Death Penalty News

William "Tommy" Zeigler William "Tommy" Zeigler, the 71-year-old man who has spent the last 4 decades on death row for the murders of 4 people, will not be allowed to test evidence in his case with touch DNA technology, the Florida Supreme Court ruled Friday. Zeigler was convicted of killing his wife, her parents and another man at his Winter Garden furniture store on Dec. 24, 1975.  The case has long attracted those skeptical of the evidence against Zeigler, including 1 of the original investigators and a former Orlando Sentinel newspaper editor.  It was also the subject of a 1992 book called Fatal Flaw . In 2015, his attorneys filed a motion seeking court approval to use a special DNA test to examine evidence, such as clothing and the guns found at the scene, presented at the trial.  A circuit court denied the motion, and his attorneys appealed to the state's highest court.  While Zeigler sits on death row awaiting an execution dat...

Ledell Lee Arkansas executed Ledell Lee on Thursday night , after it fought and won a complex and sometimes confusing legal battle. The state executed him in spite of Lee's insistence that he was not guilty of murdering Debra Rees, a crime committed more than 20 years ago. It did so despite doubts about whether he had sufficient intellectual capacity to be "eligible" for the death penalty. The state rushed to put Lee to death before its supply of midazolam expired, claiming that it had a compelling interest in carrying out the "lawful" decision of the jury which sentenced him and that the execution would bring closure to the Rees family. Yet the way it went about doing so hardly seems likely to bring consolation to those who grieve at that family's terrible loss - and raises many concerns about the potential miscarriage of justice. A 2014 report by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 1 in every 25 people given a death sentence are in...

The FDA banned shipments of execution drugs states have been trying to get for months. BuzzFeed News obtained the letter that shows why. On Thursday, the federal government formally blocked 2 shipments of a massive amount of execution drugs on their way to Texas and Arizona. The decision to block the shipments came after months of legal arguments back-and-forth between the states and the Food and Drug Administration. In announcing the conclusion, the FDA did not include its full decision or the reasons it came to its conclusion that the drugs can't enter the United States. But the full decision shows the FDA said its hands were tied. BuzzFeed News obtained a redacted copy on Friday through an open records request. In the decision, the FDA pointed to a 2012 court decision that requires the government block shipments of sodium thiopental, an outdated anesthetic, when the shipments appear to violate the law. The states argued "that [the case] was 'wrong...

Supreme Court (left) Justice Neil M. Gorsuch and President Donald Trump Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch cast his 1st consequential vote Thursday night, siding with the court's other 4 conservatives in denying a stay request from Arkansas death row inmates facing execution. Hours later, the state executed 1 of the men, the 1st lethal injection carried out there since 2005. New justices have described being the final word on whether a death row inmate is executed - often during a late-night, last-chance appeal to the Supreme Court - as a time when the responsibility of the role crystallizes. Indeed, one of the court's most solid death-penalty supporters, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., flinched the 1st time he was faced with the choice. The day after his 2006 swearing-in, Alito joined the court's liberals in upholding a stay that kept Missouri from going forward with an execution. Gorsuch's reasoning for his vote in not known. Neither he nor the other ...

Artur Segarra Artur Segarra found guilty of murdering and dismembering David Bernat in bid to access his savings A Spanish national was on Friday given the death sentence after being found guilty by a Thai court of murdering fellow countryman David Bernat in Bangkok.  The victim had traveled to the Asian country in January 2016 for a vacation. Hours after arriving, he met with Segarra to have drinks, and after midnight, the pair went to the condemned man's apartment.  There he was held captive for 6 days, until he was killed and dismembered by Segarra, according to the police investigation into the case. Segarra will have 2 chances to appeal the sentence, at the Thai Appeal Court and the country's Supreme Court. If the appeals process fails to overturn the death penalty, he can apply to the Royal Family for a pardon, which could see a lesser punishment applied. According to the investigators assigned to the case, Segarra extorted his victim in order to g...

Dylann Roof Convicted church shooter Dylann Roof has been transferred to death row at Terre Haute Federal Prison in Indiana — the facility that houses male inmates awaiting execution under the federal government. Roof, the first person to be convicted of a federal hate crime and sentenced to the death penalty, was removed from custody in Al Cannon Detention Center in North Charleston, South Carolina, on Friday and transferred to Terre Haute, prison records show. Terre Haute, a medium-security prison where inmates are put to death by lethal injection, currently houses 1,338 inmates . In January, a jury sentenced the self-proclaimed white supremacist to death for killing nine black worshipers in June 2015 at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston during a Bible study. The 23-year-old told FBI agents that he was trying to start a race war. He also pleaded guilty to nine counts of state murder charges on April 10. Roof is now among the long list of well-known criminals ...

The conflict in Arkansas is the latest to politicize the death penalty — but for families of the victims and the prisoners, it also resurfaces the complicated issues of closure and the long-reaching effect of these executions on their communities. Arkansas justified its unusually swift schedule by saying the state’s supply of lethal injection drugs were about to expire, and pharmaceutical companies have refused to replenish stocks. A series of judicial rulings blocked the scheduled executions of the first four men: Jason McGehee, Bruce Ward, Don Davis and Stacey Johnson. The three men who remain are, at the moment, still scheduled to die before the month is out. The idea of closure is powerful. It’s something Arkansas invoked in an April 15 motion that tried to fight a temporary restraining order that McKesson Medical Surgical, Inc., has used to block the use of its drug vecuronium bromide in state executions. (The drug is typically used as general anesthesia to relax muscle...

Lynn Scott, the sister of Arkansas death row inmate Jack Jones, Jr. Jack Jones' sister says she wants to be there for her brother in his final hour. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (News release) - Lynn Scott, the sister of Arkansas death row inmate Jack Jones, Jr., has been denied a request to witness the execution of her brother, who is scheduled to die April 24. In an interview with freelance journalist Deborah Robinson, Scott said the Department of Corrections does not allow the family of those being executed to witness their loved one's executions. She said, "There’s absolutely nobody there for him. He’s just gonna die. He’s gonna be murdered at the hands of the state with nobody there except for people wanting to watch him die. That’s just so cruel." An excerpt of the interview concerning Scott's request to witness her brother's execution can be found here . The full interview with Scott covers a wide range of issues as it relates to her brother...

Seema Mohan Gavit (red sari) and Renuka Shinde SERIAL killer sisters Seema Gavit and Renuka Shinde are making a last desperate bid to avoid execution for abducting and murdering multiple children aged under five years old. The sisters, who with their mother abducted or brutally murdered up to 13 children, are due to become the first women hanged in India for 72 years. On death row in Yerawada Central Jail in the western Indian city of Pune, the sisters are incarcerated for the crimes which they committed while aged in their 20s. The sisters’ lawyer Sudeep Jaiswal told news.com.au exclusively that the two women — known as the Gavit sisters — hoped to have their death penalty commuted to life in prison. Speaking from his chambers in Nagpur, Mr Jaiswal described plans to execute the sisters as “a barbaric act”. Yerawada jail has its own gallows and the “anda”, an egg-shaped cell where condemned prisoners are held and weighed before being hanged. Mr Jaiswal, wh...

Changi Prison, Singapore Mohd Jeefrey bin Ismail was hanged in the early hours of Friday morning, 21 April, at least according to the scheduled execution date given to his family by the Singapore Prison Service. He was executed after the Public Prosecutor decided that Jeefrey had not “substantively assisted” the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) in “disrupting drug trafficking activities within or outside Singapore.” In Singapore, the authorities do not make public announcements of hangings, the preferred state-sanctioned killing method for those condemned to death. Lawyers for the inmates and anti-death penalty activists often have to guess if the executions have in fact been carried out. Executions are typically held just before dawn on Fridays. Jeefrey, 52, was a drug addict and trafficker, or courier, who was arrested in 2012 and subsequently sentenced to death for trafficking in excess of the statutory limit for the drug diamorphine. The only person who stood...

Sister Helen Prejean Prejean’s work opposing capital punishment was captured in her book and film Dead Man Walking, and now she’s speaking out against a spate of planned killings Sister Helen Prejean, the Louisiana nun who through the movie of her book, Dead Man Walking , became the face of the American anti-death penalty movement, has a message for Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas who this month attempted to carry out an unprecedented killing spree of eight executions in 11 days. “Governor, be a statesman and a real moral leader of the people,” she said. “Do what is morally right. As a state official, you should not be involved in the deliberate killing of human beings.” On Thursday night, Hutchinson had his way: Lendell Lee, 51, a convicted murderer, was executed through lethal injection just four minutes before midnight, when his death warrant ran out. By the twisted logic of US capital punishment, the killing went “smoothly”, lasting 12 minut...

Texas sued in January for the drug's release, saying in its lawsuit that it was importing the sodium thiopental for legal executions. A US regulatory agency told Texas and Arizona that more than a thousand vials of drugs they ordered for executions in their states from India in 2015, and seized by US Customs, will not be released to them, an official said on Thursday.  The Food and Drug Administration notified the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Arizona Department of Corrections that their confiscated shipments of sodium thiopental have been refused on the basis that the detained drugs appear to be unapproved new drugs and misbranded drugs, FDA press officer Lyndsay Meyer said. Officials in Arizona were not immediately available for comment. "It has taken almost 2 years for the Food and Drug Administration to reach a decision, which we believe is flawed. TDCJ fully complied with the steps necessary to lawfully import the shipment," the Texas De...

Ten young Indian workers in Al Ain jail, convicted of murdering a Pakistani worker, are expected to learn whether they will be pardoned as early as next month. The Al Ain Appeals Court on Wednesday completed the hearing in the case and adjourned the matter to May 25 to pronounce the verdict, head of an Indian charity involved in the case, told Gulf News on Wednesday. The court is expected to issue a verdict on the letter of consent submitted by the family of the Pakistani victim to pardon the accused Indians, said S.P.S. Oberoi, chairman of Sarbat Da Bhala Charitable Trust, that donated the blood money for the accused men. Oberoi, a Dubai-based businessman, said he has already saved 78 Asian men who were convicted of murder in the UAE from death row by paying blood money on their behalf to their victims' families. "With my experience in similar cases, I will tell you that their death penalty will be commuted because the victims' family has already given ...