Death Penalty News

Saipov will  serve his sentence at the maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado NEW YORK (AP) — An unrepentant and defiant Islamic extremist received 10 life sentences and another 260 years in prison on Wednesday for killing eight people with a truck on a bike path in Manhattan on Halloween in 2017, as a judge decried his “callous and cowardly” crimes. “The conduct in this case is among the worst, if not the worst I’ve ever seen,” said U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick, as he announced a sentence designed to underscore the severity of the terrorist attack Sayfullo Saipov claimed he carried out on behalf of the Islamic State group. A life sentence was mandatory after a jury rejected the death penalty in March, but prosecutors had asked Broderick to impose eight consecutive life sentences and two concurrent life sentences. They also wanted an extra 260 years to send a stern message to other like-minded terrorists. And that's what the judge did. Broderick cited the defiance...

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); May 16, 2023: Two unidentified Afghan men were executed for murder charges in Qezel Hesar Prison on 10 May, increasing the number of executions at the prison that day to five. According to HRANA news agency, two Afghan men were executed in Qezel Hesar Prison on 10 May. The unidentified men were sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder. At the time of writing, their executions have not been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran. Hossein Panjak, Abdolhossein Emami Moghaddam and Babak Aghayi were also executed at the prison that day. On death row for drug-related charges, their families gathered outside the prison in an attempt to save their lives. They were met with bullets and tear gas, with one person hospitalised. According to the 2022 Annual Report on the Death Penalty , at least 256 people were executed for drug-related offences in 2022, a more than two-fold increase compared to 2021 (126) and ten times more than 2020 (25).

Some argue nitrogen hypoxia is a painless way to kill, but critics fear there's not enough evidence. A new execution method could potentially soon be used for the first time in the US: nitrogen hypoxia. While its proponents argue it is a humane and effective means of capital punishment, its critics say there’s simply not enough evidence to justify its use. Nitrogen hypoxia involves forcing a person to breathe pure nitrogen gas, starving them of oxygen until they die. Although the exact protocols have not yet been drawn up, there is some idea of what they might entail: “The protocol would likely involve placing some type of mask over the condemned inmate’s head and pumping it full of 100 percent nitrogen, thereby depriving that person of oxygen. The inmate would die not by suffocation, which is caused by an inability to exhale and a subsequent (and very painful) buildup of carbon dioxide in the body, but rather by becoming gradually oxygen-deprived, which is essentially painless,” ...

For some justices, the Eighth Amendment is nothing more than an annoying technicality. On November 17, 2022, Kenneth Smith spent four agonizing hours strapped to a gurney waiting for the state of Alabama to kill him. Smith, who was convicted of murder in 1988 and sentenced to die by lethal injection, could do nothing but watch as correctional officers poked and prodded his arms and hands, searching fruitlessly for veins. Then, without warning or explanation, the officers—it’s not clear if any of them were medical professionals—tried a different approach, jabbing a large needle underneath Smith’s collarbone, which made him cry out in pain and plead for his lawyers or the court to intervene. Smith’s death warrant expired at midnight, and because officials couldn’t find his veins in time, they had to stop the execution attempt. When they unstrapped Smith from the gurney, he was hyperventilating and couldn’t sit, stand, or walk without help. It was Alabama’s third failed execution attempt ...

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia —  Singapore on Wednesday hanged another citizen for trafficking marijuana, the second in three weeks, as it clung firmly to the death penalty despite growing calls for the city-state to halt drug-related executions. The 37-year-old man was executed after his last-ditch bid to reopen his case was dismissed by the court Tuesday without a hearing, said activist Kokila Annamalai of the Transformative Justice Collective, which advocates for abolishing the death penalty in Singapore. The man had been imprisoned for seven years and was convicted in 2019 for trafficking about 3.3 pounds of cannabis, she said. His bid to reopen his case was based on DNA evidence and fingerprints that tied him to a much smaller amount, which he admitted to possessing, but the court rejected it, she added.

The appellant asked for life imprisonment or a reduction to a non-capital charge. SINGAPORE: The Court of Appeal has dismissed a bid by a cannabis trafficker on death row to have his case reviewed. In a judgment released on Tuesday (May 16), Justice Tay Yong Kwang said the application was "clearly an impermissible attempt at reopening and rearguing the appeal" that Muhammad Faizal Mohd Shariff, 36, had already attempted. Justice Tay said there was no new evidence that would satisfy the requirements of a review application. Faizal was convicted in January 2019 by trial judge Chan Seng Onn of a charge of possessing cannabis for the purpose of trafficking. He was arrested in February 2016 and found to have 3.5kg of vegetable matter, which contained 1.6kg of cannabis, for the purpose of trafficking.

The number of executions recorded globally in 2022 was the highest in five years, as several Middle Eastern states ramped up their use of the death penalty, Amnesty International says. A total of 883 people are known to have been put to death across 20 countries, marking a rise of 53% compared to 2021, according to the group's annual review. China, Iran And Saudi Arabia Responsible For Most Executions Last Year Iran , Saudi Arabia and Egypt alone carried out 90% of those executions. The figures exclude China , which is thought to execute thousands each year. Data on the death penalty is classified in China , which Amnesty said impaired its ability to make an accurate assessment about the numbers put to death in the country. The group was also able to confirm that executions were carried out in North Korea , Vietnam , Syria and Afghanistan , but there was insufficient information to provide credible minimum figures.

In early May, the Islamic Republic executed two men on charges of “insulting the Prophet” and “insulting Islamic sanctities.” Carrying out executions for blasphemy are very rare in Iran, as previous cases saw the sentences reduced by authorities. In 2002, the Iranian judiciary sentenced Hashem Aghajari, a university professor and historian, to death for apostasy for making a speech urging Iranians to "not blindly follow" Islamic clerics. Following a domestic and international outcry, his sentence was reduced in 2004 to five years in prison after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei ordered a retrial. Two decades later, the judiciary hanged two Iranians on the same charges after an opaque judicial process and amid a dramatic surge in executions. 

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian authorities on Monday executed five people over “armed drug smuggling” in the south of the country, the judiciary reported. The convicts, “all criminals and armed drug smugglers,” had been sentenced to death by hanging in a verdict upheld by Iran’s top court, the judiciary’s website Mizan Online quoted Mojtaba Ghahramani, chief justice of the southern province of Hormozgan, as saying. “The sentences of the aforementioned were carried out this morning in Bandar Abbas and Minab prisons” in Hormozgan, he added. The latest hangings bring to eight the number of people executed in less than a week over drug smuggling. On Wednesday, the judiciary executed three convicted drug cartel members, following warnings from the United Nations over the “frighteningly” high number of executions in the country.

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed a challenge by an Alabama death row inmate who sued months before surviving a botched execution claiming that the state’s troubled lethal injection process would violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment. In an unusual case that has returned to the justices because the execution of convicted murderer Kenneth Smith failed, they turned away an appeal by Alabama officials of a lower court’s decision to revive his lawsuit seeking to block the state from putting him to death through lethal injection. Smith instead is seeking to be executed using another method. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the decision to allow Smith’s challenge to proceed. A majority of the justices in November cleared the way for the execution of Smith, sentenced to death for his role in a 1988 murder-for-hire plot.

HRANA, the Human Rights Activists News Agency, reported on May 13, 2023, that six inmates in Kerman prison and two in Khorramabad prison were executed for drug-related crimes. HRANA has identified two of the six inmates executed in Kerman prison as Kambiz Davarpanah and Amrollah (Shamal) Adish, both coming from Dehdasht. According to an informed source who spoke to HRANA, Davarpanah had been sentenced to death five years ago, and his body has not yet been returned to his family. On the same day, Khorramabad Prison officials carried out the execution of two inmates convicted of drug-related crimes. HRANA is working on identifying these executed inmates. At the time of writing, none of the official sources or media outlets in the country has reported these executions.

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia wants to introduce a law to decriminalise the possession and use of small quantities of illicit drugs, its home affairs minister said on Monday, citing a need to reduce prison overcrowding. The move is the latest in a series of criminal justice reforms pursued by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's government, which this year abolished the mandatory death penalty and natural-life prison terms, and said it would seek to decriminalise suicide attempts. Malaysia, like many of its Southeast Asian neighbours, has harsh penalties for drug crimes.  Under reforms passed last month, it retained the death penalty for drug trafficking but said it will no longer be mandatory, with judges allowed to decide whether or not to impose the sentence on convicted offenders.

In May 2023, the de facto Deputy Chief Justice of Afghanistan announced that courts across the country had sentenced 175 individuals to Qisas (retribution in kind) punishments and 37 to stoning. Other sentences included physical punishments such as flogging and burying under a wall. The de facto Deputy Chief Justice did not specify a timeline for implementation of these sentences. The announcement was met with international condemnation, including from the United Nations experts who indicated that many of the punishments constitute torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment and are contrary to international law. Both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT), to which Afghanistan is a State party, prohibit torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.

Iran secured a senior role at the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday, despite hanging two men on charges of blasphemy earlier this week. Iran will serve as chair of the Human Rights Council Social Forum for the next year, which is set to be focused on how technology can be used to promote human rights.  The announcement came just days after Iran executed two men for participating in a social media discourse titled "Critique of Superstition and Religion." Yousef Mehrad and Sadrollah Fazeli Zare were executed at Arak Prison in central Iran on Monday after being arrested in May 2020 for the crime of blasphemy. Iran has ramped up its executions in recent months in response to the waves of unrest it has experienced since the murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini last year. Amini was beaten in police custody after being arrested for improperly wearing her hijab. She succumbed to her injuries days later in a hospital.

In January, NPR aired excerpts from four tapes recorded behind the scenes during Virginia executions. It was only the second time in history that audio from inside an execution chamber had ever been published. The records revealed details about the last seconds of prisoners’ lives and indicated the Virginia Department of Corrections may have tried to cover up one of the state’s recent botched executions. A former employee donated the four tapes and hundreds of other execution documents to the Library of Virginia more than a decade ago. But shortly after NPR aired the audio, something unusual happened. A representative from the Department of Corrections requested that the library give the records back. Within a week, the library complied. The collection is once again behind prison walls.

Father, girlfriend who killed his two children get verdict in second trial A father in Chongqing who killed his two children by tossing them out of a high-rise apartment window in 2020 was sentenced to death along with his girlfriend, who had prompted him to commit the act, after their second trial on Thursday morning. The Chongqing High People's Court upheld the original ruling and said that the sentences handed down to Zhang Bo and his girlfriend, Ye Chengchen, were appropriate. Its ruling will be submitted to the Supreme People's Court, the nation's top court, for approval. In China, any death sentence handed down by a lower court is submitted to the Supreme People's Court for further review. Executions are only allowed if the top court approves. As the case has drawn intense public attention in China, dozens of residents and reporters gathered in front of the courthouse to wait for the verdict from the trial, which began in early April.

Branch 9 of the Iranian Supreme Court has confirmed the death sentences of three protestors who were arrested during the nationwide protests in 2022 in Isfahan. Saleh Mirhashemi, Majid Kazemi, and Saeed Yaghoubi were accused of enmity against God (Moharebeh) in a legal case known as “Khaneh e Isfahan (Isfahan House).” According to HRANA, the news agency of Human Rights Activists, the Supreme Court of Iran upheld death sentences against three protests arrested during the nationwide protests of 2022. Amir Kazemi, Majid Kazemi’s cousin, spoke to HRANA and shared details about the case: “Branch 9 of the Supreme Court, presided over by Judge Ghasem Mazinani, dismissed the appeal request and upheld the death sentences. The highest judicial authority in Iran upheld these verdicts without considering the errors and defects in this legal case.”

Marcos is  pursuing all legal remedies including asking for her pardon, commutation of sentence, or even extradition to serve her sentence in the Philippines MANILA – President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. on Thursday said he has asked Indonesian President Joko Widodo to reexamine the case of jailed overseas Filipino worker Mary Jane Veloso, who has been on Indonesia's death row over drug-related charges. In a chance interview with reporters, Marcos said he mentioned Veloso’s case in his talk with Widodo on the sidelines of the 42nd ASEAN Summit and Related Summits in Labuan Bajo, Indonesia. “Sabi ko (I said) the best that we can do I suppose is for the Indonesian authorities to reexamine the case para naman as a favor to the Philippines. ‘Yun lang ang napag-usapan namin (That's the only thing that we talked about). Not much more than that,” Marcos said.

Prime minister’s aide tells The Media Line that Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are not being misused against minority groups Minorities in Pakistan enjoy equal human rights to other citizens and “there is no misuse of the blasphemy laws against them,” Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, a religious cleric and the Pakistani prime minister’s special representative on interfaith harmony and the Middle East, told The Media Line. Ashrafi was responding to a report released this week by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which recommended that 12 nations remain on the list of countries of concern for religious freedom, among them Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Speaking of Pakistan, the report stated that the coalition government led by Prime Minister Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, which took office in mid-April 2022, had “weaponized the country’s blasphemy laws against former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his cabinet members.”

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); May 10, 2023: Three men were executed for drug-related charges in Qezel Hesar Prison. Bullets and tear gas were fired at families of death row prisoners gathered outside the prison to save their lives. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, three men were executed in Qezel Hesar Prison on 10 May. Their identities have been established as Hossein Panjak, Abdolhossein Emami Moghaddam and Babak Aghayi. They were all sentenced to death for drug-related charges by the Revolutionary Court. Their families gathered outside the prison last night in an attempt to save their lives but were met with forces who beat them with batons, bullets and tear gas. An informed source told Iran Human Rights: “One of the families was taken to hospital and is in a serious condition after being beaten. Prison authorities fired bullets in the air and shot paint balls at the families. One of them was hit with a club and was in a bad state when they were transferred to t...