Death Penalty News

For close to a quarter of a century, death row inmate Hiroko Kazama’s every movement in her 3½ tatami-size cell at the Tokyo Detention House has been watched. When she wakes up, uses the bathroom or creates a piece of art, she does so surveilled by guards who observe her through a ceiling-mounted camera. “Prisoners are never told how or when they are being monitored, which creates a profound sense of fear and uncertainty,” Kazama, 68, said in a statement to The Japan Times. As male guards are not prohibited from surveilling female prisoners, such exposure is particularly distressing for Kazama.

FORT WORTH, Texas — Tanner Lynn Horner, a former contract delivery driver for FedEx, pleaded guilty Tuesday to the 2022 capital murder and aggravated kidnapping of 7-year-old Athena Strand, a move that abruptly shifted the proceedings into a high-stakes punishment phase where jurors will decide between life imprisonment and the death penalty. Horner, 34, entered the plea in a Tarrant County courtroom as his trial was set to begin. The case was moved to Fort Worth from neighboring Wise County last year after defense attorneys argued that pretrial publicity would prevent a fair trial in the community where the girl disappeared.

A Tarrant County jury sentenced Jason Alan Thornburg, 44, to death for killing three people, dismembering their bodies and burning them in a dumpster in 2021. Assistant District Attorneys Kim D'Avignon, Emily Dixon and Amy Allin represented the state. In September 2021, Thornburg said David Lueras, 42, Maricruz Mathis, 33, and Lauren Phillips, 34, needed to be sacrificed for religious reasons.

The punishment for not wearing a hijab is largely financial, although there are new systems to report women not complying with hijab rules to the morality police. Iranian women are refusing to comply with hijab rules in Iran, ABC News reported, as reporters recently conducted an investigation in Tehran. Not wearing a hijab is punishable by the Iranian morality police, who generally patrol the streets of Iran. 

Florida prosecutors seeking the death penalty for a plastic surgeon accused of killing a lawyer and dumping his body in the Everglades have laid out their case in new court filings. Authorities say Dr. Tomasz Kosowski killed attorney Steven Cozzi in the bathroom of Cozzi's law office moments after both participated in a March 21 conference call about a lengthy, acrimonious legal battle over medical billing. Prosecutors said in court documents that Kosowski took the call from a Toyota pickup truck outside the office and that he had supplies to commit the killing, including trash bags, a syringe containing a paralyzing drug and a wagon to haul the corpse out.

The death penalty for Wu Xieyu was upheld by the Fujian Province High People's Court on Tuesday. The death penalty for Wu Xieyu, an academically outstanding Peking University student who brutally killed his mother, was upheld by the High People's Court of Fujian Province on Tuesday. Wu, 28, was sentenced to death by the Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court for murder, fraud and buying others' ID cards in August 2021. Wu developed the evil intention of killing his mother out of his misperception. He meticulously planned the murder, committed the murder extremely cruelly, scammed money from relatives and friends and squandered it all during his run, showing no signs of confession or remorse, the high court said.