Death Penalty News

Robert Towery was denied clemency by the state of Arizona on Friday March 2, 2012 and was executed on Thursday March 8th in Florence, Arizona . He was 47 years old. The last 35 days of his life, Robert was placed on “Death Watch” where his every move was recorded and chronicled by prison officials. Robert kept a diary and he sent his writings to his attorneys. Robert authorized his lawyers to release his diary after his execution. “Death Watch Diary” is available now as a FREE PDF version at www.deathwatchdiary.com . A $.99 ebook download on amazon at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007JD3LUM is available in Kindle format. In his narrative, Robert picks at the ironies and absurdities of life in prison. He revels in simple pleasures, such as a good meal or a sports event on television. He yearns for the human contact from his last visitors, and he touchingly tries to comfort his pod-mate, who doesn’t really understand that he is going to his death. As often happens, the man who was ex...

After four decades awaiting execution, a recent court development offers hope of retrial for Masaru Okunishi. An evening in March 1961, in the central Japanese village of Kuzuo: Masaru Okunishi, a farmer in his mid- thirties, attended a meeting at a local community centre. Among those gathered that night at the community centre were Okunishi’s wife - and his mistress. Wine was served to the women, which Masaru Okunishi had carried to the meeting. The men drank sake and everyone toasted to success for their further networking. But suddenly the evening started to go wrong. After a glass or two, Okunishi’s wife, his mistress and three other local women suddenly felt unwell. A doctor was frantically summoned, but the five women died shortly afterwards. Twelve other women were taken seriously ill. The next morning, the farmer was brought to the local police station. No lawyer was present during five days of intense interrogation and by the early morning on 3 April the police had fo...

Executions around the world soared last year with countries like Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia resorting to the death penalty more often, Amnesty International has said in a new report. The rights group said on Tuesday that at least 676 people were executed in 20 countries in 2011 compared with 527 executions in 23 countries in 2010, a 78 per cent increase. Executions in the Middle East rose by almost 50 per cent last year to 558, the group said. Methods of execution used around the world included beheading, hanging, lethal injection and shooting. However, Amnesty said China executed more people than the rest of the world put together. Data on the death penalty in China is a state secret and Amnesty International no longer publishes a figure for Chinese executions, but it said they were in the thousands. Salil Shetty, Amnesty's secretary-general, said that when Amnesty was launched in 1961 only nine countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes, whereas last year only...

The mayor of Medora, a small tourist town in North Dakota, is planning to erect a gallows on his property in a bid to boost visitor numbers. Doug Ellison, 49, has asked the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission for permission to build the attraction, and intends to stage a mock hanging - with his own neck in the noose. “The matter was not on the agenda and they were a little taken aback,’’ Mr Ellison is reported to have said. “There was about five seconds of stunned silence and at first I think they thought I was joking.’’ The commission is expected to vote on the proposal next month, and Mr Ellison said he was hopeful of securing approval. “My vision is to stage a shooting, where I'd gun down someone in the street, have a trial and a hanging, all within 20 or so minutes,” he said. “Anything longer than that and the tourists would lose interest.” Click here to read the full article Source: The Telegraph, March 26, 2012

Julie Green's project "The Last Supper"  includes a depiction of an Indiana inmate's last meal, which featured a birthday cake. He had never had one before. It's the stark blue-and-white image of a simple birthday cake that lingers in Julie Green's memory of the plates she has painted. An Indiana death row inmate, on the eve of his execution in 2007, requested birthday cake as part of his last meal. "Because he had never had one before," Green said. They're killers convicted of heinous crimes, but before being condemned to death, their past shaped many things about who they became - including what they would request for their last meal on earth. "These meals speak to their histories and their families," said Green, an artist and art professor who has made painting death row inmates' final meals into a decade-long project called "The Last Supper." A bag of Jolly Ranchers or a solitary honeybun....

Main gallows at Tokyo Detention Center Following a series of wrongful imprisonment cases, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations recently proposed that death sentences be handed down unanimously in lay judge trials, presided over by 3 professional judges and 6 citizens. "People have been unfairly accused even in capital cases, thus it is necessary to introduce the unanimity rule when issuing a death sentence to prevent miscarriages of justice," the JFBA said, noting that death-row inmates have been acquitted after retrial in four postwar murder cases. Under the current system, verdicts are based on "conditional majorities" that must include at least one professional judge. Enforced on May 21, 2009, the lay judge law stipulates that the system must undergo a government review three years after its debut, if necessary. The JFBA's proposal was drafted with such a review in mind. In addition to the four death-row reversals, other murder convictions have be...

Dubai - A driver will be executed after Dubai's highest court confirmed his guiltiness of confining his friend in freezer truck then cold-bloodedly killed him by slitting his neck following a financial dispute. Mohammad Shehabuddine Haji Amir Hamzah, a 23-year-old Bangladeshi worker, will be executed soon after the Dubai Cassation Court upheld the capital punishment against him early Monday morning. "The court has unanimously confirmed the death sentence against the defendant," said Presiding Judge Mohammad Nabil Riyadh in courtroom 22 this morning. Dubai Attorney General will soon refer the case file to the ruler's court for endorsement before the execution is carried out. "The court has unanimously confirmed the death sentence against the defendant," said Presiding Judge Mohammad Nabil Riyadh in courtroom 22 this morning. Last month the Appeal Court confirmed death sentence Hamzah, who convicted of committing a premeditated murder associated with thef...

Legal action charity Reprieve has today launched a campaign calling on pharmaceutical companies to sign a ‘Pharmaceutical Hippocratic oath’ under which they pledge not to become involved in executions by lethal injection. With prisons in the US becoming increasingly desperate as supplies of key execution drugs start to run short, Reprieve is calling on ethical pharmaceutical companies to make their opposition to the use of medicines in executions clear. Under the oath, companies pledge that: “We dedicate our work to developing and distributing pharmaceuticals to the service of humanity; we will practice our profession with conscience and dignity; the right to health of the patient will be our first consideration; we condemn the use of any of our pharmaceuticals in the execution of human beings.” Reprieve is also renewing its calls for Hospira to put in place measures to ensure that its product pancuronium bromide, a paralysing agent used as the second part of a three dr...

Habibollah Golparipour, a member of Iran's Kurdish minority on death row, has been transferred to Semnan Prison, northern Iran. His family has not been allowed to visit him since his transfer, and he may be at imminent risk of execution. Habibollah Golparipour was arrested on 27 September 2009 while travelling between the north-western cities of Mahabad and Oroumieh. In a letter he wrote to the Supreme Leader which was published in December 2010 he alleged that he was tortured during interrogation. Habibollah Golparipour appeared before Branch 1 of Mahabad Revolutionary Court on 15 March 2010 and was sentenced to death after conviction of moharebeh (enmity against God) through cooperation with a proscribed armed group, the Party For Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) after what he said was a five-minute trial. On 1 August 2010, Branch 31 of the Supreme Court upheld his conviction and death sentence and again on 9 June 2011 after judicial review. According to the court documents, Habibo...

An Iranian teacher who was convicted of moharebeh (enmity against God) and sentenced to death has had his request for pardon rejected. He is at risk of imminent execution. The teacher, Abdolreza Ghanbari, was arrested at his workplace after anti-government demonstrations took place on 27 December 2009 to mark the Ashoura religious commemorations, at the end of six months of protests following the disputed presidential election of 2009. Held in Evin Prison since his arrest, where he was reportedly tortured or otherwise ill-treated and denied access to a lawyer. Abdolreza Ghanbari was tried unfairly before Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court on 30 January 2010 and sentenced to death for moharebeh (enmity against God) for alleged links with the banned opposition group, the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). The sentence was upheld on appeal, and his request for a pardon from the Amnesty and Clemency Commission was rejected at the end of February 2012. Once his de...

China will abolish the transplanting of organs from executed prisoners within five years and try to spur more citizens to donate, a top health official says. Rights groups call transplants from condemned prisoners a form of abuse and allege that the government, which executes far more people than any other country, pressures them to donate organs. The government, however, says prisoners volunteer, and that the change is being made because prisoners are less healthy than the general population. The official Xinhua news agency quoted the vice-health minister, Huang Jiefu, as saying on Thursday that prisoner organ donations are not ideal because condemned inmates have high rates of fungal and bacterial infections. "Therefore, the long-term survival rates for people with transplanted organs in China are always below those of people in other countries," Xinhua paraphrased Huang as saying. Organ donations from condemned prisoners will be abolished within five years,Huang told a...

Japanese Death Row The Miyazaki branch of the Fukuoka High Court on Thursday upheld the death sentence for a 24-year-old man convicted of killing his wife, baby and mother-in-law in the city of Miyazaki in March 2010. Siding with the lay-judge trial decision handed down by the Miyazaki District Court in 2010, presiding Judge Takumi Enomoto said the defendant, Akihiro Okumoto, committed "cold-blooded and atrocious crimes" because of his "self-indulgent and self-centered motives." It is the second case in which capital punishment in a lay-judge trial has been appealed, and the second in which the sentence has been upheld. Defense lawyers had sought life imprisonment, saying the district court reached the wrong conclusion regarding motive. In the appeal, handled only by professional judges, Okumoto was given a psychiatric test in an attempt to establish his motive. Judge Enomoto said the test shows that Okumoto committed the killings mainly because his mother-in...

William Mitchell A 61-year-old Mississippi man was executed Thursday for the 1995 slaying of a woman, who disappeared from convenience store where she worked in Biloxi. William Mitchell was pronounced dead at 6:20 p.m. Thursday after a lethal injection. Mitchell was convicted in the Nov. 21, 1995, slaying of 38-year-old Patty Milliken, who disappeared after walking out of the Majik Mart convenience store where she worked to have a cigarette with Mitchell. Her body was found the next day under a bridge. She had been "strangled, beaten, sexually assaulted and repeatedly run over by a vehicle," according to court records. Mitchell was convicted of capital murder in Harrison County in 1998. The U.S. Supreme Court earlier Thursday declined to stop Mitchell's execution. Mitchell becomes the 3rd condemned inmate in Mississippi to be put to death this year, and the 18th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1983. Mitchell becomes the 11th condemned inmat...