Death Penalty News

Tanner Horner apologised to Athena Strand's loved ones for 'taking their little angel away' in a two-page letter Athena Strand's killer penned a letter to her family apologising for 'taking their little angel away' - before chillingly claiming he 'wasn't the only one involved' in another addressed to investigators. Tanner Horner, 34, confessed to abducting and murdering the seven-year-old on 30 November, 2022, after delivering a parcel to her dad's home in Paradise, Texas. Jurors - who were left in tears after listening to distressing audio of the little girl's final moments last week - must now decide if the former FedEx driver should face the death penalty or life in prison.

In Somalia, Uganda, and Mauritania, the offense can carry the death penalty. DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Senegal‘s parliament has approved a new bill that toughens punishment for homosexuality in the largely Muslim West African nation, the latest African country to impose harsh penalties against the LGBT community. The new bill, which was introduced to parliament last month by Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, describes homosexual acts as being “against nature.” It doubles the punishment for those convicted from prison sentences of one to five years to between five and 10 years. Nearly all lawmakers voted in favor of the bill during Wednesday’s plenary, with no opposition and three abstentions. It needs presidential assent before becoming a law, with Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye widely expected to sign it.

Iran confirms that its former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was killed in Israeli airstrike. Ahmadinejad was reportedly struck at his residence in the Narmak neighborhood of Tehran on February 28 (Saturday), along with bodyguards and companions.  Iranian sources confirmed his death in the attacks, which also killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and targeted other senior figures of the regime.

TEHRAN, Iran (DPN) — Iranian authorities have arrested an engineering student accused of secretly filming inside a ballistic missile warehouse during a university field trip to a site operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The student, whose identity has not been publicly disclosed, allegedly used a mobile phone to record dozens of missiles despite a strict ban on photography at the facility. The video, which circulated on platforms including X and pro-Iranian Telegram channels, showed what experts identified as short-range ballistic missiles from the Fateh-110 family, an older model in Iran's arsenal. The footage prompted swift action from IRGC intelligence officials.

Prosecutors said Elias Rodriguez, accused of killing two Israeli Embassy staff in Washington, had bought a body camera online and used it to record the attacks.    A man accused of fatally shooting two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington was wearing a body camera that captured video of the killings from his close-range perspective, prosecutors disclosed in a court filing on Friday. Elias Rodriguez purchased the body-worn camera online and arranged for it to be delivered to the hotel where he was staying in Washington before the May 21 shootings, according to the filing. Prosecutors said the transaction demonstrates the premeditated nature of the crime.

Iranians in Tehran illicitly filmed scenes of their capital for Israeli Channel 12 news, an act that constitutes espionage in Iran and can warrant a death penalty. The clips, broadcast on Saturday, showed locals at high-end shopping malls that the videographers said are only financially accessible to those connected to the regime. “I filmed this video with great difficulty and fear, and I said I would send it to the Israeli Channel 12,” said a 44-year-old Iranian who sent footage for the report and went by the alias Ali, speaking in Persian. “I committed a dangerous act. If you just talk to Israelis, you become a spy and they will execute you.”

Singapore, known for having some of the world's harshest anti-drug laws, gave death penalties to two drug traffickers last year. While recreational cannabis is legal in some countries, it is strictly banned in Singapore.  A Singapore man has been sentenced to four years in prison for attempting to incriminate his wife by planting cannabis in her car.  Tan Xianglong planted 500 grams of cannabis in his wife's vehicle, fully aware that possessing such a large amount could result in the death penalty under Singapore's strict drug laws, reported The Straits Times.

The Opinion video above  [view on website] is the final episode in a series of three videos that take a stand against the death penalty in the United States. It features Charles Don Flores, who has been on death row in Texas since 1999, awaiting execution for a murder he insists he didn’t commit. That is where we met and filmed him. The videos are in keeping with the editorial board’s longstanding position that the death penalty is full of bias and error, morally abhorrent, futile in deterring crime and should be abolished.

BATAVIA, Ohio (WXIX) - The defense team for a Greater Cincinnati father charged with murdering his three young sons at their home last summer wants the court to throw out all statements he made following his arrest during his “entire interrogation because the Detectives violated Mr. Doerman’s constitutional rights from the outset,” a new court filing shows. The motion to suppress covers Chad Doerman’s statements to investigators and healthcare workers once the Clermont County Sheriff’s Office took him into custody back on June 15.

January 11, 2024 – There are serious concerns for a group of young men detained in Iran, some facing the death penalty despite a lack of concrete evidence, who are in extremely poor condition after enduring torture and confinement in a prison where they have witnessed a surge in executions. “All of these detainees are in severely poor mental and physical condition, as they have been subjected to torture, inhumane prison conditions and intense psychological pressure,” a source familiar with the case told the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

A prominent Christian leader, along with 14 other Christian leaders and their families, was arrested in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania earlier this month.  These leaders represent a significant portion of the nation’s small Christian community, estimated to be around 1,000 individuals.   Mauritania’s current penal code, specifically Article 306, imposes the death penalty for apostasy, with the provision for a lesser penalty if the accused repents. 

The corridors of power within the Islamic Republic are ablaze with a series of sex scandals – seemingly more with each passing day.  Fresh revelations spotlighting the moral and sexual transgressions of high-ranking officials within the system continue to threaten or even topple yet another leader or pillar of Iran’s ruling Islamic system. The latest jolt came on August 19 when a new shockwave of explicit images in contravention of Sharia law emerged. The central figure in the latest scandal was Mohammed Masoudianfar, director general of the state radio and television educational and welfare complex, who featured in images of an act of sexual intimacy with a veiled woman. The woman was later revealed to be a married employee of state radio and television – amplifying the shock. The exposé surfaced through the Radio Gilan Telegram channel. 

A Montana woman who pleaded guilty to torturing and killing her 12-year-old grandson more than three years ago has been sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison. Patricia Batts, 51, pleaded guilty in May to deliberate homicide in the death of James “Alex” Hurley on February 3, 2020, in West Yellowstone in an agreement reached after prosecutors dropped efforts to seek the death penalty. She was sentenced in District Court in Bozeman. “This is a horrific case of child abuse. It was totally unnecessary, and it was done with malevolence,” District Judge John C. Brown said, according to NBC-Montana. RELATED | Death penalty sought for grandmother of boy, 12, beaten and left to die on living room floor

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — North Korea is increasing its repression of human rights and people are becoming more desperate and reportedly starving in parts of the country as the economic situation worsens, the U.N. rights chief said Thursday. Volker Türk told the first open meeting of the U.N. Security Council since 2017 on North Korean human rights that in the past its people have endured periods of severe economic difficulty and repression, but “currently they appear to be suffering both.” “According to our information, people are becoming increasingly desperate as informal markets and other coping mechanisms are dismantled, while their fear of state surveillance, arrest, interrogation and detention has increased,” he said.

LIBERTY, Mo. — The Clay County Prosecutor plans to seek the death penalty for the man charged with killing North Kansas City police officer Officer Daniel Vasquez. Joshua T. Rocha is charged in Clay County with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the death of 32-year-old Officer Daniel Vasquez. Prosecutors said officer Vasquez died in August after Rocha shot him during a traffic stop.  Investigators said Vasquez stopped Rocha’s car because of an expired temporary tag. According to a probable cause statement, video from Vasquez’s dash camera showed Rocha opening the door of his car and immediately shooting at Vasquez.  Rocha then got out of the car and shot Vasquez two more times after the officer fell to the street.

RABAT, Morocco (AP) — A Moroccan convicted of belonging to an Islamic State-affiliated ring and sentenced to death for the beheadings of two Scandinavian tourists has killed himself in prison, Moroccan officials said. The facility where he was held in the eastern city of Oujda said in a statement that staff found his body early Tuesday. The prisoner was among convicted ring members jailed in 2019 over the gruesome killings of two young Scandinavian women, Louisa Vesterager Jespersen from Denmark and Maren Ueland from Norway.  They were killed in December 2018 while on a backpacking trip in the Atlas Mountains, near the city of Marrakech.

👉Click here to Google translate the following text into your own language La vista de la apelación de Pablo Ibar se realizará el próximo 28 de febrero a las 14 horas (hora local de Florida) el Tribunal ha convocado al abogado de Ibar, Joe Nacimiento, para que exponga en 20 minutos las razones por las que solicita la celebración de un nuevo juicio. En esta apelación el letrado expondrá los doce motivos por los que considera que el juicio de Pablo en 2018-2019 fue injusto. "Confío en que los jueces estarán de acuerdo en que Pablo no recibió un juicio justo" dijo Joe.

📢 Click here to Google translate this article into your own language La vista de la cuarta apelación, puerta para un nuevo juicio, será telemática y  se celebrara el próximo 28 de febrero Pablo Ibar ya tiene fecha y hora para su vista de apelación. Será el próximo 28 de febrero a las 14.00 horas (hora local de Florida).

Majidreza Rahnavard's execution took place four days after Mohsen Shekari, also aged 23, was executed on charges of wounding a member of the security forces. A 23-year-old executed in Iran in connection with the anti-government protests, has left instructions before his death that no one is to mourn him or read Quran at his grave. Majidreza Rahnavard was hanged in public on Monday in the city of Mashhad.  Rahnavard's execution took place four days after Mohsen Shekari, also aged 23, was executed on charges of wounding a member of the security forces. It was the first case of death penalty being used against a protester, defying international outcry. A video surfaced today that showed Rahnavard expressing what was probably his last wishes. In it, Rahnavard, blindfolded and flanked by two masked guards, is seen speaking to the camera. "I don't want anyone to mourn upon my grave. I don't want them to read Quran or pray. Just celebrate and play celebrating music,...

Algerian Public Prosecution requested, on Saturday, the death penalty against more than 70 people charged with torturing a man, burning him alive and mutilating his body on 11 August 2021 in the Kabylia region, after they wrongly accused him of causing of a fire, according to local media. Those accused of murdering Jamal Ben Ismail are being tried in Algiers for "committing terrorist and subversive acts targeting state security and national unity" and "participating in the deliberate and willful killing." Some 25 other defendants are also being tried in the case and the Public Prosecution requested they be handed ten-year prison sentences after charging them with "armed gathering" and "spreading terror among the population and creating an atmosphere of insecurity" through photographing the crime and mutilating the dead man's body, and publishing photos and videos of this brutality." Thirty-eight-year-old Jamal voluntarily went to the dis...