Death Penalty News

Time to retire unworkable penalty We are former Nebraska judges united in our call to retain LB 268, which was passed by the Nebraska Legislature in 2015 repealing the state’s death penalty and leaving in place life imprisonment. Each of us is intimately familiar with our state’s legal system, and committed to seeing it function in an effective manner that protects Nebraskans. Our legal experience has led us to conclude that the death penalty is an unworkable and failed policy. In the four decades since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, states have tinkered with death penalty statutes, repeatedly promising that they can fix them. The evidence is clear that they cannot. Here is the reason why: You cannot design an efficient system of capital punishment, which delivers punishment swiftly, while also avoiding the risk of executing the innocent. States that hold onto the death penalty end up with a government program that fails on both these fronts — it is in...

Click here to sign Reprieve's online clemency petition. Over 60 lawyers from common-law countries around the world have urged Pakistan’s President to halt the execution of a severely mentally ill man next Wednesday (2nd November). A series of medical assessments have confirmed that death row prisoner Imdad Ali is “insane,” and a government psychiatrist who has been treating him for eight years has confirmed that there is “no doubt…that he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.” Despite this, last week Pakistan’s ministry of the interior confirmed that the authorities plan to hang Mr Ali this Wednesday (2nd). Mr Ali’s lawyer at Justice Project Pakistan (JPP), Sarah Belal, has said that Mr Ali is unable to understand that he faces execution. In a letter sent to the President of Pakistan, Mamnoon Hussain, 65 lawyers who are experts on capital cases from the USA, UK, India, Singapore, Nigeria, Botswana and Malawi wrote that: "[We] note with some dismay the im...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkish President Erdogan has said his country's parliament will consider whether to reintroduce the death penalty. Such a move would likely put Turkey on a collision course with the European Union. In a speech in Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday [October 29, 2016] that he would ask parliament to consider reintroducing the death penalty. "Our government will take this [proposal on capital punishment] to parliament," Erdogan said. "I am convinced that parliament will approve it, and when it comes back to me, I will ratify it." If reinstated, the punishment could be used for those found guilty of organizing a July coup that sought to remove Erdogan from power. Some 35,000 people have been arrested in connection with the failed coup. Turkey did away with capital punishment in 2004 during negotiations to join the European Union, which has outlawed capital punishment and requi...

Click here to sign Reprieve's online clemency petition Court had earlier ruled that schizophrenia was not an illness With hope in her eyes, the wife of a schizophrenic convict once again knocked the door of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, asking for a review petition before her husband's execution, which is scheduled to be held on November 2. Safia Bano, wife of the convict moved an early hearing application for her husband case on October 31. "Demand that stay for death execution petition may kindly be heard on an urgent basis on October 31 because if the application is not heard on the same day then the petition would become infructuous and the husband of the petitioner would be hanged on November 2 in the early morning," Bano stated in her application. Despite the pendency of review petition, a session court in Vehari issued the death warrant for Imdad Ali aged 50, who was awarded death penalty in 2001 over a shooting case. Imdad, the convicted, has s...

Click here to sign Reprieve's online clemency petition European Union politicians have warned that Pakistan’s preferential trade status with the EU could be under threat from an executions drive in the country that has seen over 400 people hanged since 2014. EU trade delegates are due to visit the country on Monday (31st) – two days before the scheduled hanging of a severely mentally ill prisoner. Officials from the EU who oversee Pakistan’s special ‘GSP plus’ trade status with Europe will visit Pakistan from Monday next week to assess whether the government has honoured its obligations under the scheme, which including abiding by certain human rights standards. The visit takes place in the week that Imdad Ali – a prisoner who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia – is to face execution, on Wednesday (2nd). Government psychiatrists have confirmed Mr Ali’s illness, concluding that he is “insane.” The execution of mentally ill people is prohibited under Pakistani and internati...

"Nebraska spends an average of $14.6 million annually to keep the death penalty." Dr. Ernie Goss, professor of economics at Creighton University, is frustrated with death penalty proponents' constant challenge of his study on the cost of capital punishment in Nebraska . So on Friday, he issued a challenge of his own. Goss wants Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson, who has attacked the study, to appear with him at a public forum to debate it. It appears Peterson is turning down the invitation. Goss sent a letter to Peterson Friday saying there have been repeated misstatements, half truths, and misrepresentations from the Attorney General's office about the cost analysis. It showed Nebraska spends an average of $14.6 million annually to keep the death penalty, beyond what life imprisonment costs the state. "The economic impact of the death penalty is an important component of the death penalty discussion, and voters deserve to have the real...

Steven Frederick Spears Georgia on Thursday scheduled the lethal injection of Steven Frederick Spears, who thus far has chosen not to fight his death sentence for murdering his girlfriend in 2001. If he dies by lethal injection on Nov. 16 as scheduled, Spears, 54, will be the 8th person Georgia has executed this year, which is more than any other state. Last week, Georgia executed Gregory Lawler for murdering an Atlanta police officer in 1997. His lethal injection was Georgia's 7th since Feb. 3, more than any other year since the death penalty was reinstated nationwide in 1976. Spears, now 54, readily admitted he murdered his ex-girlfriend, Sherri Holland, in the early-morning hours of August 25, 2001, in Lumpkin County. "I loved her that much. I told her I wasn't letting her go, and I didn't," Spears said in his confession. "(If) I had to do it again, I'd do it." Spears told friends and detectives that he had warned Holland ...

Concerns have been raised over wrongful executions in Pakistan, after two brothers who had already been hanged were found to be innocent. The news comes amid fears for a mentally ill prisoner who is due to be executed on Wednesday (2nd), in violation of Pakistani and international law.  The wife of Imdad Ali, a severely mentally ill man, has asked President Mamnoon Hussain to grant mercy to her husband before his scheduled hanging on Wednesday , but has had no response. Government psychiatrists have confirmed that Mr Ali suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. Mr Ali is held in isolation, and is unaware that he faces execution. Click here to sign Reprieve's online clemency petition. The execution of mentally ill people is prohibited under Pakistani and international law, and fears of a wrongful execution for Mr Ali have grown since a human rights committee in Pakistan's upper house of parliament highlighted yesterday that two brothers were recently acquitted after they had bee...

President Rodrigo Duterte TOKYO— Before it goes on Christmas break, the House of Representatives plans to approve on third and final reading a bill that would bring back the death penalty, a priority measure of President Rodrigo Duterte, who has often threatened to kill criminals. Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said the House would work to approve state-sanctioned killings of drug convicts and those involved in heinous crimes. “I don’t know with the Senate, I don’t control it, but as far as the House is concerned, we will approve it before the Christmas break,” Alvarez told reporters in Tokyo, where he joined Mr. Duterte on his official visit to Japan. He said the House plans to leave it up to the executive to set the method for executing hardened criminals. “If they want to hang them, shoot them by firing squad, it’s up to them. The criminals would be dead either way,” he said. He also defended the controversial measure, saying it did not work before because the s...

Jessica Wongso sits in court next to her lawyer. Jakarta. High-profile coffee murder suspect Jessica Kumala Wongso was sentenced to 20 years in prison by the Central Jakarta District Court on Thursday (27/10) for the premeditated murder of 27-year-old Wayan Mirna Salihin. Presiding judge Kisworo found Jessica guilty of killing her friend Mirna by spiking her coffee with cyanide at a café in the upmarket Grand Indonesia shopping mall in Central Jakarta in January this year. The sentence met the prosecutors' demand of 20 years' imprisonment. Jessica's lawyer, Otto Hasibuan, said his client will appeal the verdict. "We are disappointed with the verdict, since the panel of judges did not take our evidence into account," Otto said. Prosecutors accused Jessica of intentionally killing Mirna over a personal dispute dating back to June 2015, when they were both students at Billy Blue College in Sydney, Australia. Prosecutors provided at least ...

Hassan Rouhani (L), Recep Erdogan (center), Ali Khamenei (R) Three Turkish citizens were reportedly executed in Iran 11 days after Erdogan paid an official visit to Tehran. Iran Human Rights (October 27 2016): Iran Human Rights (IHR) has discovered that three Turkish citizens were executed in Iran last year on April 18, 2015. The executions took place 11 days after Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Tehran on an official visit with both Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. According to information received by Iran Human Rights from confirmed sources, the three Turkish citizens were hanged on April 18, 2015 at Mashhad's Vakilabad Prison for alleged drug related offenses. According to close sources, the three men were convicted of drug charges in three separate cases. They have been identified as: Mehmet (Mohammad) Yilmaz, Faruk Güner (46 years old), and Matin (surname unknown at this time). These three pr...

Click here to sign Reprieve's online clemency petition Imdad Ali lives, or exists, in Pakistan. He is on death row. He may not live much longer. Indeed, he very well may die, thrashing in the hangman's noose, as early as next Wednesday. [UPDATE: Since this was written, Imdad's execution date has been set for Wednesday, 2 November, 2016 - please join our urgent call on Pakistan's President to stop the hanging going ahead] On October 20th, the Supreme Court of Pakistan affirmed his death sentence. The Court used some odd language . He was, they wrote in the strange words of Pakistan capital cases, "awarded a death sentence by the trial court" (much as if he had received an OBE from Her Majesty). After this, a "black warrant" was issued authorising his execution. The question posed to the court was whether his long history of paranoid schizophrenia should spare him from the gallows. In the appeal, his lawyer asked - or "respectful...