Death Penalty News

Below is a message from Andrea Bible, of the National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women. Her email appeared in our mailboxes today, and with her permission, we're sharing it with you. It's long, but incredibly important. We thank her, the National Clearinghouse, and all of you for what you do. - National Coalition To Abolish the Death Penalty Dear ones: Today I am grieving. I am grieving because last night, just after 9pm Eastern time, people in the State of Virginia killed Teresa Lewis. I am grieving because the people who were given the power to decide whether or not to kill Teresa Lewis were unswayed by new evidence showing she was not the mastermind behind the crimes, as the judge who sentenced her to death believed her to be. I am grieving because we live in a country where politicians and the courts believe it is ok to use the state's resources to kill someone. I am grieving because we live in a country where politicians and the courts believe it i...

The Georgia Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for Brandon Rhode effective until 4pm on Monday. Amnesty International Statement: "Executing Rhode on the heels of his attempted suicide is especially cruel and inhuman," said Laura Moye, director of AIUSA's Death Penalty Abolition Campaign. "To strap Rhode’s stitched up body to a gurney, fresh with razor cuts to his wrists and neck, is particularly grizzly. He may not be innocent, but he is a human being and what is done to him speaks volumes about our society's values. Georgia officials may find it inconvenient that Rhode tried to kill himself before they could, but questions about his current competency to face the ultimate punishment must be properly addressed. We hope that the courts or State Board of Pardons and Paroles will recognize the unusual and disturbing nature of this case and stay the execution." To say that the circumstances surrounding the past few days have been outrageous is an u...

Shortage of anesthetic has caused delays in killings in several states The company that makes the drug Ohio uses to execute condemned prisoners wants the state to stop killing people with its anesthetic. "Hospira provides these products because they improve or save lives and markets them solely for use as indicated on the product labeling," wrote Dr. Kees Groenhout, the Illinois company's vice president for clinical research and development, in a letter obtained by The Dispatch. "As such, we do not support the use of any our products in capital-punishment procedures." The letter protesting that the purpose of Hospira's drug has been altered went to Ohio and the 49 other states. But the state has no intention of changing its one-drug method of execution. However, Ohio might be forced to put lethal injection on temporary hold next year because of a national shortage of the drug. Prison officials have enough thiopental sodium - th...

Iran Human Rights, September 22: Two people were hanged in Kerman (southeast of Iran) and Aran-Bigdel (province of Isfahan, Central Iran) according to the official Iranian media. The semi-official Iranian daily Kayhan reported that one person was hanged in the town of Aran-Bigdel convicted of drug trafficking. The report didn’t mention the person’s name and age, and whether he/she was executed in public or inside the prison. According to the official website of the Iranian judiciary in Kerman, a man identified as "Majid Sh." was hanged in the prison of Kerman. The man was convicted of rape in 2007 according to the report. According to official Iranian sources, since last week one person has been executed in Shirvan (15 September), one man in Varamin (16 September), one man in Zahedan (19 September), three men in Ahvaz (20 September) and three people in Yazd (20 September). Thus along with today’s reported two executions, 11 people have been executed in one week in Iran. ...

Brandon Rhode recovering after suicide attempt A federal judge Thursday denied a condemned inmate's request for a stay of execution so an investigation can be carried out to find out how he got razor blades and used them to try to commit suicide hours before his scheduled execution on Tuesday. But U.S. District Judge Bill Duffey ordered the Department of Corrections to make sure Brandon Rhode is no longer a danger to himself. The DOC's existing protections did not prevent him from seriously injuring himself, the judge noted. Rhode, convicted of a triple murder, is now scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection at 7 p.m. Friday. Duffey ordered the DOC to search Rhode's cell for all razors, belts or T-shirts and to remove them if any are found. 2 guards -- and not the guards who were assigned to watch him when he tried to kill himself -- must continuously observe Rhode, the judge said. During a Thursday morning hearing, Rhode's lawyer, William M...

Teresa Lewis A woman convicted of orchestrating a plot that led to the murders of her husband and stepson was executed in Virginia Thursday night, becoming the first woman executed in the state in almost a century. The woman, Teresa Lewis , 41, died by lethal injection at a correctional facility in southeastern Virginia. With a crowd of death penalty opponents protesting outside, Ms. Lewis was pronounced dead at 9:13 p.m., the Associated Press reported, citing officials at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. She was the 12th woman executed in the United States since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The case against Ms. Lewis, the first woman executed in the country since 2005, had drawn international attention. Many of her supporters questioned the fairness of her sentence — her co-conspirators, who fired the fatal shots, were spared capital punishment — and doubts were raised about her mental capacity. Psychologists involved in her case said she was borderlin...

San Quentin's new death chamber California has not put anyone to death in nearly 5 years. Litigation around the state’s lethal injection procedures has led to a de facto moratorium on executions. But that moratorium may come to a sudden end this Wednesday (9/29), when Albert Greenwood Brown is scheduled to be killed shortly after midnight. The legal issues surrounding California’s method of killing its prisoners have not been fully resolved, yet the state is asserting that executions should be restarted anyway. But what for? California has by far the nation’s largest death row, with over 700 inmates, and soaks its taxpayers for upwards of $100 million per year for the privilege of having a death penalty. Over $800,000 was spent on a new lethal injection chamber which contains two things – a gurney and a clock. And hundreds of millions more are going to build a new death row. Capital punishment in California (and elsewhere) is a money pit. Millions of dollars get tossed i...

A death-row inmate is seeking a stay of execution on allegations that prison guards gave him the razor blades he tried to kill himself with on Tuesday. At a hearing in federal court, a lawyer for Brandon Rhode said 2 guards gave razor blades to the condemned killer shortly before he tried to commit suicide on Tuesday. After the suicide attempt, Rhode was rushed to a hospital. His execution, which was to be carried out Tuesday, was postponed. On Thursday, William Montross asked U.S. District Judge Bill Duffey to postpone the execution, now rescheduled for 9 a.m. Friday, so an investigation can be conducted to find out what happened. Joe Drolet, a lawyer for the state Attorney General's Office, opposed the stay of execution and disputed the allegations. Rhode had concealed the razor blade and used it to cut his neck and arms while laying under a blanket, Drolet said. At that time, he was being observed by guards, who could not see what was happening under the blanket and who too...

In the wake of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s trip to New York City this week to attend the UN General Assembly, human rights lawyer Mohammad Mostafaei (left) writes a powerful letter to world leaders to provide them with a general overview of the human rights violations and abuses committed by the Islamic Republic of Iran since its inception. In the Name of God Your Excellencies, With Salutations and Greetings, Peace, international and national security, social, economic, judicial and political stability and the privileges of a peaceful life, and, even more importantly, equality, avoidance of violence, tyranny, oppression and other unjust discriminations can only reach a desirable conclusion worthy of proper human dignity when all of the world leaders show determination and take steps in preserving human rights and human dignity and convince countries that abuse human rights to safeguard the inherent human dignity and grace. As Mr. Ahmadinejad’s trip to New York and his speech at the Uni...

The Texas Forensic Science Commission rebelled Friday against its head commissioner, refusing to accept his draft report clearing arson investigators of misconduct or negligence in a 1991 fatal fire where flawed science was used to determine the blaze was intentionally set. Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for killing his three children by setting that blaze. Texas may have executed an innocent man on Gov. Rick Perry's watch if the fire was accidental. "There's a lot of work to be done still," Tarrant County Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani, a member of the commission, said after the meeting. "That's why the commission didn't approve the draft." The commission instead plans to question arson experts at a future meeting about investigation standards at the time of the fire and will look into whether the investigators knew or should have known the science that led them to assume the fire was caused by arson was flawed. That puts the comm...

As Teresa Lewis is set to become the first woman to be executed in the US for five years, Briton Linda Carty continues to await the same fate for killing a young mother in Texas. Peter Marshall meets Carty, a St Kitts-born grandmother, and investigates why campaigners say her 2002 trial was flawed. Since the death penalty was restored in Texas in 1982, the US state has put to death 462 people. Just three of them were women. Next in line for the lethal injection in America's busiest execution chamber is British grandmother Linda Carty. The 51-year-old, born in a former British colony in the Caribbean, stands convicted of the kidnap and murder of Joana Rodriguez - seized with her four-day-old son by three men involved in a drugs gang in May 2001. The baby was later discovered unharmed in a car, but Ms Rodriguez was found suffocated with duct tape on her mouth and a plastic bag over her head. Carty, convicted and sentenced to death in 2002 for ordering the crime, has always maint...

Teresa Lewis Teresa Lewis , who is set for execution Thursday evening, is down to her last choice: her final meal. She will be the 1st woman executed in Virginia in nearly a century. Her legal odyssey ended Tuesday night when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear her appeal . Before the court ruled, supporters of Lewis, who suffers from borderline mental retardation, posted a recording on the Web of Lewis singing the gospel hymn "I Need a Miracle." As the recording plays, pictures of Lewis and her daughter flash on the screen. With a scheduled 9 p.m. EDT execution, Virginia Department of Corrections rules allow Lewis to have only 1 visit with immediate family before she is put to death by lethal injection. Attorneys, clergy and spiritual advisors are allowed to visit up until the time of execution. Victim's rights advocates were unsympathetic to her appeal, pointing out the seriousness of her crime. According to court records, in 2002, Lewis participated in a pla...

Brandon Rhode (left), a 31-year-old white man, is due to be executed in Georgia, USA, at 9pm on 24 September. He was due to be put to death on the evening of 21 September, but his execution was stayed by the Georgia Supreme Court after Brandon Rhode attempted suicide . Brandon Rhode was scheduled to be killed by lethal injection at 7pm on 21 September 2010. That morning, his lawyers filed a motion for an emergency stay of execution in the Georgia Supreme Court. The lawyers had learned that Brandon Rhode had attempted suicide that morning and had been moved from death row for treatment at an undisclosed location. The motion stated that they had been given no information on their client’s “whereabouts, physical condition, mental condition, details of treatment, or drugs he may have ingested or been administered”. Effectively, Brandon Rhode was “without counsel and without access to the courts and remedies on the day of his scheduled execution”. The lawyers argued that Brandon Rhode coul...

San Quentin's new execution chamber & gurney Execution is going to be a much more visible and sterile experience at San Quentin State Prison from now on. Prison officials offered the first glimpse of their new lethal injection center Tuesday - one week ahead of a planned execution few think will actually be carried out - and the differences between this stark-white place and the old apple-green gas chamber are marked. The spacious $853,000 center has three brightly lit witness viewing rooms, and each gives a considerably better view than the cramped gas chamber's lone, poorly illuminated viewing room. But it is unclear whether there will be any witnesses at 12:01 a.m. next Wednesday to see rapist-murderer Albert Greenwood Brown, 56, put to death as planned. That's because the execution itself is in doubt. Capital punishment in California has been blocked since 2006 by two state lawsuits contending improper procedures in planning injections and one federal suit ...