Death Penalty News

Tyrone Noling's fate is now up to Ohio's governor. The state Parole Board on Tuesday recommended that Gov. Mike DeWine spare the 54-year-old from execution by commuting his sentence to life with a chance at parole as soon as 2029.  NBC News reports one of the eight board members backed a full pardon, which DeWine—who in June called for ending the death penalty in the state—can still grant.  Five members voted in favor of commuting his sentence, while two were against. The Akron Beacon Journal reports there is no deadline for DeWine's decision. Noling, who was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1990 murders of Cora and Bearnhardt Hartig, has long maintained his innocence; no physical evidence tied him to the crime, and the teen witnesses who implicated him later recanted, saying police pressured them.  The Ohio Innocence Project points to suppressed evidence and alternative suspects, including a man later executed for another killing. Noling, for his part, had requested a ...

Charles Flores argued that his conviction was improperly based on testimony from a witness who changed her recollection after hypnosis by an investigator. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected Texas death row inmate Charles Flores’ efforts to force the state’s highest criminal court to reconsider his appeal. The Supreme Court denied the petition without comment. Flores argued that his 1999 conviction should be overturned under the Texas “junk science” law because testimony from a key witness was improperly influenced by hypnosis performed by a police officer who was investigating the murder of 64-year-old Elizabeth “Betty” Black in Dallas County.

The Florida Attorney General's Office has still not responded to the defense's request for a review of the case, which was filed almost eight months ago. The family of Pablo Ibar has publicly expressed its outrage at the lack of response from the Broward County District Attorney's Office in Florida to their request for a review of the case, filed almost eight months ago by the defense of the Spanish-born prisoner, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for a triple murder committed in 1994 in Miramar, near Miami. The defense denounces unjustified delays in responding to the review request, while the Pablo Ibar-Fair Trial Association has reactivated its fundraising campaign. They allege that the prosecution has twice failed to meet the deadline set by the judge for issuing its ruling.

The Fukuoka High Court rejected an appeal on Monday for a retrial for the 1992 murder of two 7-year-old girls in the city of Iizuka in Fukuoka Prefecture, for which a death row convict was executed. The defense plans to file a special appeal with the Supreme Court against the decision.  In what's known as the Iizuka incident, despite the assertion of his innocence, Michitoshi Kuma's death sentence became final in 2006 based on DNA test results and eyewitness accounts. He was executed at the age of 70 in 2008.  The defendant's side submitted in the second round of its retrial request a woman's testimony as new evidence. 

Alabama executes inmate Anthony Boyd despite innocence claims in 1993 burning death  Alabama executed an inmate using nitrogen gas Thursday night, despite the man’s claims of innocence and a legal fight calling the execution method unconstitutional.  Anthony Todd Boyd , 54, died by breathing in nitrogen through a gas mask at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. The prison is where Alabama death row is housed, holds the state’s only execution chamber and is just miles north of the Florida border. 

Anthony Boyd is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in Alabama on October 23, 2025, for his role in the 1993 kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Gregory "New York” Huguley. Mr. Boyd was con­vict­ed based sole­ly on eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny with no phys­i­cal evi­dence link­ing him to the crime, and he has main­tained his inno­cence. Alabama will exe­cute Mr. Boyd using nitro­gen gas, the 7th time state has used this con­tro­ver­sial method since January 2024, when the state exe­cut­ed Kenneth Smith in the 1st-ever exe­cu­tion of its kind.

No physical evidence connected Anthony Boyd to a 1993 murder. He was sent to death row on the word of a co-defendant who testified under the threat of capital punishment. On the afternoon of August 1, 1993, the Talladega County Sheriff’s Department got a call to check out the ballfields in Munford, Alabama. When they arrived, they discovered a man’s badly burned body lying underneath an oak tree where spectators would sit to watch softball games. A pair of cinderblocks were nearby, and a charred wooden board was next to him.  Unable to identify the body, the state’s forensic pathologist cut off a hand during the autopsy in order to take fingerprints. They came back as a match for Gregory “New York” Huguley, 32, who lived in Anniston, about 20 minutes north of Munford. 

Entrevista exclusiva con el preso español, condenado en EEUU a cadena perpetua, después de que se conociera que su defensa ha presentado la declaración de un testigo en la que se le exculparía de ser el autor del triple asesinato en 1994. El caso de Pablo Ibar, el español condenado a cadena perpetua en Estados Unidos, dio un nuevo vuelco el pasado 23 de junio. Tras una investigación que se ha llevado en secreto, ese día su defensa presentó en los juzgados de Broward County una declaración jurada de un testigo en la que se le exculpaba de ser el autor del triple asesinato cometido en la ciudad de Miramar (Florida) en 1994. 

Lawyers for a man convicted in a notorious 1994 triple murder in Miramar say a new witness has come forward with evidence that could prove their client's innocence. Pablo Ibar, now 54, was convicted in the murders of nightclub owner Casimir Sucharski, Sharon Anderson and Marie Rogers in Miramar. The shocking crime was dubbed the "Casey's Nickelodeon murders" after the Pembroke Park bar owned by Sucharski. But now, after spending over 30 years in jail and going through three trials, attorneys for Ibar say a new witness has come forward with evidence that could set him free.

El triple asesinato que ocurrio en Miramar en 1994, podra ser abierto de nuevo tras nuevo testigo clave, dice abogado. El caso de Pablo Ibar, marcado por más de tres décadas de juicios y apelaciones, podría dar un giro decisivo. Su abogado actual, Daniel Tibbitt, asegura contar con un nuevo testigo que identifica a los verdaderos responsables del triple homicidio ocurrido en Miramar, Broward, en 1994.

The judgement comes as a major embarrassment to the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad which conducted the probe into the case. Mumbai: Nineteen years after multiple train blasts here killed more than 180 persons, the Bombay High Court on Monday acquitted all the 12 accused, saying the prosecution utterly failed to prove the case and it was “hard to believe they committed the crime”. The judgement comes as a major embarrassment to the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) which conducted the probe into the case.

A man who served seven years in prison after being found guilty of the 1986 murder of a junior high school student was acquitted Friday at the conclusion of a retrial. The Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court ordered the retrial after finding testimony given by Shoshi Maekawa's acquaintance in the original trial lacked credibility. The now 60-year-old Maekawa had maintained his innocence since his arrest in 1987. In the retrial that began in March, prosecutors argued Maekawa's guilt but were unable to present any new evidence to add to the circumstantial evidence under which he was originally convicted.

Las dos personas a las que alude este testigo "no estaban en la cárcel" cuando se cometieron los crímenes y, además, ha apuntado, "hay una foto de uno de ellos, de los años 90, que se parece bastante más que Pablo a la famosa foto sacada del video" Una nueva esperanza se ha abierto para los familiares de Pablo Ibar, que cumple cadena perpetua en Estados Unidos un supuesto triple asesinato. Dicen estar "esperanzados, pero cautos", tras la localización de una persona que asegura conocer a los verdaderos autores de los crímenes de Florida por los que se encuentra encarcelado el hombre de origen vasco, sobrino del legendario boxeador guipuzcoano 'Urtain', informa Europa Press. Así lo ha asegurado Andrés Krakenberg, portavoz de la familia y la asociación Pablo Ibar Juicio Justo.

A defense attorney for Pablo Ibar, the man sentenced to life in the June 1994 “Casey’s Nickelodeon” murders, is seeking to have his 2019 conviction vacated after a new witness came forward, alleging two people who were never charged were the true killers.  The “newly discovered evidence,” a sworn affidavit from a witness who was previously not known to Ibar’s defense, could have potentially resulted in a different outcome at Ibar’s trial, attorney Daniel Tibbitt wrote in a court motion filed Sunday. 

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); October 16, 2024: Younes Akhtar Samar, a man sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) based on elme-qazi and a qassameh ceremony due to the lack of evidence against him, was executed in Jiroft Prison after his family failed to raise the €300k blood money. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was hanged in Jiroft Prison on 14 October. His identity has been established as Younes Akhtar Samar who was sentenced to qisas based on elm-e-qazi (knowledge of the judge) and a qassameh ceremony.

An Oklahoma city has agreed to pay more than $7 million to a former death row inmate who was exonerated after nearly 50 years in prison, making him the longest-serving inmate to be declared innocent of a crime.  The Edmond City Council voted without comment on Monday to settle the lawsuit filed by Glynn Ray Simmons, 71, against the Oklahoma City suburb and a former police detective for $7.15 million. 

On July 18, 2024, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey asked the state Supreme Court to block a scheduled evidentiary hearing for Marcellus Williams and deny him the opportunity to establish his innocence before his scheduled execution on September 24, 2024. 

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Attorneys for a Georgia inmate sent to death row 25 years ago are accusing a prosecutor of hiding a deal that they contend casts doubt on the credibility of a crucial trial witness. Warren King was sentenced to death in September 1998 after an Appling County jury convicted him of murdering Karen Crosby, a convenience store clerk who was fatally shot during an armed robbery in southeast Georgia.

Fukuoka, June 5 (Jiji Press)--A Japanese court Wednesday turned down a request for a retrial for the 1992 murder of two girls in the southwestern prefecture of Fukuoka, for which a death row convict had been executed. Fukuoka District Court thus denied the second retrial request over the so-called Iizuka incident, in which two primary school first graders in the Fukuoka city of Iizuka were killed. 

Sister Helen Prejean is trying to keep Texas from killing death row inmate Ivan Cantu. Prejean, the famed death penalty opponent, joined MoveOn.org in a virtual meeting last week to plead for a delay in Cantu’s execution, scheduled for Feb. 28. “Even if you’re for the death penalty, you believe in fairness,” Prejean said. “There was no fairness at this trial. All we’re asking is to delay the execution of Ivan Cantu long enough to be able to have a hearing and an inquiry into the new evidence that’s been presented.”