Death Penalty News

With the modern and supposedly more humane electric chair due to replace the gallows at midnight, an overflow crowd packed the courthouse square in Angleton on Aug. 31, 1923 for the last public execution in Texas. The first dose of “manufactured lightning” was administered in 1890 to a convicted wife murderer in New York. But the much-heralded debut was something less than an unqualified success. The warden cut off the current after just 17 seconds on the advice of the attending physicians, who felt certain the subject must have expired. Upon closer examination, however, the doctors discovered to their astonishment that the man was still very much alive and called for a 2nd jolt. This time the warden took no chances. 60 seconds at full power not only finished the job but filled the execution chamber with a ghostly white vapor and the sickening stench of cooked flesh. Despite this inauspicious start, electrocution was soon accepted as the most efficient and least pain...

A Singapore court has sentenced a Malaysian drug dealer to death in a trial carried out over the video-conferencing app Zoom, NBC News reports. Punithan Genasan, 37, appeared before the Asian city-state’s Supreme Court to answer for charges of recruiting two couriers to deliver approximately one ounce, or 28.5 grams, of heroin in 2011.  The proceedings were carried out over Zoom, as have almost all Singapore court proceedings in the past few weeks, due to the coronavirus pandemic.  In this particular case, Genasan was in jail, while his attorney, the prosecutor, and the judge all appeared from their various locations. At the hearing, Genasan was sentenced to death by hanging for his crime. In Singapore, crimes such as drug trafficking, as well as kidnapping, rape, and use of firearms, carry the death penalty. Indeed, NBC News notes that most sentences of capital punishment in the country are drug-related. Human rights groups are calling the sentence of...

The Federal Court upheld the death penalty imposed on two Iranians and a local construction worker for drug trafficking today. The Federal Court today held that judges hearing drug trafficking cases could rely on presumptions and inferences to determine if the prosecution had established a prima facie case against accused persons. Chief Justice Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat, who led a 7-member bench, said the panel had traced the legislative history of Section 180 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), in particular the amendments made in 1997 and 2006. “We find that the purpose of Section 180(4) of the CPC was not to exclude the use of presumptions, inferences or anything other than direct evidence to establish a prima facie case,” she said. Rather, she said, the purpose of Section 180(4) was to clarify Parliament’s intention for the threshold to be applied at the close of the prosecution’s case. Tengku Maimun, who delivered the unanimous judgment, said this in dismissing...

The Court has handed down the death penalty to the school director who shot and killed 3 people before robbing a Lop Buri gold shop in January. He was found guilty on 3 counts of murder and 1 count of attempted murder. The court says 38 year old Prasittichai “Golf” Khaokaew entered the Robinson shopping mall in Lop Buri with a pistol attached with silencer. He shot and killed a female employee and a 2 year old boy. He shot and injured another person before stealing jewelry from the Aurora Gold Shop. He then shot and killed a mall security guard whilst fleeing the shopping centre. He escaped on a Honda Scoopy with 33 gold necklaces valued at about 665,470 baht. A 600,000 baht bounty was raised to find the gunman. He was arrested 2 weeks later at his parent’s home.  Police found some of the gold jewellery in the rafters of a shed in his parent’s home. Prasittichai told police that he was “bored”. He claims he shot the child by accident.  Surveillance camer...

Canada has urged China to release 2 high-profile Canadian detainees and grant clemency to several other Canadians sentenced to death by Chinese courts, the Canadian Foreign Ministry said Wednesday. Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi during talks in Rome on Tuesday that the cases of former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor remain a top priority for the Canadian government. Their arrests have been widely viewed as retribution for Canada’s detainment at the request of the United States of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co, in late 2018. “Canada continues to call for immediate consular access to Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor. China’s actions are in violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations,” Champagne said in a statement issued after meeting, which took place on the sidelines of Wang’s visits to Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, France and Germany. ...

The Saudi public prosecutor has ordered a review of death penalties issued against 3 individuals who committed crimes as minors, including the nephew of a prominent Shi’ite cleric whose execution sparked demonstrations in Saudi Arabia and Iran, a statement said on Thursday. Ali al-Nimr, the nephew of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, Dawoud al-Marhoon and Abdullah al-Zaher, were sentenced to death in 2016 for terrorism-related crimes committed before they had reached the age of 18. A royal decree issued by King Salman in April said the kingdom would no longer impose the death sentence on people who committed crimes while minors, and the death penalty should no longer be applied to those convicted while they were minors. “These referrals mark important progress in faithfully implementing an important reform in the legal system, and in advancing human rights in Saudi Arabia,” said Awwad Alawwad, president of the state-backed Saudi Human Rights Commission. Saudi law stipulates that ...

The execution of Lezmond Mitchell, a Diné citizen, was a long, grisly test case about tribal sovereignty. At 6:29 p.m. on Wednesday evening, the United States executed Diné citizen Lezmond Mitchell, the first Native person since 1902 to face the death penalty at the hands of the federal government. In 2001, Mitchell and a then-underage accomplice and fellow Diné citizen, Johnny Orsinger, stabbed and murdered Alyce Slim and her nine-year-old granddaughter, also both Diné, within the borders of the Navajo Nation in Arizona. The pair were swiftly caught and detained by local authorities after holding up a nearby trading post. A decision then fell before U.S. federal prosecutors. As outlined by congressional law, the Federal Bureau of Investigations maintains jurisdiction over Indian Country if the committed crimes fall under those outlined in the 1885 Major Crimes Act. This includes violent crimes such as rape, murder, and kidnapping. But in 2001, then–Attorney General John ...

With the execution Wednesday of Lezmond Mitchell — the only Native American on federal death row — the federal government under President Donald Trump registered more executions in 2020 than it had in the previous 56 years combined. TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — The scheduled federal execution of a 10-year-old Kansas girl's killer was back on track Friday after an appellate panel tossed a lower court's ruling that would have required the government to get a drug prescription before it could use pentobarbital to kill the inmate. Questions about whether pentobarbital causes pain prior to death has been a focus of last-minute appeals for Keith Nelson, who would be the fifth person to die this year and the second this week in the Trump administration’s resumption of federal executions after a 17-year hiatus. All the executions by lethal pentobarbital injection have been carried out at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. If Nelson's lawyer appeals Friday to the Sup...

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) — The white supremacist who slaughtered 51 worshippers at two New Zealand mosques was sentenced Thursday to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the first time the maximum available sentence has been imposed. Judge Cameron Mander said the crimes committed by 29-year-old Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant were so wicked that a lifetime in jail could not begin to atone for them. He said they had caused enormous loss and hurt and stemmed from a warped and malignant ideology. “Your actions were inhuman,” Mander said. “You deliberately killed a 3-year-old infant by shooting him in the head as he clung to the leg of his father.” The March 2019 attacks targeting people praying at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques in Christchurch shocked New Zealand and prompted new laws banning the deadliest types of semi-automatic weapons. They also prompted global changes to social media protocols after the gunman livestreamed his attack on Facebook....

The only Native American on federal death row was put to death Wednesday, despite objections from many Navajo leaders who had urged President Donald Trump to halt the execution on the grounds it would violate tribal culture and sovereignty. RELATED |  Trump and Barr Are on a Capital Punishment Killing Spree With the execution of Lezmond Mitchell for the grisly slayings of a 9-year-old and her grandmother, the federal government under the pro-death penalty president has now carried out more executions in 2020 than it had in the previous 56 years combined. Asked by a prison official if he had any last words for victims’ family members and other witnesses behind glass at the death chamber, Mitchell casually responded, “No, I’m good.” Moments later, prison officials began the lethal injection of pentobarbital inside the small, pale-green death chamber at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Mitchell lay flat on his back, his glasses still on and a medical ma...