Death Penalty News

The governor also signed bills that eliminate parole for adults who commit crimes after Aug. 1 and dramatically cut the availability of good behavior credits in prison NEW ORLEANS — Gov. Jeff Landry signed into law Tuesday a bill allowing executions by nitrogen gas and electrocution, opening the door for Louisiana to revive capital punishment 14 years after it last used its death chamber.

Debate centered around competing visions: whether to provide imprisoned people more second chances or to toughen their penalties. Family members of murder victims wept, lawmakers’ voices broke and advocates packed into committee rooms as the state Legislature advanced over a dozen bills backed by Gov. Jeff Landry that aim to toughen penalties for a slew of crimes. Those bills — which passed out of legislative committees Tuesday — seek to expand execution methods in the state to include by nitrogen gas and electrocution, toughen penalties for carjacking, put 17-year-olds in the adult justice system and let people carry concealed handguns without permits, among over a dozen others.

New footage has been released that shows how a deadly shooting in a Texas school unfolded. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed when Salvador Ramos targeted Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. The video shows the 18-year-old gunman after he crashed his pickup truck, entering the building and - carrying an AR-15 assault rifle - walking down a hallway unhindered at 11.33am on 24 May. Police officers first arrive two-and-a-half minutes later. Two approach the classroom, but retreat after shots are fired. At 11.52am, more policemen arrive - armed with guns, wearing body armour and carrying ballistic shields, but they are seen milling in the hallway. At 12.30pm, another officer is seen stopping to get hand sanitiser. At 12.50pm - 77 minutes after the gunman entered the school - officers breach the classroom and kill him. The footage was recorded from hallway CCTV within the school, and portions have been published by the Austin American-Statesman newspaper and KVUE. Delays in the la...

The Supreme Court struck down a New York law Thursday that only lets firearm owners receive a concealed carry license if they have “proper cause,” a blow to gun control advocates that marks the court’s most significant Second Amendment ruling in over a decade and could roll back gun control measures across the country. KEY FACTS The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that New York’s concealed carry law violates the Fourteenth Amendment, by stopping “law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs” from practicing their Second Amendment right to bear arms. The challenge, brought by gun owners in the state, argued New York’s law that only gave licenses to firearm owners who have “proper cause” was unlawful under the Second Amendment, because licenses are too often denied and the decisions are left up to the personal discretion of individual licensing officers. Justices agreed that the law was overly burdensome, with Justice Clarence T...

Since 2017, mass shootings in the United States -- described as shooting incidents in which at least four people are injured or killed -- have nearly doubled year over year. Already, there have been 212 mass shooting incidents in 2022 -- a 50% increase from 141 shootings in May 2017. The number of people injured or killed does not include the suspect or perpetrator.   UVALDE, Texas -- The death toll in the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, rose to 22, with at least 19 children, one teacher, and a second school employee killed, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety. The 18-year-old suspect, a student at Uvalde High School, is also dead, Gov. Greg Abbott said. Abbott said the suspect "shot and killed horrifically and incomprehensibly" more than a dozen students and a teacher. The incident began when the suspect, identified by Abbott and law enforcement sources as Salvador Ramos, shot his grandmother. Initial reports from law enforcement said the ...

Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie draws outcry by posing with 6 relatives, holding firearms with the words: ‘Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo’ WASHINGTON — A US congressman is under fire for posting a picture of his family smiling and holding guns in front of a Christmas tree days after a deadly school shooting rocked the country. RELATED |  Michigan | 3 dead, 8 injured in Oxford High School shooting; suspect is 15-year-old student Thomas Massie, a representative for the staunchly Republican state of Kentucky, posted the photo of himself and six members of his family, each grinning and gripping a gun, on Saturday with the words “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo.” The post triggered a swift outcry, with parents of school shooting victims and fellow lawmakers accusing Massie of insensitivity days after a teenager shot dead four fellow high school students in Oxford, Michigan. “Disgraceful,” wrote John Yarmuth, a Democratic congressman from Kentucky, saying...

Nov 20, 2021 -- Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal on murder charges on Friday opened yet another front in America's longstanding fight over gun rights: Is it acceptable for a teenager to bring an assault-style rifle to a protest? Conservatives hailed Rittenhouse as a hero for exercising his right to self-defense when he fatally shot two demonstrators and wounded a third who he said attacked him last year at a racial justice protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Gun control advocates warned the jury's verdict could inspire a new wave of armed vigilantism, after Rittenhouse traveled in August 2020 from his Illinois home to Kenosha after demonstrations erupted following the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake. Guns have long been a potent political issue in the United States, where permissive laws have led to the highest rate of civilian firearm ownership in the world. Mass shootings, which are far more rare in other wealthy nations, have plagued the country for decades. Rittenhou...

A former police officer in Alabama used a weapon that authorities had taken away and then returned to kill his wife in 2019, a report has said. Ex-cop Jason McIntosh, 46, was forced to give up his gun nine months before the killing because he had shot and injured his 31-year-old estranged wife, Megan Montgomery, NBC News reported.  However, the state’s top law enforcement agency reportedly returned the firearm, which he used 16 days later to fatally shoot Montgomery on Nov. 30, 2019, during another late-night dispute in Mountain Brook, Alabama. Prior to him getting back the weapon, McIntosh had pending domestic violence charges and an active protective order from his wife. Capital murder due to 'protective order' In March, McIntosh pleaded guilty to the reduced charge of murder and was sentenced to 30 years in state prison. Prosecutors had previously charged McIntosh with capital murder punishable with the death penalty due to the existence of the protective order. On the night...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amy Coney Barrett paid homage to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her White House speech Saturday as a shatterer of glass ceilings. She said she would be mindful of the woman whose place she would take on the Supreme Court. She even commented that her children think their father is the better cook, much as Ginsburg used to talk about her husband's prowess in the kitchen. But the replacement of the liberal icon Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the high court, by Barrett, who would be the fifth, would represent the most dramatic ideological change on the Supreme Court in nearly 30 years and cement conservative dominance of the court for years to come. Barrett, a judge on the federal appeals court based in Chicago, made clear in her Rose Garden address that she looks to conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she once worked, and not Ginsburg, on matters of law. “His judicial philosophy is mine, too. Judges must apply the law as written. Judges are not po...

As an appeals court judge, Judge Barrett has issued opinions that have reflected those of her mentor, Justice Antonin Scalia, but with few of his occasional liberal rulings. WASHINGTON — Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s pick for the Supreme Court, has compiled an almost uniformly conservative voting record in cases touching on abortion, gun rights, discrimination and immigration. If she is confirmed, she would move the court slightly but firmly to the right, making compromise less likely and putting at risk the right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade. Judge Barrett’s judicial opinions, based on a substantial sample of the hundreds of cases that she has considered in her three years on the federal appeals court in Chicago, are marked by care, clarity and a commitment to the interpretive methods used by Justice Antonin Scalia, the giant of conservative jurisprudence for whom she worked as a law clerk from 1998 to 1999. But while Justice Scalia’s methods occasionally drov...