Death Penalty News

BACK IN 2010, overseas Filipino worker (OFW) Mary Jane Veloso was arrested in Indonesia. She was convicted of drug trafficking after being caught carrying 2.6 kilograms of heroin in Yogyakarta. She was then given the death penalty despite pleading innocence – saying that she was only a victim of human trafficking.  Initially, she started working as an OFW to give her children a better life. As per her lawyer Agus Salim, she had gone to Dubai to work as a domestic helper, but returned to Manila before the end of her contract because she was allegedly almost raped.

DENVER (AP) — Anderson Lee Aldrich, who killed five people and injured 19 others at an LGBT nightclub in Colorado Springs, is prepared to plead guilty to federal hate crime charges as well as gun charges Tuesday following new evidence of anti-gay slurs and weapons purchases before the mass shooting.

The first federal trial over a hate crime based on gender identity began Tuesday in South Carolina, where a man faces charges that he killed a Black transgender woman by shooting her three times in the head COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The first federal trial over a hate crime based on gender identity began Tuesday in South Carolina, where a man faces charges that he killed a Black transgender woman and then fled to New York. 

For a country that executes gay people, it offers a surprising procedure. But those going through it face unqualified doctors and humiliation. Death or surgery? It’s a capital offence to be gay in Iran. But gender-change surgery is legal. Now, 4000 Iranians are undergoing the life-changing procedure every year. And many of them are juveniles. The plight of Iran’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) was brought back to the attention of the world after the belated arrest of a provincial “morality police” chief last month after video of him engaging in homosexual acts began circulating on social media. Seven of his sexual partners were arrested immediately. Then, after six months of public outrage, Reza Seghati, the director general of the Office of the Ministry of Culture in Iran’s Gilan province, was detained. Seghati was just one of a half-dozen similar exposes in the past year involving senior members of Iran’s clerical religious ruling class. RELATED |  Iran’s governm...

Tropical reefs, safaris, the pyramids: LGBT travel companies deliver dream vacations, even to places where being out and proud could land you in prison. A romantic island getaway in the Maldives. A safari in Kenya. A visit to the pyramids in Egypt. Apart from being popular on bucket lists, these places have one thing in common: Their destinations have strict anti-LGBT legislation. In the Maldives, gay sex may be punished with lashes and up to eight years in prison. In Kenya, it can bring a sentence of up to 14 years. And in Egypt, the authorities are known to throw people in jail for simply waving a rainbow flag. Paradoxically, these trips are also all offered by travel companies founded by and catering to members of the LGBTQ community. In interviews, the founders of four of these companies, which take a combined total of 3000 tourists — most of them American — abroad each year, said they were providing a safe way to meet a growing demand for trips to countries that criminalise LGBT p...

According to data analyzed by the DPIC, 79% of the death row inmates executed in 2023 had some disability or impairment, including serious mental illness, brain injury, developmental brain damage, or an IQ in the range considered intellectually disabled; and/or chronic serious childhood trauma, neglect and/or abuse. The report adds: "One-third or eight of the people executed had all three. At least three prisoners were under the age of 20 at the time of their crimes." Phillip Hancock on Thursday became the fourth death row inmate executed in Oklahoma this year. The state's parole board had voted 3-2 to recommend clemency for Hancock, who was convicted for the 2001 murders of two men, but the governor declined to intervene.

A draft bill has been introduced in Iraq that would see the death penalty introduced for homosexuality. Critics argue that it's another attempt to distract locals from the country's far bigger political problems. The Iraqi politician who introduced the bill into parliament is absolutely certain: Any behavior that deviates from heterosexuality is a danger to his country. This is why, in mid-August, Raad al-Maliki introduced a bill that would amend Iraq's "Law on Combating Prostitution" from 1988 to make same-sex relations a crime, alongside any kind of expression of transgender identity.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) called for an “automatic death penalty” for school shooters after a 28-year-old killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tenn.  “We need to consider an automatic death penalty for school shooters,” Scott posted to Twitter. “Life in prison is not enough for the deranged monsters who go into our schools to kill innocent kids & educators.” “Pray for all facing the unimaginable in Nashville. This is horrible & must stop,” he added. A shooter who police say surveilled The Covenant School and drew maps of the building in advance of the massacre blasted through the school’s locked glass doors on Monday, killing three nine-year-olds and three adults in their 60s. 

Missouri judge Steven Goldman talked with me about his views on the death penalty, and his thought process when imposing a death sentence on Amber McLaughlin, in what would become the nation’s first execution of a transgender woman. It was a strangely friendly conversation. We could have been chatting at a cocktail party, gossiping about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, or some other trifle.

The Ohio Supreme Court put an execution date on hold for a transgender inmate—a twice-convicted killer with disputed diagnoses of gender dysphoria and other mental issues. Now legally named Victoria Drain, the condemned prisoner formerly known as Joel Drain was granted a stay of execution on Jan. 5.

(CNN) — Missouri carried out the first known US execution of an openly transgender person Tuesday when Amber McLaughlin, who was convicted of a 2003 murder and unsuccessfully sought clemency from the governor, was put to death by lethal injection. “McLaughlin was pronounced dead at 6:51 p.m.,” the Missouri Department of Corrections said in a written statement. “I am sorry for what I did,” wrote McLaughlin in her final statement, which was released by the department of corrections. “I am a loving & caring person.”

Amber Laughlin committed a brutal crime, but what brought her to that moment was a life marked from her earliest years by brain damage, physical and psychological abuse and mental illness. On Tuesday , Missouri plans to carry out the first execution of 2023 when it puts Amber McLaughlin to death. If it does, McLaughlin would be the first transgendered person ever executed in the United States. But beyond this historical first, a look at McLaughlin’s case reveals that she is not all that different from many people on death row in this country.

On January 3, 2023, Missouri is set to execute Amber McLaughlin (pictured), the first transgender person scheduled to be put to death in the United States. Tried as Scott McLaughlin, her jury rejected three of the four aggravating circumstances advanced by St. Louis County prosecutors but split on its sentencing verdict. The vast majority of death-penalty states require a unanimous jury vote for death before the death penalty may be imposed. But under Missouri law, a nonunanimous jury vote is deemed a hung jury, triggering a statutory provision that allowed McLaughlin’s trial judge to independently impose sentence. McLaughlin’s trial judge then relied upon the aggravating circumstances rejected by the jury to sentence McLaughlin to death.

Amber McLaughlin, the first openly transgender woman set to be executed in the United States, is getting baptized three weeks prior to her scheduled execution date. ST. LOUIS — The first openly transgender woman set to be executed in the United States is getting baptized three weeks prior to her scheduled execution date. Amber McLaughlin raped and stabbed her ex-girlfriend in 2003. There is no known case of an openly transgender inmate being executed in the U.S. before, according to the Anti-Execution Death Penalty Information Center. The crime 5 On Your Side searched through our own archives, uncovering what happened on Nov. 20, 2003. The victim's neighbor said Guenther was in fear of her ex-girlfriend for six months. According to the neighbor, we learned a police officer was walking Guenther from work to her car for a week. However, the one time she stopped asking for an escort, the murder happened. Guenther was about to file another order of protection against McLaughlin the ver...

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — The first openly transgender woman set to be executed in the U.S. is asking Missouri’s governor for mercy, citing mental health issues. Lawyers for Amber McLaughlin, now 49, on Monday asked Republican Gov. Mike Parson to spare her. McLaughlin was convicted of killing 45-year-old Beverly Guenther on Nov. 20, 2003. Guenther was raped and stabbed to death in St. Louis County. There is no known case of an openly transgender inmate being executed in the U.S. before, according to the anti-execution Death Penalty Information Center. “It’s wrong when anyone’s executed regardless, but I hope that this is a first that doesn’t occur,” federal public defender Larry Komp said. “Amber has shown great courage in embracing who she is as a transgender woman in spite of the potential for people reacting with hate, so I admire her display of courage.” McLaughlin’s lawyers cited her traumatic childhood and mental health issues, which the jury never heard, in the clemency petition. A f...

After the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021, the UK government made a promise to take in those who had helped UK forces during the war, and those most vulnerable to persecution. But many of the most at-risk, including "thousands" of LGBT Afghans, were left behind, according to Nemat Sadat, the executive director of LGBT charity Roshaniya. Speaking to the Sky News Daily podcast with Niall Paterson, Sadat, who left Afghanistan in 2013 after hostility to his sexuality, said that "there's really no future left for LGBT people in Afghanistan". Homosexuality is currently illegal under Afghanistan's Islamic law, and transgender people are not recognised by the state. The punishment for being gay is the death penalty. "It's the probably the worst place to be an LGBT person. And under the Taliban rule, under Sharia law, the Taliban are continuing to entrap LGBT people. Once they find an LGBT person, they torture them," Sadat continued. "A...

U.K.’s anti-gay laws, which date back to colonial times, remain on the books in dozens of countries The U.K. is set to pardon individuals convicted under now-abolished laws criminalizing gay sex, more than 50 years after the country first began to decriminalize homosexual relationships.  An amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will expand the existing scope of past convictions that can be pardoned. Currently, the list includes just nine former offences, according to U.K. newspaper The Guardian. They are “largely focused on the repealed offenses of buggery and gross indecency between men.”  The legislation has passed the House of Commons and is currently awaiting approval from the House of Lords. Were it to become law, people will be able to have any convictions under laws that previously prohibited same-sex activity wiped from their records. People in England and Wales have been able to apply to have historical convictions for gay sex thrown out since 201...

MANILA, Philippines — Saying the country’s judicial system should first be fixed, presidential aspirant Senator Manny Pacquiao has  changed his tone on the revival of the death penalty, but his stand against same-sex marriage remains the same. “About the death penalty, before, I filed a bill in the Senate. But right now, I’m just holding it. I’m not pushing right now because of the situation of this country,” Pacquiao said in an interview with Vice News Asia Monday. “I don’t want… innocent people [to] be punished by death. So we want to fix first our judicial system in this country and arrange everything and make sure that the government is performing their duty,” he added. Earlier, Pacquiao, a born-again Christian, has pushed for the revival of capital punishment for heinous crimes involving the manufacturing and trafficking of illegal drugs. Same-sex marriage Despite a changed stance on death penalty, Pacquiao remains firm on his stand on same-sex marriage. “Being a Christian, I’...