Death Penalty News

Abolishing the death penalty worldwide would reflect the brave and hope-filled belief that crime can be dealt with without capital punishment and that a criminal should be given the chance to reform, a top Vatican diplomat told world leaders. "Respect for the dignity of every human person and the common good are the two pillars on which the Holy See has developed its position" of advocating for an end to the death penalty, Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, Vatican foreign minister, said Sept. 25 at the United Nations in New York, where he led the Vatican delegation at the 73rd session of the U.N. general assembly. The Vatican released a copy of his speech Sept. 26. Speaking at a high-level U.N. side event on the death penalty and the role of poverty and the right to legal representation, the archbishop said that the universal abolition would be a "courageous reaffirmation" that humanity can successfully deal with crime while also refusing "to succumb to ...

“Each appointment to our nation’s Highest Court (as with all others) is simply too important to rush to a vote,” the lawyers’ group says. The American Bar Association late Thursday called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to delay a confirmation vote on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh until an FBI investigation can be completed into several claims of sexual misconduct. “We make this request because of the ABA’s respect for the rule of law and due process under law,” reads the letter, a copy of which was obtained by HuffPost. “The basic principles that underscore the Senate’s constitutional duty of advice and consent on federal judicial nominees require nothing less than a careful examination of the accusations and facts by the FBI.” The move is extraordinary in that the ABA gave Kavanaugh a unanimous “well-qualified” rating for the Supreme Court nomination, and the federal judge has boasted that he was “thoroughly vetted” by the lawyers’ group. The letter,...

Richard Glossip's bride is 33 years younger than him - and today they were allowed to touch each other for the first time. A prisoner who survived an execution attempt because of a mistake with a lethal injection drug has got married - almost three years on from his brush with death. Richard Glossip's bride is 33 years younger than him, and admits that her family initially opposed the wedding. Glossip was due to die on 30 September 2015 - his third execution date that year. RELATED :  Oklahoma Death Row Inmate Richard Glossip Details His Execution Experience But after all legal appeals were exhausted, and an hour after he was scheduled to be put to death, the execution was called off because a pharmacist had supplied the wrong drug. It was the latest in a series of botched executions in Oklahoma, and the state has now abandoned lethal injections as its preferred method of execution. Work is now under way to start using nitrogen gas to kill death row...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China executed a man on Thursday for killing nine students and injuring 11 others in a knife attack at a middle school in central China's Shaanxi province in April, according to a post on a Chinese court's official social media account. Zhao Zewei was sentenced to death in July after being charged with homicide for attacking 19 students near a middle school in Mizhi county in China's northwestern province of Shaanxi on April 27. After receiving approval from China's supreme court, the death sentence was carried out in Mizhi county of Shaanxi on Thursday, according to the statement from the Yulin City Intermediate Court. Zhao had said he had taken knives into his former school in order to vent frustration and anger over his misfortunes in life and the bullying he was subjected to while attending the school, the statement said. But the motives for depriving others of life were "despicable" and the methods were especially cr...

The jury heard closing arguments Wednesday in Ronald Hamilton's 2016 capital murder case MANASSAS, Va. — Defense lawyers for an Army staff sergeant accused of killing his wife and a police officer on her first shift pleaded with a jury to convict their client on a charge other than capital murder. A jury heard closing arguments Tuesday in the death penalty trial of Ronald Hamilton, 34, of Woodbridge, who is charged with capital murder and other counts in the February 2016 fatal shootings of Crystal Hamilton and Officer Ashley Guindon. He is also charged with attempted capital murder of two police officers who survived the shooting, Jesse Hempen and David McKeown. During two weeks of testimony, jurors heard evidence that Crystal Hamilton called 911 after her husband struck her and slammed her to the floor. Jurors heard the 911 call which ended with Crystal Hamilton pleading, "Stop!" Prosecutors say Ronald Hamilton shot his wife four times with a Glock ha...

With an Oct. 11 execution looming, jurors and prison staff support clemency for death row inmate Edmund Zagorski's plea for mercy is short and simple. “Dear Governor Haslam,” he writes. "Thank you for your time. I just wanted to let you know that I regret everything that happened. I feel really bad for victims' families and the vast impact it caused. I knew their lives would have been so much better in so many ways and not a day has gone by I haven't thought about it. If you spare me I will continue doing my best." In 1984, Zagorski was convicted of murdering 2 men who were meeting him to buy drugs. He was said to have shot the men, slit their throats and robbed them. Now, 34 years later, the state of Tennessee plans to put him to death by lethal injection on Oct. 11. Zagorski’s short note to the governor is included in his application for executive clemency - an official request for the governor to spare his life, submitted by his attorneys at ...

Condemned murderer Troy Clark has been executed for the 1998 murder of his former roommate Christine Muse. A 51-year-old Texas inmate has been executed for torturing and drowning an East Texas woman in his bathtub and then stuffing her body into a barrel. Troy Clark received a lethal injection Wednesday evening for the 1998 death of 20-year-old Christina Muse of Tyler. Clark chuckled as he addressed several friends watching through a window a few feet from him, telling them a number of times that he loved them and “it’s all good.” “I’m not the one who killed Christina,” he said. “But, hey, whatever makes you happy.” As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital was administered, Clark was laughing and remarked that the drug “burned going in.” “I feel it,” he said. Then he grunted, gasped and began to snore. Seconds later, all movement stopped. He was pronounced dead 21 minutes later at 6:36 p.m. Margaret Bouman, Muse’s aunt, said witnessing the execution was a ...

PRATTVILLE — Two Montgomery teenagers are charged with capital murder in connection with a May 2016 homicide in Prattville. One of the teens was 14 at the time of the homicide, which makes him one of the youngest people in the state to be charged with capital murder. Lil’ Roderick Williams, 16 and Devonte Raymon Hill, 17, were each indicted on capital murder charges by the Autauga County Grand Jury. On May 21, 2016, John Michael Taylor, 57, of Prattville, was shot and killed. The capital murder charges were filed because prosecutors feel the murder was committed during the commission of a robbery, said Chief Assistant District Attorney C.J. Robinson. Both Williams and Hill are being held without bond.  Taylor went to a convenience store in the 1900 block of Cobbs Ford Road in the early morning hours of May 21, previous testimony at preliminary hearings and court documents show. He was found by a passing motorist as he laid on Cobbs Ford Road. Taylor told the ...

Clark was convicted in the Tyler murder of Christina Muse, whose body was found stuffed in a cement-filled barrel months after her death. Death penalty opponents say his conviction rests too heavily on a co-defendant's testimony. The 1st of 2 scheduled Texas executions this week is set to take place Wednesday evening. Troy Clark, 51, was convicted in the 1998 Tyler kidnapping and murder of Christina Muse, and he has been accused of 2 other murders and a slew of other crimes, according to court records. The prosecution said Clark beat and drowned Muse before stuffing her body in a barrel with concrete and hiding it on his landlord's property. Though his attorneys hadn't filed any last-minute legal challenges as of Tuesday, his conviction has been questioned by anti-death penalty advocates since it was largely based on the testimony of his then girlfriend who also faced a murder charge. And for years, his legal fight had focused on a lack of evidence presented ...

Even as law enforcement tries to reduce the number of deaths attributed to the super-opioid fentanyl, some states are trying to increase them through their use for capital punishment. In the United States, capital punishment is mostly a matter of state law, so long as it doesn’t violate the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” There is no accepted legal definition of what “cruel and unusual” means, but that doesn’t seem to be the real concern. We don’t seem to care much about whether the convict suffers, but whether he (or she) appears to have suffered. We appear to be more concerned with whether the officials conducting the execution and the witnesses are so disturbed by what they see that they suffer post-traumatic stress disorder or, worse, start to advocate for the abolition of the death penalty. Most nations of the world already have abolished capital punishment—including Canada, most of Latin America and Europe—and that has created a problem ...