Death Penalty News

On successive days last week, a grand jury indicted Donald Trump and a petit jury sentenced Robert Bowers to die. Something about the immediate juxtaposition of these two events had my head spinning. I can’t really explain it, and unlike my other essays, I don’t have a particular claim I want to establish or argument I want to advance in these 1300 words. It’s more an occasion to reflect on how we use the criminal law and what we hope it will accomplish. I hope readers will excuse the tentativeness in my writing. At one level, the two events seem so different as to make comparisons insulting. Donald Trump has been charged with attempting to subvert the democratic process by interfering with the result of the 2020 presidential election; Robert Bowers was sentenced to die for killing eleven worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. I recognize and acknowledge the obvious differences even as I write these words. But there is...

HONG KONG - Tens of thousands of people are expected to take to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday in a bid to block changes to the Chinese-ruled city's extradition laws, which could pave the way for fugitives wanted by mainland China to be sent across the border for trial for the first time. Hong Kong residents as well as foreign and Chinese nationals living or traveling through the global financial hub would all be at risk if they are wanted on the mainland. After weeks of broadening local and international pressure, debate in Hong Kong's parliament on the so-called Fugitive Offenders Ordinance amendment bill is due to start on Wednesday. With pro-establishment political forces now dominant in the Legislative Council, the bill is expected to be passed by the end of the month. What does the extradition bill involve? The Hong Kong government first launched the proposals in February, proposing sweeping changes that would simplify case-by-case extraditions of c...