Death Penalty News

“People say that executing criminals does not take away from their dignity – if it is done with dignity. But the fact of the matter is that whether you’re waiting to die by lethal injection – waiting ... for the poison to flow down your veins – or waiting for a bullet, or waiting for a rope, or waiting for gas, or waiting for the electric current – there is no difference: there is no lesser or greater dignity in dying. The practice of the death penalty is the practice of torture. And by the time people I have been with finally climb into the chair to be killed, they have died a thousand times already because of their anticipation of the final horror.” – Helen Prejean, author of the book “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States.” _____________________________________________________________________ Twitter/X   |  Instagram   |  Telegram   | Contact Us "One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have c...

Under Trump, there were 13 executions in his last six months as president. Biden must clear death row now to stop that and what Albert Camus described as the most cold-blooded premeditated murder. On Jan. 14, 2021, I stood in a small chamber in the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, while the federal government carried out an execution. Relegated to a spot 6 feet away from the gurney, I prayed with Corey Johnson, the “Gentle Giant” as he was known on death row.  He was one of the last of 13 people executed under then-President Donald Trump, who carried out an unprecedented killing spree during the final six months of his presidency.

Alabama offered death-row inmates an untested method of execution — and then went back to the even worse option The state of Alabama wants to kill Alan Miller. But it is having a hard time getting its act together to do so. On Sept. 12, Alabama made headlines when it announced that it would use nitrogen hypoxia to put Miller to death. It had added this method to its execution arsenal in 2018, making Alabama one of just three states (along with Mississippi and Oklahoma) to authorize it. But none of them has yet to use it in an execution. Nitrogen hypoxia is a new and so far hypothetical method of administering capital punishment in which the air someone breathes is replaced with 100 percent nitrogen. As a CBC report explains, this will "deprive the person of the oxygen needed to maintain bodily functions," presumably leading to a rapid and painless death. Three days after that announcement, Alabama abruptly reversed course and said it would use lethal injection to execute Mill...

"All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten the stained and murderous hands of the Singaporean government!" THE Nagaenthran Dharmalingam case has highlighted the cruelty and brutality of capital punishment – and the urgent need to consider more humane alternatives – as the long-drawn case of trials, appeals and clemency has cast a negative image of squeaky clean and prosperous Singapore. The case has unearthed and revealed some vexing question about Singapore legal and judicial system. It is now well known that the government pressures the legal fraternity to avoid representing cases concerning capital punishment for drug-related offences. Lawyers are fearful of the subtle and other forms of threats that will risk their livelihood and professional progress. Hence, getting top-notch competent lawyers, even if they want to take up these cases on humanitarian grounds, adds to the dilemma of cases similar to Nagaenthran’s. This is a big handicap and disadvantage to the defendan...

Botched executions are a repeated feature of the death penalty system in the United States. But from listening to the after-the-fact accounts of state officials, you would never know. They seem to have developed a shared vocabulary for reassuring the public that there was nothing to see or worry about, even when an execution goes wrong. Take the case of John Marion Grant, put to death by the state of Oklahoma in October of last year. This week an autopsy report was released that revealed just how badly botched his execution was and just how absurd was Oklahoma’s head-in-the-sand response to it. Grant’s execution made headlines when witnesses provided disturbing eyewitness accounts of his suffering. Dan Snyder, a local television reporter and one of the five media members present, offered a minute-by-minute account of what happened. Snyder reported that shortly after the start of the midazolam, the first drug in Oklahoma’s drug cocktail, things started going wrong. Midazolam is a se...

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel Peace laureate who described himself as “passionately opposed to the death penalty,” died in Cape Town, South Africa on December 26, 2021. He was 90 years old. Tutu, who as Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town helped turn the conscience of the world against the white supremacist policies of apartheid that oppressed his homeland, later was tasked by President Nelson Mandela with chairing the nation’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. While unrelenting in his opposition to apartheid, he remained a consistent voice of non-violence. “The passing of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu is another chapter of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a statement. During his speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, Tutu condemned violence both by government security forces and by those fighting for the liberation of the na...

Q&A with SBC minister Dana Moore on the power of prayer in a state death chamber. Interview by Daniel Silliman. John Henry Ramirez is scheduled to die on September 8. The state of Texas will execute him by lethal injection for the 2004 murder of 45-year-old convenience store clerk Pablo Castro. Ramirez was convicted of stabbing Castro 29 times in the process of stealing $1.25 to buy drugs. Now, 17 years later, he will be put to death for his crime. When that happens, Ramirez would like to have his pastor lay hands on him. He filed suit in federal court last week claiming he has a religious right to have Dana Moore, senior pastor of Second Baptist Church in Corpus Christi, Texas, touch him while he dies. According to Ramirez’s lawyer, Seth Kretzer, the prison’s current policy allows doctors and guards to touch an inmate during execution, but does not allow spiritual touch. Kretzer argues that this “burdens Mr. Ramirez’s free exercise of his Christian faith at his exact time of death...

Food for thought... The Animals Sick of the Plague The sorest ill that Heaven hath Sent on this lower world in wrath,-- The plague (to call it by its name,) One single day of which Would Pluto's ferryman enrich,-- Waged war on beasts, both wild and tame. They died not all, but all were sick: No hunting now, by force or trick, To save what might so soon expire. No food excited their desire; Nor wolf nor fox now watch'd to slay The innocent and tender prey. The turtles fled; So love and therefore joy were dead. The lion council held, and said: 'My friends, I do believe This awful scourge, for which we grieve, Is for our sins a punishment Most righteously by Heaven sent. Let us our guiltiest beast resign, A sacrifice to wrath divine. Perhaps this offering, truly small, May gain the life and health of all. By history we find it noted That lives have been just so devoted. Then let us all turn eyes within, And ferret out the hidden sin. Himself le...

This week, the federal government may have tortured three men to death in the name of justice. It wasn’t at some black site overseas, but here at home and unhidden. The work was done quickly and initiated in the dead of night. It began Tuesday morning when, for the 1st time in 17 years, the federal government executed a man on death row. Resuming these executions has been a priority for U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr. The problem was how to do it. Lethal injections once involved 3 drugs which have been hard to get for years because the European Union banned exports of lethal injection drugs and even the manufacturers stopped selling them to the United States. Yet we very much want to kill, you see, and so states began experimenting with different drug protocols, injecting what they could get, with horrifying results on occasions when prisoners died in agony. Barr wanted to use a single sedative, pentobarbital, to kill convicted murderer Daniel Lee . Medical ...

Click here to Google translate the following text into your own language Un ami tentait de me convaincre hier soir, au cours d'une discussion que j'ai pourtant pris l'habitude d'éviter depuis des années, qu'il existait des "cas", des crimes d'une telle monstruosité qu'ils justifiaient la peine de mort, notamment les crimes contre les enfants.  Cette discussion était inutile -- mais je le savais en m'y engageant. Elle n'a débouché sur rien, sinon de l'animosité et des haussements de ton. Elle a renforcé mon ami dans ses convictions, mon apparente "cécité face à la réalité" légitimant un peu plus sa position et la justesse de son point de vue. J'ai décidé de ne pas pousser le débat plus avant.  Le texte d'Albert Camus reproduit ci-dessous explique admirablement pourquoi je me bats depuis des années contre la peine de mort, quel que soit le crime commis par le condamné. Le deuxième paragraphe est celui qui...