Death Penalty News

Robert Jackson III SMYRNA, Del. (AP) — Delaware carried out its first execution since 2005 early Friday, putting to death a man who was convicted of killing a woman with an ax during a burglary nearly two decades ago. Robert Jackson III was pronounced dead at 12:12 a.m. after being given a lethal injection at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna. Jackson, 38, lifted his head when asked for his last words shortly after midnight. Searching the window between the execution chamber and witnesses, he asked if the two children of the victim, Elizabeth Girardi, were watching. "Are the Girardis in there? Christopher and Claudia, if you are in there, I've never faulted you for your anger. I would have been mad myself," he said, going on to deny he killed their mother. He suggested that his accomplice in the burglary, Anthony Lachette, was the killer. "Tony's laughing his ass off right now because you're about to watch an innocent man die. This isn...

Ajamal Kasab The 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks accused Ajamal Kasab on Friday moved the Supreme Court challenging the Mumbai high court order awarding him death sentence for his crime. According to reports, the request by Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab had been filed via jail authorities in Mumbai, where he has been held since the attacks, and lodged with the secretary general of the court. Kasab was convicted by the Bombay high court for murder, conspiracy and waging war against the country, and was sentenced to death. He has been lodged in the Arthur Road prison since 2008. According to reports, Kasab had recently gone into a shell and stopped interacting with anyone. Kasab is not allowed to meet other inmates. He isn't allowed to read newspapers, or even step out of his cell. Previously, Kasab was quite conversational and would keep the security guards outside his cell busy with his questions. Source: The Hindustan Times , July 29, 2011 Mumbai gunman Qasab appeals against death...

The Court of Criminal Appeals today stayed the execution of Larry Swearingen, sending the case back to the trial court for further review. Swearingen was convicted of the 1998 kidnap-rape-murder of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter in Montgomery County. Prosecutors have said – and the CCA has previously agreed – that a "mountain" of evidence links Swearingen to the college student's death. Trotter disappeared on December 8, 1998 from the Montgomery College campus; Swearingen was seen with her at the college shortly before she disappeared. He was arrested, on outstanding warrants, three days later and has remained behind bars since then. Trotter's body was not found until January 2, 1999, off a dirt road near Lake Conroe in the Sam Houston National Forest. The theory was that Swearingen killed Trotter on Dec. 8, after she rebuffed his sexual advances, and he then dumped her body, that same day, in the forest. But much of the evidence linking Swearingen to the case was ci...

It has been 12 years since Pennsylvania executed a convicted killer, but in that time, death row has still cost taxpayers more than $27 million. Every year, the state Department of Corrections spends an estimated $10,000 more for each inmate on the country's fourth largest death row compared to other prisoners. That's despite a de facto halt on capital punishment in Pennsylvania for all but prisoners who voluntarily go to their executions. The last person put to death against his will was in 1962, half a century ago. The most recent to be executed, in 1999, was Philadelphia torture-murderer Gary Heidnik — and only because he bowed to it by waiving his appeals. Since then, the state has housed on average 227 inmates a year facing death sentences, for an additional cost of $27.24 million, or $2.27 million annually. And this when executions have ceased. The numbers, provided after a request by The Morning Call, offer a peek into the expense of a system in which a death row pris...

Yong Vui Kong Member of parliament Datuk Chua Soon Bui has submitted a memorandum of appeal on Yong Vui Kong to Datuk Husein Hanif, the new Ambassador and Permanent Mission of Malaysia to the United Nations (UN) at the UN headquarters, New York, in July. Chua said she briefed Husein that Vui Kong, a young Malaysian from Sandakan, who is now awaiting execution in Singapore for drug trafficking, was facing injustice. Reference was made to Vui Kong’s counsel, M Ravi, that the Chief Justice of Singapore, Chan Sek Keong, should recuse or disqualify himself from hearing the youth’s appeal as he was in a position where conflict of interest occurred. The Chief Justice had rejected the application despite it was validly made. As a result, Vui Kong suffered a breach of customary international law as a fair trial had been denied to him. Vui Kong and his family had appealed to the Malaysian government to take the matter before the United Nations for adjudication in order to protect its citi...

The EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton expressed deep concern over the fact that Iran has become a world leader in executions in the first 1/2 of this year, RIA Novosti said. "In this regard, the EU calls for Iran, as well as all the other countries that insist on maintaining the death penalty, to stop the death sentences and to impose a moratorium on the death penalty," Ashton said. The European Union imposed sanctions against 32 representatives of the Iranian leadership in connection with their involvement in human rights violations in April. The sanctions include freezing the assets of Iranian officials and a ban on their entry into the EU countries. The EU, in particular, strongly condemns the executions, the repression against Iranian citizens, human rights activists, lawyers, journalists, bloggers, members of ethnic and religious minorities, as well as the opposition. Source: Trend, July 28, 2011

Three more death penalty states are preparing to adopt a new lethal injection drug this summer, despite evidence that it has caused botched executions and intense suffering to prisoners across the USA. Delaware plans to use the untested barbiturate pentobarbital – in place of the anaesthetic sodium thiopental, which has been hit by domestic shortages – for the first time this Friday [July 29] in the execution of Robert Jackson. Virginia will use the same drug in the execution of Jerry Jackson on August 18. Florida had planned to execute Manuel Valle, a Cuban with close ties to Spain, using pentobarbital on August 2, but the State Supreme Court issued a stay until September due to concerns over whether use of the drug could lead to unnecessary pain and suffering. The concerns stem from reports of a number of botched executions using pentobarbital, notably that of Roy Willard Blankenship in Georgia earlier this year, who suffered a "thrashing, jerking death," dur...

Alan Shadrake Alan Shadrake's book about the country's brutal judicial regime landed him with a six-week prison sentence there. What was the experience like? Alan Shadrake's career sparked into life when he uprooted his young family and relocated to Berlin shortly after the wall went up in 1961. Now the 76-year-old great-grandfather is enjoying a new lease of life after being imprisoned for writing a book that dared to criticise the judiciary in Singapore. (...) After his third wife died, Shadrake was just about to go to Cuba when a journalist friend phoned and asked him to write some travel stories about Singapore. So he flew to south-east Asia. On his only night off he was sitting alone at a bar when he met a Singaporean-Chinese woman who was to become his fourth wife. "The very morning I moved into her flat in Singapore I switched the TV on and there was an announcement about a British guy wanted for two murders who had run off to Australia," remembers Sh...

In a popular trial held in Minya Governorate on Tuesday, both ex-president Hosni Mubarak and former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly were sentenced to death for killing protesters and misappropriating the nation’s money. The trial was organized by a human rights organization and the Lawyer’s Syndicate’s committee for freedoms in Minya. The popular court said that Mubarak and Adly committed premeditated murder in killing unarmed protesters. The court also said that the accused witnessed protesters being shot without attempting to stop the bloodshed because they intended to kill some and disperse the rest. The mock trial took place as a Cairo court ordered former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly to stand trial next week alongside deposed President Hosni Mubarak. Both are charged with ordering the killing of protesters during the 25 January revolution. Adly has already been sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption. It is still unclear whether the trial will be held in Cairo or Sha...

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The European Union and UK foreign office condemned the execution of two people in Gaza on Tuesday, calling on Hamas authorities to abide by the de facto moratorium on the use of the death penalty by the Palestinian Authority. EU representations in Jerusalem and Ramallah issued a joint statement on Wednesday urging the government in Gaza to "refrain from carrying out any further executions of prisoners ... pending abolition of the death penalty in line with the global trend." The European body "considers capital punishment to be cruel and inhuman, failing to provide deterrence to criminal behavior," the statement said. Also Wednesday, UK Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East and North Africa Alistair Burt highlighted "serious concerns about the application of the rule of law in Gaza." "The UK opposes the death penalty in all circumstances," the statement from the UK foreign office said. "It is particularly ...

SP Singh DUBAI -- The family representative of a man who was murdered last year in a fight over alcohol bootlegging signed pardon papers in the Sharjah Appeals court yesterday, waiving the death penalty against 17 found guilty of killing the Pakistani in exchange for nearly Dh3.4million in blood money. Negotiators on behalf of the convicted men deposited the remainder of the unusually high diyyah payment with the court's treasury - a move that will help the 17 men escape death. The payment set the stage for the final curtain to fall in a saga that has lasted more than two years and generated numerous court appearances. The court will hand down a final prison sentence on September 12. The defence asked during yesterday's hearing that the death penalty be dropped and that the court considers the 31 months the defendants have already spent in prison as enough punishment. Yesterday, the court received an official waiver from the family relinquishing Al Qasas rights - a Shari...

Amnesty International has received information that two Saudi Arabian brothers Muhammad Jaber Shahbah al-Ja'id and Sa'ud Jaber Shahbah al-Ja'id are at imminent risk of execution. Muhammad Jaber Shahbah al-Ja’id and Sa’ud Jaber Shahbah al-Ja’id, who are both married and have children, were sentenced to death in late December 1998 by a court in Mecca, for the murder of another man. Their sentences were ratified in late April 2011 by the King and we issued an Urgent Action which urged the King to halt their impending executions. Amnesty International has since received information from Saudi Arabia that both executions may happen imminently, increasing the need for urgent appeals on behalf of the brothers. The death sentences were imposed following what appear to have been unfair trial proceedings. According to the lawyers who have assisted them after their sentences, neither of the two brothers had access to a lawyer at the original trial and Sa'ud Jaber Shahbah al-Ja...

27 July 2011 – The United Nations Human Rights Committee today accused Belarus of violating its international agreements by executing two persons while their cases were still under review by the committee. The committee – an independent body supervising compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) – expressed “dismay” that the executions were the second such breach by Belarus in two years. According to a press statement issued by the committee, Oleg Grishkovtsov and Andrei Burdyko had alleged that they were subjected to torture at the pre-trial investigation stage and did not receive a fair trial. Media reports indicated the two were found guilty of premeditated murder, armed assault, arson, kidnapping of a minor, theft and robbery. The committee had asked authorities in Belarus not to carry out the executions while their cases were under consideration. The exact date of the executions remains unknown but it is presumed that they took place b...