Death Penalty News

A Canadian citizen convicted of drug smuggling in China faces the possibility of harsher punishment, including the death penalty, after a Chinese court agreed with prosecutors that his initial 15-year sentence was too lenient. The decision threatens to heighten tensions between Beijing and Ottawa after Canada’s arrest of a senior Chinese telecom executive, whom the US is seeking for extradition. Robert Lloyd Schellenberg, a Canadian citizen, was arrested in 2014 and tried in 2016 but only sentenced in November. His original trial received no publicity, but China’s cabinet-level news department, in an unusual move, invited some foreign media to attend the appeal hearing at the weekend in the port city of Dalian in north-east China’s Liaoning province. The court rejected Mr Schellenberg’s appeal, while accepting prosecutors’ claims that new evidence revealed he had a larger role in a failed smuggling plot than originally indicated at his initial trial. “It was wrong fo...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A court ruling this week puts the police murder case of former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal back in the spotlight years after it drew the attention of Amnesty International, Hollywood celebrities and death penalty opponents worldwide. Abu-Jamal, a one-time taxi driver and radio reporter, emerged over four decades in prison as a vocal critic of the American justice system, especially the racial bias he saw at the heart of his 1982 trial. His writings and commentaries from prison, including the 1996 book “Live from Death Row,” have earned him acclaim from progressive scholars and activists — along with the disdain of police unions, conservative politicians and the widow of Daniel Faulkner, the young patrolman slain in downtown Philadelphia on Dec. 9, 1981. “Thirty-eight years!” Maureen Faulkner cried out in court this fall during the latest post-trial arguments, leading city Judge Leon Tucker to have her escorted out. “This is wrong!” Tucker’s ...

IMPORTANT NOTICE: It seems that Google made a few changes to the way images are shown on Google-powered blogs. Pictures and links to social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) will no longer be loaded if you are using an ad blocker. Please be advised that no commercial activity whatsoever (ads, links, etc.) is conducted by DPN on their website. Ads, if any shown, are selected and inserted on this page by Google, not by DPN. Disable your ad blocker if pictures and/or videos are no longer shown on DPN pages. Please note that this may not apply to all browsers. Chief of Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa on Friday ratified the death sentences awarded to 22 hardcore terrorists, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement. The convicts were reportedly involved in heinous terrorist offences, including attacks on armed forces, law enforcement agencies, explosions of vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (IED) to carry out sectarian killings, destruction of commun...

IMPORTANT NOTICE: It seems that Google made a few changes to the way images are shown on Google-powered blogs. Pictures and links to social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) will no longer be loaded if you are using an ad blocker. Please be advised that no commercial activity whatsoever (ads, links, etc.) is conducted by DPN on their website. Ads, if any shown, are selected and inserted on this page by Google, not by DPN. Disable your ad blocker if pictures and/or videos are no longer shown on DPN pages. Please note that this may not apply to all browsers. The Cabinet approved death penalty for aggravated sexual assault against children below the age of 18 years as part of amendments in the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act), Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad announced on Friday. Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “The cabinet has approved amendments to the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, further strengthening the l...

IMPORTANT NOTICE: It seems that Google made a few changes to the way images are shown on Google-powered blogs. Pictures and links to social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) will no longer be loaded if you are using an ad blocker. Please be advised that no commercial activity whatsoever (ads, links, etc.) is conducted by DPN on their website. Ads, if any shown, are selected and inserted on this page by Google, not by DPN. Disable your ad blocker if pictures and/or videos are no longer shown on DPN pages. Please note that this may not apply to all browsers. The Nevada attorney general’s office has made its final argument of the year to the state’s high court in a drawn-out legal battle over prison execution drugs. In court papers filed this week, the last filed in the case under outgoing Attorney General Adam Laxalt, the Nevada Department of Corrections argued that a judge’s ruling barring a specific sedative from use in lethal injection could ultimately end capital punishment...

IMPORTANT NOTICE: It seems that Google made a few changes to the way images are shown on Google-powered blogs. Pictures and links to social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) will no longer be loaded if you are using an ad blocker. Please be advised that no commercial activity whatsoever (ads, links, etc.) is conducted by DPN on their website. Ads, if any shown, are selected and inserted on this page by Google, not by DPN. Disable your ad blocker if pictures and/or videos are no longer shown on DPN pages. Please note that this may not apply to all browsers. LINCOLN — Grand jury testimony about a decision by state prison officials to pull a curtain during the August execution of double-murderer Carey Dean Moore sparked renewed criticism Thursday. State Corrections Director Scott Frakes, in grand jury testimony released on Thursday, testified that the curtain was drawn on the execution chamber just after the last of four lethal injection drugs was administered “out of respect” f...

IMPORTANT NOTICE: It seems that Google made a few changes to the way images are shown on Google-powered blogs. Pictures and links to social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) will no longer be loaded if you are using an ad blocker. Please be advised that no commercial activity whatsoever (ads, links, etc.) is conducted by DPN on their website. Ads, if any shown, are selected and inserted on this page by Google, not by DPN. Disable your ad blocker if pictures and/or videos are no longer shown on DPN pages. Please note that this may not apply to all browsers. More than half of all Americans support the death penalty, according to a Gallup poll conducted last fall. As 2018 comes to a close, the statistics don’t live up to the polling, but they also do not tell the whole story. This year, there were 25 men executed in the United States. That is two more executions than last year and 73 less than the 1999 high-water mark of the modern era of the death penalty. This year’s execu...

IMPORTANT NOTICE: It seems that Google made a few changes to the way images are shown on Google-powered blogs. Pictures and links to social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) will no longer be loaded if you are using an ad blocker. Please be advised that no commercial activity whatsoever (ads, links, etc.) is conducted by DPN on their website. Ads, if any shown, are selected and inserted on this page by Google, not by DPN. Disable your ad blocker if pictures and/or videos are no longer shown on DPN pages. Please note that this may not apply to all browsers. An appellate court in Bahrain has sentenced an anti-regime activist to death and passed life imprisonment against more than a dozen other political dissidents as the ruling Al Khalifah regime presses ahead with its heavy-handed clampdown on pro-democracy protesters in the Persian Gulf kingdom. The Supreme Court of Appeals on Wednesday upheld the death penalty for a Bahraini national and sentenced 13 other activists to life ...

IMPORTANT NOTICE: It seems that Google made a few changes to the way images are shown on Google-powered blogs. Pictures and links to social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) will no longer be loaded if you are using an ad blocker. Please be advised that no commercial activity whatsoever (ads, links, etc.) is conducted by DPN on their website. Ads, if any shown, are selected and inserted on this page by Google, not by DPN. Disable your ad blocker if pictures and/or videos are no longer shown on DPN pages. Please note that this may not apply to all browsers. None of the 62 prisoners on federal death row are from Kentucky, but that could change soon. Two Louisville cases — including the Kroger killings and a January murder blamed on a drug ring — are among four that qualify as death eligible in Western Kentucky. Federal prosecutors in the commonwealth have been hesitant to seek the country's ultimate punishment in the past and haven't sent anyone to federal death row durin...

SIX more suspects have been held in Morocco as cops probe terror links of a gang of ISIS thugs who beheaded two Scandinavian tourists. The arrests bring the total to 19 people now in custody over the murders of Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24, from Denmark, and her university pal Maren Ueland, 28, of Norway. They were butchered at their campsite in the Atlas mountains on December 17 - then video of the slaughter was sent to their families and spread on Facebook. Authorities in Morocco have now rounded up a total of 15 people linked to the four ISIS fanatics accused of the murders. They include nine suspects held before Christmas as authorities claimed they had foiled another terror plot and found bomb-making materials. The four suspected killers pledged allegiance to jihadi "Caliphate" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a video that emerged after they were captured last week. But officials described them as a "lone wolf" gang with no formal ties to I...