Death Penalty News

In the high-stakes theater of the American legal system, the trial is often sold as a quest for truth. We imagine a defendant standing before a jury of their peers, a fair fight where the burden of proof rests entirely with the state. But for those facing the ultimate punishment, the reality is far darker. The death penalty transforms the legal process into a high-pressure extraction, where the right to a jury trial is often a trap that leads straight to a coercive plea bargain.

Xiang Ming, a former senior prosecutor in Beijing, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for crimes of bribery and embezzlement, the capital's No 2 Intermediate People's Court announced on Monday. Xiang, who served as the prosecutor-general of the First Branch of the Beijing Municipal People's Procuratorate, was given the death penalty with a two-year reprieve for embezzlement and a 12-year imprisonment with fine of 2 million yuan ($278,492) for accepting bribes, according to the court ruling. The court combined the penalties for both crimes and imposed the suspended death sentence to him. He was also deprived of his political rights for life, with confiscation of all his personal assets.

The process of deciding whether or not the state will pursue the death penalty is not in any way a quick decision. You’re dealing with someone’s life on the line. Most state attorney’s offices have a committee that meets multiple times to go over the facts of the case before any decision is made. Even then, things can change. Many now wonder whether the state will pursue the death penalty. But those at the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office told CBS12's Katie Bente that it’s not a quick or easy process. It was a crime so heinous even law enforcement is upset by it.

Texas has executed John Henry Ramirez, whose spiritual adviser was allowed to pray aloud and “lay hands” on him as he died after a US Supreme Court ruling led to new guidelines in his case and in similar requests in prisons across the country. Ramirez, 38, was killed Wednesday evening by lethal injection at the state prison system’s Huntsville Unit for the 2004 murder of Pablo Castro, a grandfather to 14 and convenience store employee whom Ramirez robbed of $1.25 and stabbed 29 times. According to Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Ramirez’s last words were: “I just want to say to the family of Pablo Castro, I appreciate everything that y’all did to try and communicate with me through the Victim’s Advocacy program. I tried to reply back, but there is nothing that I could have said or done that would have helped you. “I have regret and remorse, this is such a heinous act. I hope this finds you comfort, if this helps you then I am glad. I hope in some shape or form this helps you find...

Ramirez was sentenced to death for murdering Corpus Christi convenience store clerk Pablo Castro. After a previous execution was halted, Ramirez won a Supreme Court case over death row inmates’ religious rights. John Ramirez, 38, convicted of murdering a Corpus Christi convenience store clerk in 2004, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday, despite the objection of the Nueces County district attorney. And even though Ramirez’s execution has been delayed three previous times, his attorney said he has no further legal opportunities to stop the state’s latest attempt to put him to death. Ramirez’s pastor will be alongside him in the death chamber, fulfilling a request he made during his latest scheduled execution one year ago. Texas initially denied his request to have a pastor touch and pray over him as he was executed, spurring a religious liberties case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court found Texas had violated Ramirez’s religious liberties by denying his pastor’s presence...

Prosecutors in the penalty trial of Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz will begin their rebuttal case Tuesday, challenging his attorneys' contention that he murdered 17 people because his birth mother abused alcohol during pregnancy, a condition they say went untreated. Prosecutor Mike Satz's team is expected to call experts who will testify Cruz has antisocial personality disorder — in lay terms, he's a sociopath — and fully responsible for his Feb. 14, 2018, attack at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), people with antisocial personality disorder commit "exploitive, delinquent and criminal behavior with no remorse." They usually have no regard for others, don't follow the law, can't sustain consistent relationships or employment and use manipulation for personal gain, the NIH says. Prosecutors will want to reemphasize Cruz "understood exactly" what he was doing during the m...

AUSTIN — Texas death row inmate John Henry Ramirez filed a stay of execution last week following action by the Nueces County District Attorney, who opposes the death penalty. Ramirez is schedule to be killed Oct. 5 for the 2004 robbery-murder of a convenience store clerk in Corpus Christi. Ramirez was previously scheduled for execution last year when the U.S. Supreme Court hit pause at the last minute in order to hear oral arguments in his religious rights claims.  At that time, Ramirez’s attorney claimed that his religious rights were violated when the TDCJ did not allow his spiritual adviser to pray aloud and lay hands on him during his execution. Ultimately, SCOTUS ruled in Ramirez’s favor, allowing his execution to be rescheduled. A death warrant was issued by a Nueces County sheriff, but days later, Gonzalez filed a motion to withdraw the warrant, taking Ramirez off death row completely, citing that the warrant was issued without his permission and that he is ultimately agains...

The Nueces County district attorney, Mark A. Gonzalez, has moved to withdraw the death warrant for John Henry Ramirez, convicted of a 2004 robbery-murder. Declaring the death penalty “unethical,” a local prosecutor has moved to stop the scheduled execution of John Henry Ramirez, who was convicted of killing and robbing a convenience store clerk in Corpus Christi in 2004. Ramirez, 37, received a last-minute execution reprieve last September, when the U.S. Supreme Court halted his execution with hours to spare. The point of legal contention then was religious freedom. In an 8-to-1 ruling last month, the court directed Texas to allow Ramirez’s Baptist pastor to lay hands on him and pray with him as he was put to death, as the inmate had requested. The new issue is the prosecutor’s views on the death penalty — not Ramirez’s guilt or his desire for a pastor to attend to his execution. Nueces County District Attorney Mark A. Gonzalez recently filed court documents requesting the courts withd...

Imagine it’s your job to kill people. Now imagine that you love that job so much that you will go out of your way, in every respect, to be able to do it. Imagine further that this is a sweet government gig, with all the perks and bennies that some people only dream about. What would you call that person, that job? There’s “executioner,” of course, which conjures up terrifying images of hooded, axe-wielding strongmen, and typically refers to the person whose job it is to carry out a death sentence. But that only speaks to the end of a years and years-long process to get the condemned on that electric chair or, in the case of Nevada, strapped onto a gurney to be lethally injected with whatever poison has been deemed not cruel and unusual. You know, just murderous. Before we get there, though, it truly takes a village—of people so invested in the power (or the power trip) of taking someone’s life that they will block any efforts to stop them from doing so, but also of people along the cha...