Death Penalty News

A notice posted in the North Korean capital earlier this year and seen by NK News this week warns that those who spread “rumors” about COVID-19 and Pyongyang’s quarantine policies could face the death penalty. The notice, dated May 29, 2022, came around two weeks after the country admitted it was facing a COVID-19 outbreak for the first time and described any criticism of the country’s pandemic policy as “anti-state” activities. “Some [North Korean] residents who are interpreting the Party and government’s anti-epidemic policies in their own way are spreading groundless rumors, disturbing the public sentiment and destroying the political stability of the society,” the decree says, prohibiting activities such as spreading “distorted” information about the spread of “malicious virus,” which is a code phrase for COVID-19 in North Korea. People are also banned from “spreading how they have interpreted” North Korea’s anti-COVID rules and guidelines “in their own way,” as well as lies about ...

In June, on death row at San Quentin State Prison, 58-year-old Jarvis Masters heard a rumor that the coronavirus was ripping through the aging structure. Condemned prisoners are confined to their cells for 23 hours a day, so Masters tracked the outbreak by watching news reports on his small personal TV. He watched as 100 cases swelled to 300 in 2 days, then 1,000. Then he started to cough. Masters soon felt like he couldn’t breathe. Over the next 2 weeks, as calls of “man down!” rang out every few hours, several of his neighbors disappeared and didn’t come back. Staff pulled them from their cells, leaving their TV sets on to drone. “It’s like a crime scene,” said Masters, who has been on death row since 1990. Less than 2 years ago, Gov. Gavin Newsom halted executions of condemned prisoners, saying the death penalty system is prone to error and is a “failure.” California has faced challenges to its lethal injection protocol and has not executed a prisoner since 2006. ...

Prisoners held at the Greater Tehran Penitentiary lack access to hygiene and sanitary products despite the Covid-19 outbreak.  The sanitary conditions in the wards and cells of the prison is described as deplorable. Previously the prisoners were provided with a bleach-water solution to disinfect surfaces themselves. But there is currently no disinfectants despite some prisoners testing positive for coronavirus. Prison authorities do not provide any detergent to prisoners. The prison does not have a quarantine system as well as screening or testing in the prison wards and inmates who go to court are returned to their cells among other prisoners. Covid-19 infection has already spread in the prison killing at least eight inmates. Authorities in the Greater Tehran Penitentiary have maintained silence about the spread of the outbreak in this prison and do not report on the conditions of political and ordinary prisoners. Therefore, the lives of many prisoners i...

Authorities in North Korea executed without trial 3 high-ranking officials last week on charges of treason, for allegedly stealing food from the country’s strategic supply and selling it on the open market amid skyrocketing prices resulting from the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, sources within the isolated country told RFA. According to sources familiar with the situation, the food was part of a large emergency shipment from China that was allowed to come through despite trade between the 2 countries having been shut down to prevent the spread of the virus. The portion that was sold on the market was high-quality food intended to be used in celebrations for national founder Kim Il Sung’s birthday on April 15, a holiday referred to as the Day of the Sun. A trader in North Pyongan province told RFA’s Korean Service Sunday said that authorities temporarily reopened the Dandong-Sinuiju customs office on March 23 to accept the shipment. It had been completely shut down since ...

After weeks of assuring the public there are no cases of coronavirus among the state’s nearly 95,000 prisoners — without saying whether significant numbers of prisoners had been tested — the Florida Department of Corrections acknowledged its first positive test involving an inmate. That was quickly followed by a second. One lawmaker, a Democrat, called the situation in the state’s prison system, which employs 24,000 staffers, a “ticking time bomb,” although another, a Republican, said the department was doing an “exceptional job.” Michelle Glady, a prison system spokeswoman, would not say how many inmates have been tested because “testing numbers are constantly changing.” The first prisoner with the positive test, whose name was not released, had been locked up at the Blackwater River Correctional Facility near Pensacola, a private prison under the state’s purview run by the GEO Group. The information was posted on the department’s website Saturday. The website was updat...

Over the past month, Alyaksandr Lukashenka has gained notoriety for his careless attitude to the pandemic. On March 16, Lukashenka shared with the newly appointed officials his own ways of fighting the coronavirus. He advised going to a dry sauna, claiming that the virus dies at 60 degrees; more frequent handwashing, regular diet, and… drinking some vodka are also on his list. Later, he called the situation ‘psychosis and foolishness’. President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has impliedly confirmed four coronavirus deaths in Belarus when interviewed by TV station Mir on Thursday. “We have only four of them, those who died of pneumonia complicated by the coronavirus. We are still clarifying whether the fourth death was caused by the coronavirus. Any virus aggravates chronic diseases,” he said. According to the Belarusian leader, the authorities are not hushing up about the pandemic in the country, because it is ‘impossible’ to brush up a human death under the carpet. ...

“You have to learn how to deal with yourself.” For 27 years, Keith LaMar has survived solitary confinement in a supermax prison in Ohio, isolated for 23 hours a day in a space the size of a bathroom. From his bed, if he crooks his neck at just the right angle, he can look out through a slit of a window a few inches wide at a parking lot. But in all these years, he hasn’t touched a blade of grass or a tree; the closest he’s come to the outdoors is in a below-ground concrete “rec cage,” covered by a steel grate ceiling. If he’s lucky, he might catch a glimpse of the sun. LaMar, 50, was locked up as a teenager after killing someone in a dispute during a drug deal. A few years later, he was moved to solitary confinement and sentenced to death after he was convicted of murdering five inmates in a prison riot known as the Lucasville Uprising. He says he did not kill them. Activists in Ohio and around the country have rallied to his cause by writing op-eds and staging solidarit...

Iran Human Rights (IHR); March 15, 2020: While Iranian people are suffering from a nation-wide Coronavirus outbreak, the authorities are busy with executing prisoners.  According to Iran Human Rights (IHR) sources, two prisoners were hanged on Thursday, March 12, at the central prison of Urmia, West Azerbaijan province.  They have been identified as Hossein Kachnanlou (60) and Abdollah Mohammadzadeh (70), both were sentenced to death for murder charges. Executions in Iran have continued to be carried out even after the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the country.  Even holding a funeral for the executed people is not possible at this time.  Coronavirus kills Iran religious leader as death toll jumps again Ayatollah Hashem Bathayi Golpayegani dies two days after testing positive, while number of deaths tops 850. COVID-19 has killed a member of the clerical body that appoints the supreme leader, according to Iranian state media, the la...