Death Penalty News

BATON ROUGE, La. (KALB) - The Louisiana Board of Pardons has declined to move forward with the first five death row applications during administrative reviews Friday in Baton Rouge. This comes after an agreement was reached last week between the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office, district attorneys throughout the state, the Louisiana Board of Pardons and the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections to hold reviews instead of actual hearings first.

As a nation that claims to uphold human rights, it is puzzling that Indonesia retains the death penalty in its criminal justice system. The problem with our capital punishment is not just the fact that it is irreversible, but also because of the country’s corrupt system that allows room for miscarriages of justice. In commemorating World Day Against the Death Penalty on Tuesday, we join human rights groups in renewing our call on the government to abolish the death penalty, not only because the country’s judicial system is prone to mistakes, but also because of human rights violations that many death-row inmates have endured.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — An Idaho judge issued a death warrant on Thursday for the state’s longest-serving death row inmate, scheduling his execution for next month. Thomas Creech was convicted of killing two people in Valley County in 1974 and sentenced to death row. But after an appeal that sentence was reduced to life in prison. Less than 10 years later, however, he was convicted of beating a fellow inmate to death with a sock full of batteries, and he was again sentenced to death in 1983.

SAN QUENTIN — Douglas Daniel Clark, housed at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center on condemned status since 1983, died Oct. 11, 2023.  He was 75. At 3:39 p.m., Douglas Daniel Clark was pronounced deceased from natural causes at an outside medical facility. The Marin Coroner’s Office will determine his official cause of death. Clark was sentenced in Los Angeles County on March 16, 1983, to six consecutive death sentences for six counts of first-degree murder, an eight-month consecutive sentence for mutilation/sexual contact with human remains, and a nine-year consecutive sentence for attempted first-degree murder with a three-year enhancement for inflicting great bodily injury. 

They may be the only five of 56 prisoners who asked for mercy to have a shot at receiving it. Antoinette Frank, the infamous New Orleans police officer and the only woman facing execution in Louisiana, will argue for mercy along with four condemned men on Friday as the Louisiana Board of Pardons weighs clemency hearings for the first in a historic batch of pleas from death row. Frank was convicted nearly 30 years ago in one of the city’s most notorious crimes, a triple homicide committed during one of the darkest chapters in the scandal-ridden history of the New Orleans Police Department.

Hamas terrorists cold-bloodedly execute 90-year-old Israeli woman As Israeli forces continue to clear Gaza border towns of Hamas terrorists, harrowing scenes keep emerging, with particularly gruesome images being revealed in Kibbutz Kissufim. "Dozens of terrorists entered Kissufim and broke into homes of innocent civilians," says a local going by the name Shmulik Harel.  "While they were outside, they shouted 'IDF, IDF,' possibly in an attempt to lull us into a false sense of security and make us leave our homes. However, most of the residents sensed that something was amiss."

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); October 12, 2023: Hossein Bahrehmand, a man sentenced to death for drug-related charges, was executed in Hamedan Central Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, a man was executed in Hamedan Central Prison on 11 October. His identity has been established as Hossein Bahrehmand who was sentence to death for drug-related charges by the Revolutionary Court. At the time of writing, his execution has not been reported by domestic media or officials in Iran.

The State of Idaho has issued a death warrant for the execution of convicted murderer Thomas Eugene Creech. The execution is scheduled for Nov. 8, 2023 by lethal injection. The Idaho Department of Correction said in a news release it has secured the chemicals necessary for the lethal injection. Creech, now 73 years old, was sentenced to death for a 1974 double murder in Valley County. That death sentence was changed to two life sentences when the state’s death penalty mandate for first degree murder was ruled unconstitutional in 1979.

Pannir Selvam Pranthaman has spent the last nine years – a quarter of his 36 years on earth – in prison. Seven of those have been on death row. The son of a pastor in Ipoh, Pannir had come to Singapore to work and made friends with the wrong crowd. They convinced him to carry packages from Malaysia to Singapore. In September 2014, on the third of such trips, Pannir was stopped at Woodlands Checkpoint. He was carrying nearly 52g of heroin. Trafficking just 15g of heroin would make a person eligible for the death penalty.

Amnesty International says authorities in Iran and 35 other countries continue to use the death penalty for drug-related offenses in contravention of international human rights law and standards.  More than 700 drug-related executions were carried out across the world between 2018 and 2022, “disproportionately affecting those from marginalized sectors of society and often following proceedings that violated international standards for a fair trial,” the London-based human rights group said on October 10, which marked the World Day Against the Death Penalty. In 2022, Iran’s 255 drug-related executions constituted 78 percent of the confirmed global total for these offenses, according to Amnesty.

Catholics, Protestants and other Christian groups joined rights activists in South Korea to call for an end to capital punishment, marking the World Day Against the Death Penalty on Oct. 10. The United Conference on the Abolition of the Death Penalty, a forum that includes members of several Christian denominations and rights groups appealed to political decision-makers to abolish capital punishment as a mark of respect for human life. "Attempts to execute people must be stopped, and the campaign to abolish the death penalty in Korea must continue," the group said in a statement. South Korea has not executed anyone since 1997 and therefore Amnesty International categorizes it as “an abolitionist country in practice.”

Nun and famed anti-death penalty advocate Sister Helen Prejean has sued Louisiana’s prison pardon board and state attorney general Jeff Landry, arguing officials illegally agreed to halt numerous appeals from death row without the required public input. “I’m suing the Louisiana Board of Pardons,” Ms Prejean, whose book inspired the film Dead Man Walking , wrote on X on Tuesday. “The Board held a secret meeting on September 29th in an attempt to thwart clemency hearings for 56 Louisiana death row prisoners. The secret meeting occurred in violation of Louisiana’s Open Meetings Law.”

To this day Hussain trembles when he thinks of the time, and the experiences he had still gives him nightmares. Like many others who are prisoners of the death row, Hussain himself believes that being alive there is a fate worse than death “Who eats when they are sitting on death row, waiting to die?” Iqbal Hussain, who is now living his life freely in his family home in Mandi Bahauddin, had been on death row for 20 years, until miraculously just a day before his execution was carried out, his death sentence was revoked.

SINGAPORE: Families of death row convicts urged the Singapore government today to impose a moratorium on capital punishment to allow for an independent review of the controversial use of executions in the city state. Five families called for a meeting with Singapore’s law and home affairs minister “to listen to our stories, to our pain, and confront our humanity”, they said in a statement on the eve of World Day Against the Death Penalty. At least 16 people convicted on drug trafficking charges have been hanged since Singapore resumed executions last year after a two-year pause during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Today [Oct. 10] is the 21st World Day against the Death Penalty, and a pathway towards abolition of this cruel measure in the South East Asia is not unimaginable. I don’t pen these words in response to vast mobilizations against capital punishment sweeping the region. Quite the contrary. Regrettably, we’re far from achieving that level of awareness and mobilization. This is a region where championing human rights hasn’t historically been viewed as fashionable or commendable. Yet, there’s a genuine opportunity to ignite a substantive conversation about the death penalty.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A Texas man who unsuccessfully challenged the safety of the state’s lethal injection drugs and raised questions about evidence used to persuade a jury to sentence him to death for killing an elderly woman decades ago was executed late Tuesday. Jedidiah Murphy, 48, was pronounced dead after an injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the October 2000 fatal shooting of 80-year-old Bertie Lee Cunningham of the Dallas suburb of Garland. Cunningham was killed during a carjacking.

I’ve long spoken up against the death penalty, a punishment so cruel, inhumane, and riddled with error and malice that it should have no place in our modern world. Its proponents claim it deters crime, yet nothing could be further from the truth – and study after study refutes that claim. Look anywhere in the 55 countries that retain the practice: the death penalty doesn’t make communities safer, has no noticeable impact on crime rates, whilst wasting precious resources that could be better used elsewhere.  

“A chilling whisper lingered in the air as he disclosed these unsettling words, meant for my ears only. ‘You believe these sentences from the Judiciary hold weight? We don’t concern ourselves with judgments and court rulings. We execute at our discretion, whenever we see fit. You may languish for years on death row, or be summoned in the dead of night. It matters not. We take lives when we choose…” This is the harrowing testimony of a former Iranian political prisoner and a prison guard. This prisoner endured 12 long years within the confines of Evin, Gohardasht, and the Central Prison of Tabriz during the tumultuous 2010s. It is a damning indictment of the regime that holds the unfortunate record of the highest number of state-sanctioned executions globally, surpassed only by China, a country with a population of 1.4 billion.

As Saudi Arabia continues to issue and carry out death sentences, ranking prominently among the top five countries with the highest execution rates, the world observes the World Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10, 2023, under the theme "Execution: Irreversible Torture." For the second consecutive year, the general theme of International Day focuses on examining the relationship between the implementation of the death penalty and torture, as well as harsh and inhumane punishments and treatments. In addition to what detainees who are sentenced to death endure from the moment of their arrest until the issuance of the verdict, they face widespread violations that constitute continuous torture for them even until the execution. These violations do not cease after the execution, with the psychological torture experienced by their families.

Jedidiah Murphy gets reprieve one day before he was scheduled to receive lethal injection over fatal 2000 shooting of an 80-year-old during a carjacking JTA — A stay of execution was upheld for a Jew on death row in Texas, one day before he was scheduled to receive a lethal injection. Jedidiah Murphy, 48, was sentenced to death for the fatal 2000 shooting of 80-year-old Bertie Lee Cunningham in Dallas County during a carjacking.