Death Penalty News

Crusius could still face execution if convicted in state court Federal prosecutors will not seek the death penalty for a man accused of fatally shooting nearly two dozen people in a racist attack at a West Texas Walmart in 2019. The U.S. Department of Justice disclosed the decision not to pursue capital punishment against Patrick Crusius in a one-sentence notice filed with the federal court in El Paso on Tuesday.

Four young men have been executed in connection with the nationwide protests that erupted in Iran four months ago, while 18 other people have been sentenced to death. Human rights groups have said they were convicted after grossly unfair sham trials. Mohammad Mehdi Karami, a 22-year-old karate champion, was hanged on 7 January, just 65 days after his arrest. Sources have told BBC Persian that he had less than 15 minutes to defend himself in court.

PETALING JAYA: Three Malaysians on death row in Singapore for drug trafficking will have their appeals heard at the republic’s appellate court this Friday.

Singapore: An Australian man who was facing a possible death sentence in Indonesia for bringing heroin into Bali will instead spend eight months in a rehabilitation facility after a judge on the island accepted that he was an addict and not a drug trafficker.

Convict had killed his wife ‘for honour’ seven days after she delivered a baby A man who was awarded life term by a trial court on July 31, 2018 for killing his wife in the name of honour was sentenced to death in a retrial. His father, who was also jailed for life under the July 31 judgement for his alleged complicity in the murder, was exonerated from the charges in the retrial.

Drug smuggling led to dire consequences for many Taiwan citizens in 2022 Drug trafficking is a crime around the world with many countries ferociously cracking down on the drug trade with little immunity for race or ethnicity.

One of Alabama’s largest suppliers of gas won’t supply nitrogen to the state’s prison system for nitrogen hypoxia executions. Airgas, which was acquired by French-owned Air Liquide in 2016, is the largest U.S. distribution network in the packaged gas industry. The company has 24 branches in Alabama.

If you were on death row, what would be your final meal? The latest strange craze on TikTok has viewers asking themselves this question and submitting films revealing what they would eat in a less-than-ideal circumstance. @chai.lattes came up with “Diet Coke… chicken pad Thai, saltines, and D chocolate chip cookie dough.” 4ever list of curiously particular items.

The ACLU of Indiana is suing the U.S. Bureau of Prisons over conditions on federal death row, which is housed in Terre Haute. A lawsuit filed Thursday in federal court accuses the bureau of holding 38 men in isolated conditions that constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Kevin Cooper, 65, was convicted in 1985 of fatally stabbing two children and 2 adults inside a Chino Hills home. The special counsel appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to look into the case of Kevin Cooper, a death row inmate whose decades-old murder conviction fell under fierce scrutiny in recent years, released a report Friday casting aside the prisoner’s long-standing claims of innocence.

Jan. 12—Dr. Rev. Jeff Hood said he struggled with attending a man's execution despite discussions and a lawsuit leading up to Oklahoma's prison officials reversing a decision to ban him. Oklahoma executed Scott Eizember , 62, on Thursday for the 2003 murders of Patsy Cantrell, 70, and her husband, A.J. Cantrell, 76. 

Iranian conservative politician and former diplomat Javad Larijani has defended stoning for adultery, saying it is a good Islamic law protecting “family values.” Stoning, or lapidation, is a method of capital punishment where people throw stones at a person until the subject dies from blunt trauma. It is attested as a form of punishment for unlawful sexual intercourse.

According to the Iranian Human Rights Society, on January 11, 2023, 6 prisoners were executed in Arak and Gorgan prisons. According to Hengaw website, on December 11, 2023, 5 prisoners were executed in Arak prison on drug charges. 2 of these prisoners, Azad Dadvand, 40 years old, from Sardasht, and Kivan Amini tavakkol, 42 years old, from Baneh, were executed in Arak prison on drug charges.

After what’s been deemed “the year of the botched execution,” Texas should end the practice. More than forty years ago, during the first week of December in 1982, the U.S. executed its first prisoner using lethal injection. On December 7 of that year, six years after the death penalty was revalidated by the Supreme Court, Charles Brooks Jr. , who had been convicted of murder, was executed in Huntsville, here in Texas. To date, 1,380 others have been executed via lethal injection, comprising nearly 90 percent of all death row executions. In 2023, eight more Texans will be executed by injection.

The terrorism trial of Sayfullo Saipov, who is accused of fatally striking eight people with a truck in New York City in 2017, began Jan. 9 and marks the first federal death penalty case heard under President Joe Biden, who pledged as a candidate to end the practice at the federal level.

British-Iranian dual national Alireza Akbari, who was sentenced to death in Iran, has been executed. Mr Akbari's family had been asked to go to his prison for a "final visit" on Wednesday and his wife said he had been moved to solitary confinement. The ex-deputy Iranian defence minister was arrested in 2019 and convicted of spying for the UK, which he denied.

California's San Quentin prison houses the state's only death row for male inmates. Death row for men and women will soon be dismantled. SAN FRANCISCO — California this week pushed ahead with controversial efforts to dismantle the largest death row system in America.

January 11, 2023 marks the twentieth anniversary of former Illinois Governor George Ryan’s decision to grant clemency to every death row prisoner in Illinois, the largest blanket clemency in the modern era of the death penalty. It was a watershed moment in both Illinois’ criminal justice history and in the ongoing national conversation about the death penalty.

The aftermath of a last-ditch legal battle over Texas’ use of expired pharmaceuticals to kill death row inmates has left little hope for future executions. In his final hours, former police officer Robert Fratta — convicted in the murder-for-hire plot of his estranged wife — expressed nervous curiosity over the ballooning constitutional crisis. The granting of an injunction order by a Travis County district court judge brought his execution to a momentary halt Tuesday, only for it to continue as planned following a quick succession of rulings from higher courts.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has long ranked among the world’s top executioners. But with the recent death sentences handed down to protesters, critics say the regime has taken capital punishment to a new level. Last weekend, Iran executed 2 more protesters charged with killing security personnel, causing an international outcry. Critics said that the executions were a result of hasty sham trials.