Death Penalty News

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty congratulates Levon "Bo" James on his newfound freedom earlier today (May 2, 2008), as well as all those who worked so tirelessly to win his release after 14 years on death row for a crime he did not commit. With his great-niece Tatyana McCormick and great-nephew Christian McCormick in hand, Levon "Bo" Jones walks out of the Duplin County Jail a free man after spending 13 years on death row, charged with robbing and shooting Leamon Grady in February 1997. May 2, 2008 -- Diann Rust Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, issued the following statement today in response to today's announced exoneration out of North Carolina: "It's been more than seven months since an execution occurred in the U.S. - the longest de facto moratorium in our country in 25 years. And today, just as executions are set to resume in the U.S., Levon "Bo" Jones becomes the 129t...

The state took its 1st step toward resuming lethal injections today, requesting a new execution date for a convicted murderer who spread his victim’s dismembered body over parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania. Kenneth Biros was 1 of 3 death row inmates in Ohio who lost appeals last week before the U.S. Supreme Court following the justices’ determination that the cocktail of drugs Kentucky was using to execute criminals does not inflict cruel and unusual punishment. The suit had the effect of halting lethal injections nationwide. Ohio uses a drug cocktail similar to Kentucky’s. The 49-year-old Biros came within hours of death last March before the nation’s high court called it off, ruling that Biros should be allowed to join other inmates who protested Ohio’s lethal injection process in court. Source: Associated Press

The state of Georgia has scheduled the execution of William Lynd for May 6, 2008. Lynd is the first prisoner in the US scheduled to be executed. Please take action to prevent this execution by writing to the Parole Board and demonstrate your opposition to state-sanctioned killing by joining one of the vigils being organized for the evening of May 6. Vigils will be cancelled should Mr. Lynd be granted a stay of execution. We will do our best to post such urgent information at this page. Take action>>>

HUNTSVILLE, Tex. — Here in the nation’s leading death-penalty state, and some of the 35 others with capital punishment, execution dockets are quickly filling up. Less than three weeks after a United States Supreme Court ruling ended a seven-month moratorium on lethal injections, at least 14 execution dates have been set in six states between May 6 and October. “The Supreme Court essentially blessed their way of doing things,” said Douglas A. Berman, a professor of law and a sentencing expert at Ohio State University. “So in some sense, they’re back from vacation and ready to go to work.” Experts say the resumption of executions is likely to throw a strong new spotlight on the divisive national — and international — issue of capital punishment. “When people confront a new wave of executions, they’ll be questioning not only how people are executed but whether people should be executed,” said James R. Acker, a historian of the death penalty and a criminal justice professor at the State Un...

After the longest moratorium in 25 years, executions are set to resume in the U.S. next week in Georgia, where William Lynd is scheduled to be killed on May 6, 2008 in response to his murders of Virginia "Ginger" Moore and Leslie Joan Sharkey. A number of other southern states - including Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia - have also set execution dates. (Please see the top right section at http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=PhebtQZIWCIjhvGrW9cbhVMHSEFDOU%2FZ" for more details and action alerts. Especially if you have a fax machine or are willing to overnight a letter to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles for delivery not later than 9am Monday morning, please follow that link and take that action.) In a way, this is simply a resumption of the status quo before the U.S. Supreme Court announced in September 2007 that it would review one state's lethal injection protocol. The Court handed down its decision on April 16, thus clearing the way for...

Opinion of the Chief Justice announcing the judgment of the Court "Some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution—no matter how humane—if only from the prospect of error in following the required procedure. It is clear, then, that the Constitution does not demand the avoidance of all risk of pain in carrying out executions." Opinion of Justice Alito "The issue presented in this case—the constitutionality of a method of execution—should be kept separate from the controversial issue of the death penalty itself. If the Court wishes to reexamine the latter issue, it should do so directly, as JUSTICE STEVENS now suggests." Opinion of Justice Stevens "The risk of executing innocent defendants can be entirely eliminated by treating any penalty more severe than life imprisonment without the possibility of parole as constitutionally excessive." Opinion of Justice Scalia "I take no position on the desirability of the death penalty, except to say that ...

"Some risk of pain is inherent in any method of execution—no matter how humane—if only from the prospect of error in following the required procedure. It is clear, then, that the Constitution does not demand the avoidance of all risk of pain in carrying out executions." -- Opinion of the Chief Justice announcing the judgment of the Court.

On 27 March, a US federal appeals court overturned Mumia Abu-Jamal's death sentence, but not his conviction for murder. His lead counsel Robert R. Bryan gives his reaction to the ruling and the next steps in America's most high-profile capital case. As widely reported in the media, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit issued its long-awaited decision on March 27, 2008. Mumia and I had legal conferences that day, and have been in frequent meetings since. We view the opinion of the three-judge panel as a mixed bag with some good, some very wrong, and a remarkable dissenting opinion by a judge on racism that gives us great hope for eventual victory. A new jury trial has been ordered by the federal court on the question of whether Mumia should live or die, due to the trial judge’s unconstitutional and misleading instructions to the jury. It is a positive step in any capital case when a court finds that the death penalty was wrongfully imposed. Mumia is pleased w...

April 28, 2008: New Cuban President Raul Castro announced that all death sentences had been commuted to prison terms of 30 years to life, with the exception of three people charged with terrorism. "The Council of State decided to commute the death penalty imposed on a group of prisoners," Raul Castro announced at a Communist party Central Committee meeting, in a speech broadcast by state-run television. Castro said two Central Americans charged with hotel bombings in the 1990s that took the life of an Italian tourist, and a Cuban American charged with murder during an attempt at armed infiltration of the island, were not included and their cases were still on appeal. "This does not mean we have eliminated the death penalty from the penal code," Raul Castro said. He blasted the United States for allowing Cuban Americans to use its soil to launch violent attacks on the country. "It would be irresponsible and ingenuous to renounce the the dissuasive power that cap...

Statistically, 90% of inmates lose all contact with family, friends and loved ones after 3 years. And more often than not, losing contact with their friends and family, means to lose any positive social influence at all. Which, in the end, is a fact nobody will benefit from; neither the facility, nor the outside society. Least of all the inmates themselves. Therefore, according to Title 15 of the California Code of Regulations (General Mail Policy) 'The department encourages correspondence between inmates and persons outside the correctional facilities.' 'Persons outside the correctional facilities' - those are the inmates' children, wives, parents, siblings. Those are their family and friends - such as us! Now, it comes as no surprise that the possibilities to stay in touch with our loved ones in San Quentin State Prison are strictly limited. The more important become the remaining means of communication, such as correspondence via letters. Sadly, however, co...

April 25, 2008: China's top court interrogated a death penalty defendant via a video link for the first time since a key legal reform aimed at cutting wrongful executions, Xinhua news agency said. The reform, prompted by public outcries over a series of high-profile and wrong death sentences in recent years, had nevertheless greatly increased the workload of the top court, Chinese media have said. "The Supreme People's Court judges have had to travel to places across the country to meet the defendants. It is both time-consuming and costly," Xinhua quoted an unnamed official from the top court as saying. The top court questioned Jiang Huaquan, sentenced to death for drug trafficking in the southeastern province of Fujian, from Beijing through a video link, Xinhua said. "Distance interrogation can not only ensure face-to-face communication but also ... boost efficiency of the final review work maximally," the official said. The questioning process would be rec...

April 25, 2008: two Pakistanis and a Syrian convicted of smuggling drugs were beheaded by the sword in Saudi Arabia, the official SPA news agency quoted the Interior Ministry as saying. Pakistanis Ghul Khan Arghun Shah and Zarbadan Minajan were sentenced to death for bringing into the kingdom packets of heroin hidden in their stomachs. They were executed in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah. Separately, Syrian Ibrahim Hussein al-Jarkh, also convicted of drug smuggling, was beheaded in the northern city of Tabuk, the ministry said. Source: Agence France Presse, 25/04/2008

April 27, 2008: two men were hanged for drug trafficking in the main prison of Qom, Iran. The prisoners were identified only by their initials as 47-yeard-old M.N. and 56-yeard-old Gh. A. Speaking with a Fars reporter on the death sentence of the two drug traffickers, Hadi Tarshizi, the head of the public relations department of Qom Public and Revolution Prosecutor Office, said "these two people were arrested in Qom province and charged with drug trafficking. The sentence was carried out after being approved by the Country's Prosecutor-General. Tarshizi added "the sentence was carried out in the presence of representatives from the prosecutor-general's office and Law Enforcement Forces." Source: BBC, NCRI, 27/04/2008

April 23, 2008: States began moving forward with plans for executions this week after the US Supreme Court declined last Wednesday to review the appeals of death row inmates who had challenged lethal-injection methods in nearly a dozen states. The court had issued orders staying several executions last year and earlier this year while it weighed whether Kentucky's lethal-injection procedure constituted cruel and unusual punishment. States had postponed at least 14 scheduled executions pending the high court's decision, creating a de facto moratorium on capital punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. In a 7 to 2 vote last week, the justices said the three-drug cocktail used by Kentucky, which is similar to the one employed by the federal government and 34 other states, does not carry so great a risk of pain that it violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. With three executions already scheduled ...

THE Supreme Court concluded last week, in a 7-2 ruling, that Kentucky’s three-drug method of execution by lethal injection does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts cited a Supreme Court principle from a ruling in 1890 that defines cruelty as limited to punishments that “involve torture or a lingering death.” But the court was wrong in the 19th century, an error that has infected its jurisprudence for more than 100 years. In this nation’s landmark capital punishment cases, the resultant executions were anything but free from torture and prolonged deaths. The first of those landmark cases, the 1879 case of Wilkerson v. Utah, was cited by Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion in the Kentucky case. The court “had no difficulty concluding that death by firing squad” did not amount to cruel and unusual punishment, Justice Thomas wrote. Wallace Wilkerson might have begged to di...

April 23, 2008: Iran hanged five men convicted of murder in Tehran's Evin prison, the Fars news agency reported. Hamid, 29, Esfandiar, 35, and Mohammad, 40, were found guilty of killing other men in fights or robberies, Fars said. Mohammad, 32, was executed for murdering his wife after suspecting she was having an affair, and Ahmad, 38, stabbed a young couple to death in a burglary. Their full names were not given. Source: Agence France Presse, 23/04/2008

April 23, 2008: a ruling handed down by the Hiroshima High Court to a 27 year old man who killed a woman and her baby when he was 18 years old marks a change in precedent regarding the death penalty and opens the way for more capital punishment verdicts. There are two noteworthy points about the ruling. The first is the number of victims involved. Courts have generally given death sentences to people found to have murdered three or more people. However, if a murderer killed fewer than three people, courts only order capital punishment after taking into account to what degree the crime was premeditated. The Hiroshima High Court decision delivers the message that courts can and will hand down death sentences even when a murder is not premeditated, as was the case in the Hiroshima trial, unless there are mitigating reasons for the crime. The second point is the court's conclusion that it need not take into account the fact the murder was carried out by a minor. When the man comm...

April 22, 2008: a Japanese court overturned two earlier rulings and sentenced a man to death for a double murder he committed as a teenager, making him only the third person to be placed on death row for a crime committed as a minor since 1983. The man, now 27, whose name is being withheld because he was a juvenile at the time of the crime, was found guilty of strangling and raping Yayoi Motomura, then 23, and killing her 11-month-old daughter, Yuka. The Hiroshima High Court ruled that he had posed as a utility company employee to enter their home, indicating the crime was premeditated. Judge Yasuhide Narazaki said he found "no sufficient reasons to avoid the death sentence," public broadcaster NHK said. In 2006, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial of the murders, committed in 1999 when the defendant was 18, because the life sentences handed down by two lower courts were too light. Defense lawyers called the ruling unfair and said they would appeal to the Supreme Court. Sourc...

April 22, 2008: a stateless resident was beheaded by the sword in Saudi Arabia after he was convicted of killing a fellow stateless resident, the interior ministry said. Hmoud al-Anzi was found guilty of stabbing to death Adel al-Shammari with a knife and was executed in the northeastern region of Hafr al-Baten, the ministry said in a statement carried by the state SPA news agency. Several oil-rich Gulf Arab monarchies have a number of longtime residents deprived of citizenship, who are generally known as "bidoon" or "without" in Arabic. Many of those have settled in their countries of residence since the 1960s. Source: Agence France Presse, 22/04/2008

April 22, 2008: Iran hanged a man convicted of murder in a prison in the central city of Isfahan, the Fars news agency reported. It identified the man as Hassan M. and said he stabbed a man by the name of Mostafa to death three years ago in the hills outside Isfahan. Source: Agence France Presse, 22/04/2008