Death Penalty News

An Oklahoma city has agreed to pay more than $7 million to a former death row inmate who was exonerated after nearly 50 years in prison, making him the longest-serving inmate to be declared innocent of a crime.  The Edmond City Council voted without comment on Monday to settle the lawsuit filed by Glynn Ray Simmons, 71, against the Oklahoma City suburb and a former police detective for $7.15 million. 

The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday set a December execution date for Christopher Collings, who was convicted of raping and killing a 9-year-old girl nearly 2 decades ago.  Collings is scheduled to die by a chemical injection at 6 p.m. on Dec. 3 at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri. He was convicted in the death of Rowan Ford, a 4th-grade student who went missing from her home in Stella, Missouri, on Nov. 3, 2007. Her body was found in a cave 6 days later.  Police said the child had been strangled. 

An amendment to the Drug Act has been drafted that would introduce the death penalty for drug smugglers in the Maldives.  The Drug Act currently sets a penalty of a fine ranging between MVR 100,000 and MVR 10 million and life imprisonment for those convicted of smuggling drugs into the Maldives.  The bill, drafted by the Homeland Security Ministry, proposes the death penalty for smuggling more than a specified amount of drugs listed in Schedule One of the bill. 

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A third person is set to be executed by nitrogen gas, Alabama authorized Wednesday, months after becoming the first state to put a person to death with the previously untested method. The Alabama Supreme Court granted the state attorney general’s request to authorize the execution of Carey Dale Grayson, one of four teenagers convicted in the 1994 killing of Vickie Deblieux in Jefferson County. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey will set Grayson’s execution date.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); August 14, 2024: Mehdi Hosseini and Amir Tasbihi were executed for drug-related charges in Arak Central Prison. According to Hengaw, two men were executed in Arak Central Prison on 4 August. Their identities have been reported as Mehdi Hosseini from Arak and Amir Tasbihi from Saveh. Mehdi was arrested six years ago and Amir, two years ago. Both men were sentenced to death for drug-related charges by the Revolutionary Court.

CNN — Toomaj Salehi, the Iranian dissident rapper who escaped the death penalty earlier this summer has been cleared entirely of the original charges by a lower court in Isfahan, central Iran. Salehi became a key voice of anti-government dissent in Iran during the 2022 ‘Woman, Life Freedom’ protests, with lyrics that galvanized protesters and urged them to unite. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of “corruption on earth” last year.

On July 29, 2024, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the state’s first execution warrant of 2024, scheduling an execution date for Loran Cole in just thirty days, on August 29, 2024. Mr. Cole’s execution warrant comes nearly ten months after Florida’s last execution, which was the last of the state’s six executions carried out in 2023. 

The South Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to hear convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh’s jury tampering appeal. The order, issued Tuesday, means the case will go straight to the high court, skipping the lengthy Court of Appeals process. The state Supreme Court could overturn a judge’s decision from earlier this year that denied Murdaugh’s attempt to get a new murder trial.

Li Zaiyong, a former senior political adviser from Guizhou province, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve by the Fifth Intermediate People's Court of Chongqing Municipality on Tuesday for accepting bribes of over 432 million yuan ($60.27 million) and abuse of power. Li, a former vice-chairman of the Guizhou Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, was also deprived of his political rights for life and had all his personal property confiscated. The illicit gains from his corrupt activities and interest earned on them will be turned over to the State treasury, with any shortfall further pursued.

34-year-old Umendra Kevat unsuccessfully tried to hang himself after the murders using the same rope with which he strangled his family.  'No signs or remorse', says court.  A court in Chhattisgarh’s Bilaspur Tuesday sentenced a 34-year-old man to death for having murdered his wife and three children this January saying the act was “predetermined, grave, barbaric, (and) horrifying where innocent and helpless children were murdered by a man who was supposed to be their natural guardian”.

The Briton's brother is desperate to have his body returned to the UK because, as he revealed: 'The last place he would want to be is where he was falsely charged with murder' A Brit who was sentenced to death in the US despite later being proven innocent by a judge has died while still incarcerated in Florida. Kris Maharaj spent an agonising 38 years behind bars for the murder of a father and son, who were alleged to have stolen laundered money from notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.

A conversation with Death Penalty Action Co-founder and Executive Director Abe Bonowitz. Now that Joe Biden is a lame duck president, activists are holding him accountable to make good on his promise to end the federal death penalty during his remaining six months as president. Biden’s election campaign in 2020 had pledged to end the federal death penalty and incentivize the remaining 27 states that still allow executions to do the same. While he made history as the first president in the United States to openly oppose the death penalty, there has been no movement to actually end federal executions during his nearly four years in office.

55-year-old Mohammed Al-Ghamdi was sentenced to death for his tweets criticising corruption and human rights violations in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Court of Appeal has overturned the death sentence issued against a retired teacher, Mohammed bin Nasser Al-Ghamdi, for tweeting about human rights. On July 9, 2023, 55-year-old Mohammed Al-Ghamdi was sentenced to death by the Specialised Criminal Court in Riyadh for his tweets criticising corruption and human rights violations.

Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO); August 12, 2024: Mohammad Ansari Gheshlagh, Ali Mehdian and two unidentified Afghan nationals were executed for murder charges in Tabriz Central Prison. According to information obtained by Iran Human Rights, four men were executed in Tabriz Central Prison on 12 August. The four men were sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for murder. Two of them have been identified as 44-year-old Mohammad Ansari Gheshlagh and 32-year-old Ali Mehdian. The two others were Afghan nationals who have not been identified at the time of writing.

Who suffers the most through decades of appeals? Who suffers the most when justice delayed turns into justice denied? The families who were victimized.  Sen. Michele Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester, represents Ohio’s 3rd senate district and is the vice chairperson of the senate judiciary committee. Reynolds is also on the host committee of the council of state governments midwestern legislative conference and the vice chair of the conference’s criminal justice and public safety committee.

Hours after Taberon Honie was executed by lethal injection, a former Utah lawmaker who tried but failed to repeal the death penalty said an eventual repeal is "not if, but when." Lowry Snow, an attorney who served as a Republican state representative from Washington County, introduced HB 147 two years ago to hike prison time for aggravated murder, but get rid of the death penalty.

The Opinion video above  [view on website] is the final episode in a series of three videos that take a stand against the death penalty in the United States. It features Charles Don Flores, who has been on death row in Texas since 1999, awaiting execution for a murder he insists he didn’t commit. That is where we met and filmed him. The videos are in keeping with the editorial board’s longstanding position that the death penalty is full of bias and error, morally abhorrent, futile in deterring crime and should be abolished.

The wheels of justice turn slowly, especially for death row inmates who are the victims of miscarriages of justice. Marcellus Williams , who has been on Missouri’s death row since 2001 and is scheduled to be executed on September 24, knows that all too well. Next week he will finally get a chance to prove his innocence.

A Defense Department disagreement over how to bring to justice the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and two others has thrown the cases into disarray. This dispute has surfaced tensions between the desire of some victims' families for a final legal reckoning and the significant obstacles that may make that impossible. Defense lawyers and some legal experts blame many of the endless delays on what they call the "original sin" haunting the military prosecutions: the illegal torture that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants were subjected to in CIA custody. That years-old abuse has snarled the case, leaving lawyers to hash out legal issues two decades later in the now often-forgotten military courtrooms at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Japan has not executed anyone for more than two years, apparently reflecting its recent cautious stance after previously hanging death row inmates every few months under the government led by the Liberal Democratic Party. The halt in executions could be linked to the dismissal of the justice minister in 2022 over inappropriate comments about the death penalty and the ongoing retrial of Iwao Hakamada, an aging former inmate accused of a 1966 quadruple murder, according to experts.