Death Penalty News

June 24 (Reuters) - A conservative federal judge on Wednesday took the position that despite a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring the death penalty for child rape, prosecutors today may be free to seek capital punishment in cases involving sexual offenses against children. St. Louis-based U.S. District Judge Joshua ​Divine, who was appointed to the bench only last year by Republican President Donald Trump, delivered his views in an unusual ‌court opinion issued on the same day he was set to sentence a Missouri man who faced a maximum prison term of 20 years.

A 41-year-old Leesburg man could face the death penalty after a grand jury indicted him on 47 felony charges, including 12 counts of sexual battery on a child younger than 12. Fifth Judicial Circuit State Attorney Bill Gladson announced the indictment of Schubert Navarroza Macarat on May 27 and confirmed his office has filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty should Macarat be found guilty. The charges stem from an investigation that began on the evening of March 22. Lake County Sheriff's Office deputies responded to a call regarding a past sexual offense, where a caller reported that a child had just disclosed long-term, ongoing sexual abuse. 

A special court in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda on Friday sentenced a former Junior Engineer (JE) of the Irrigation Department and his wife to death for the sexual exploitation of 33 minor boys — some as young as three — over a decade, officials said. The POCSO court termed the crimes as “rarest of rare” and held Ram Bhawan and his wife Durgawati guilty of systematically abusing children between 2010 and 2020 and producing child sexual abuse material. Convicting the duo under provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the court sentenced them to death for offences including aggravated penetrative sexual assault, using a child for pornographic purposes, storage of pornographic material involving children, and abetment and criminal conspiracy, they said.

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.

Aroosa Khan's son was chatting on WhatsApp but suddenly found himself the target of "vigilante" investigators who accused him of having committed blasphemy online, a crime that carries the death penalty in Pakistan. The 27-year-old is one in hundreds of young men standing trial in Pakistan courts accused of making blasphemous statements online or in WhatsApp groups, an offence for which arrests have exploded in recent years. Many of the cases are being brought to trial by private "vigilante groups" led by lawyers and supported by volunteers who scour the internet for offenders, rights groups and police say.

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...

South Korean TV shows, Japanese porn, and Hollywood films were found on the devices of high-ranking officers. North Korea has punished more than 10 military officials after they were caught in possession of “impure” video files–South Korean TV shows, Japanese porn and Hollywood films–as a crackdown on illegal foreign media shifted to focus on high-ranking men in uniform, military sources told RFA. Though citizens of North Korea are forbidden to watch or listen to media from outside the country, foreign TV shows, music, and movies are smuggled in on easily concealable SD cards and USB flash drives. They are then distributed widely among the populace through the black market. Nervous about all this exposure to outside information, Pyongyang in December 2020 passed the draconian Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture Law, which carries a maximum penalty of death for watching, keeping, or distributing media from capitalist countries, particularly from South Korea and the U.S. To en...

KAMPALA — A former Ugandan ethics minister who championed a bill to introduce the death penalty for same-sex relationships and sought to regulate what women could wear died on Saturday, officials said. Simon Lokodo — a one-time Catholic priest ex-communicated by the church, whose homophobia attracted global condemnation — died aged 64 in a hospital in Geneva. Government spokesman Ofwono Opondo announced the news of Lokodo’s death during a radio program on Saturday. The country’s National Human Rights Commission, where Lokodo served after a decade as ethics minister, expressed “great shock and pain” at losing their colleague. President Yoweri Museveni said Lokodo “served the nation gallantly” and would be missed. His “firmness against immorality & his desire to enforce culture exceedingly stood out”, Museveni said in a tribute posted on Twitter. Lokodo was best known internationally for drafting legislation that could have imposed the death penalty for homosexual relations in his ho...

The Taliban are are scouting pornographic sites to make a “kill list” of Afghan sex workers. It is said that the terrorist group is running a campaign to identify women who worked as prostitutes to pronounce death penalty on them.  In the last Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001, many such women were handed death sentences in public.  The Sun Online has reported that videos featuring Afghan prostitutes have been discovered by the Taliban death squads on niche porn sites.  The women are under serious threat of being gang-raped by the terror group before being beheaded, stoned or hung” by the Taliban. “They pretend to condemn pornography but are digging deep into the most obscure and deeply-hidden adult sites to find videos that show Afghan brothels so they can identity and slaughter or enslave the women who worked in them. Because the videos show obvious location markers of the brothels, these women are now in serious danger of being kidnapped or murdered in the most horrific...

A Georgia man who claimed to be addicted to sex pleaded guilty on Tuesday to murdering four people as part of a shooting spree at Atlanta-area spas that highlighted the fear and intimidation felt by Asian Americans in the wake of coronavirus pandemic. Robert Aaron Long, 22, is now expected to be transferred to Atlanta where he faces four additional counts of murder and where the district attorney has indicated she will pursue hate crimes and the death penalty. Dressed in a white, button-down shirt with an open collar, and dress slacks and sporting a mohawk haircut, Long pleaded guilty in court to the four murders at a day spa in Cherokee County, about 40 miles (64km) north of Atlanta. Long, holding his head up but looking sombre, also affirmed agreement with the state's recommendation of four life sentences without possibility of parole, to be served consecutively, plus 35 years on other charges. The judge confirmed that sentence. RELATED |  Suspect in Atlanta-area shootings could ...

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...

PESHAWAR: The provincial government has decided to introduce a legislation to criminalise the rising child organ trade in the province which will be punishable with a death penalty and a Rs2 million fine. By the same token child trafficking is also to be criminalised and a punishment of 25 years of imprisonment has been suggested for the culprits. The draft law has also suggested that if a person is convicted by the court for child molestation and handed down death penalty then the death sentence should be recorded by “audio visual means” and this should be made accessible to public. Parole and probation will not be available to the convicts in case of imprisonment neither will they be able to get any remission. Under the proposed legislation the Khyber-Pakthunkhwa Child Protection and Welfare Act 2010 will be amended. All the homework has been done and the law has been drafted under which the complete record of sexual offenders will be kept who will not be employed by any department d...

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...

The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill, 2019 has been passed by Rajya Sabha. The bill seeks to enhance punishment, including a provision for death penalty, for committing sexual crimes against children. Replying to the debate on the Bill, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani said government has sanctioned 1023 fast track courts for speedy dispensation of pending cases under POCSO and sexual assault. 18 states have given their consent to set up the fast track courts which will be established within a span of two years. The Minister said government’s priority is to ensure that justice is delivered to every child in the country. The total expenditure in setting up these courts will be 767 crore rupees out of which 474 crore rupees will be borne by the Centre. She said these Courts will function in addition to the existing sessions courts. Ms Irani said, an evaluation would be made to ensure the quality of justice that was dispe...