion of a retrial. The Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court ordered the retrial after finding testimony given by Shoshi Maekawa's acquaintance in the original trial lacked credibility. The now 60-year-old Maekawa had maintained his innocence since his arrest in 1987. In the retrial that began in March, prosecutors argued Maekawa's guilt but were unable to present any new evidence to add to the circumstantial evidence under which he was originally convicted.

The death penalty, Japan's ultimate punishment, has been carried out in the country for the first time in two years and 11 months . It is essential to pause and thoroughly reconsider whether this system should be kept or abolished. As long as humans judge other humans, miscarriages of justice can never be entirely prevented. The case of Iwao Hakamada, 89, who was sentenced to death and later acquitted in a retrial, is a stark reminder of that reality. Hakamada was confined for nearly half a century, and the relentless fear of execution eroded his mental health. In his retrial, the court acknowledged that investigative authorities had fabricated evidence against him.

TOKYO – Japan’s criminal justice system is under intense scrutiny after the courts, within months, twice accused law enforcement officials of fabricating evidence in their zealous pursuit of convictions. The damning indictments in two cases – one involving murder, the other economic security – expose flaws in a system that prides itself on a 99.8 per cent conviction rate. On Oct 8, 2024, the nearly six-decade ordeal of former boxer Iwao Hakamada finally concluded when prosecutors decided not to appeal a retrial verdict that had exonerated him of four murders in 1966.

The Court said that the investigation was tainted and flawed, based on conjectures and surmises. The Supreme Court recently acquitted a man sentenced to the death penalty for the rape and murder of a three-year-old girl for lack of evidence [Ramkirat Munilal Goud v. State of Maharashtra]. The Bench of Justices Vikram Nath, Sanjay Karol and Sandeep Mehta noted that the entire case was built on circumstantial evidence, requiring the prosecution to establish an unbroken chain of facts leading to only one conclusion: the guilt of the accused. However, the Court observed that the evidence presented was unreliable, inconsistent and marked by significant procedural lapses.

A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world's longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded more than 217 million yen in compensation, an official said Tuesday. The payout represents 12,500 yen for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others.

We look at a rare victory for a death row prisoner before the U.S. Supreme Court. On Tuesday, three conservative justices joined with the three liberals to overturn the murder conviction and death sentence of Richard Glossip , who has spent nearly 30 years on Oklahoma death row and had exhausted all other appeals to stay his execution. The justices said Glossip was entitled to a new trial after errors in his original prosecution. Glossip’s conviction stems from the 1997 murder of his former boss, who was killed by another man who accused Glossip of masterminding the killing. 

An 88-year-old Japanese man who at one point was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been presented with a rosary blessed by Pope Francis. Archbishop Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo recently visited Iwao Hakamada, a former boxer and convert to Catholicism, to make the presentation of the papal gift to the now officially innocent octogenarian. Following his release from prison in 2014 because of new DNA evidence – after 48 years on death row – Hakamada still wasn’t officially proclaimed innocent until his definitive acquittal a decade later.

Hideko Hakamada’s brother Iwao was sentenced to death for murder in Japan in 1968. She campaigned tirelessly for his release as he spent nearly five decades on death row, being described as the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner.   In September 2024, Hakamada was acquitted after a retrial – a court ruling that the evidence that incriminated him was fabricated. Here, 92-year-old Hideko celebrates her brother’s long-awaited freedom. 

A Japanese man acquitted of a 1966 quadruple murder in a retrial is set to file a lawsuit against the state for defamation after the prosecutor general called the ruling that found him not guilty "unacceptable," his lawyers said Thursday.  Iwao Hakamada, 88, was acquitted by the Shizuoka District Court last September after spending nearly half a century on death row before new evidence led to his release in 2014. He was recognized that year as the world's longest-serving death row prisoner. 

When Chiaki Kasai set out to make a documentary about Iwao Hakamada, a Japanese man who was acquitted in a retrial of a 1966 quadruple murder case after spending more than four decades on death row, she hoped to tell the story of his life as a promising young boxer before his life was upended by tragedy. It was a marked departure from the fascination with Hakamada as a presumed killer as a starting point, with the film describing a pugilist driven by ambitions of building a professional sporting career.

Iwao Hakamada's Trial by Ordeal Iwao Hakamada, a former Japanese professional boxer, became one of the most prominent symbols of judicial miscarriage after spending more than four decades on death row for a crime he always maintained he did not commit. His case, marked by allegations of forced confessions, fabricated evidence by the police, and prosecutorial misconduct, has drawn international attention to Japan's legal system.

The chief of the Shizuoka Prefectural Police on Monday offered an apology in person to Iwao Hakamada at his home in Shizuoka Prefecture following his acquittal in a retrial over a 1966 murder case last month. Takayoshi Tsuda visited the home of Hakamada, 88, in the city of Hamamatsu, bowing deeply for about two minutes. “I am sorry for the pain and burden I have caused you over the last 58 years, which cannot be expressed in words,” Tsuda said to Hakamada and his older sister Hideko, 91, who fought a decades-long legal battle on behalf of her brother.

HAMAMATSU, Japan (AP) — Hideko Hakamada, 91, spent much of her life working to free her brother from nearly a half-century on death row. Now that he has been acquitted she feels that the siblings are beginning a new chapter of their lives. She backed her brother, Iwao Hakamada, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, through decades of frustrating, at times apparently hopeless, legal wrangling as his mental condition worsened.