Death Penalty News

The case has highlighted the difficulty of distinguishing between the public demand for severe punishment and the legal treatment of suspects according to their age. TUNIS – Shock over the alleged collective rape of a 15-year-old girl in Tunis has revived debate in Tunisia over the severity of penalties for sexual violence against children, including renewed calls to reconsider the country’s abolition of the death penalty for rape.

Kosowski returns to court Oct. 8 for a Spencer hearing as the judge considers whether to sentence him to death.  Convicted killer Tomasz Kosowski will return to court Oct. 8 as a judge moves closer to deciding whether the former plastic surgeon will be sentenced to death for the murder of attorney Steven Cozzi.  The case is entering its final stage under unusual circumstances. Kosowski is representing himself, waived a jury for both the guilt and penalty phases, and has declined to present mitigation or evidence intended to support a sentence other than death. 

Cases involving shaken baby syndrome (SBS) have resulted in overturned convictions in Georgia and California, while New Jersey's high court has jumped a step further.  As courts in other states reconsider convictions based on shaken baby syndrome, Robert Roberson’s lawyers have kept close watch—filing new notices in Texas each time a ruling calls the theory into question.  In Georgia and California, judges have overturned convictions after finding that advances in medical science could have changed the outcomes. In New Jersey, the state’s highest court went a step further, declaring shaken baby testimony inadmissible in criminal trials. 

Gov. Bill Lee does not plan to stop Christa Pike's execution. Pike, 50, is scheduled to be killed by lethal injection 10 a.m. Sept. 30 at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. “After deliberate consideration of Christa Gail Pike’s request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene," Lee said in a statement released Sept. 28. Pike's attorneys lamented the news.

Iranian authorities have executed at least five prisoners, including two Kurdish men and one Baloch, in prisons in Isfahan and Karaj. The five had been sentenced to death on “drug-related” or “murder” charges. According to reports received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Abdolghani Salarzehi, a 35-year-old Baloch prisoner, was executed at Isfahan Central Prison at dawn on Monday, September 28, 2026. Informed sources said Salarzehi, a married father of five, had been arrested seven years earlier on “drug-related” charges and subsequently sentenced to death.

Justin Michael Wolfe’s case once attracted national attention as an example of suburban youths dabbling in the worlds of drugs and death. A Virginia man once sentenced to death in a 2001 murder-for-hire case will be released from prison after a plea deal finalized Monday ended his decades-long legal battle, his attorneys said. Justin Michael Wolfe, whose case attracted national attention as an example of suburban youths dabbling in the worlds of drugs and death, pleaded guilty to two lesser charges of conspiracy to distribute marijuana and solicitation of robbery, according to court records. The latter disposition was made under an Alford plea, meaning a defendant doesn’t admit guilt but does admit prosecutors have enough evidence that could lead to a conviction.

PROVO, Utah (KUTV) — A man convicted in a 1985 capital murder case is to be released after more than four decades on Utah's death row. A Utah County judge ruled that Douglas Carter could be released on bail as he awaits a potential retrial for the 1985 murder of Eva Olesen. He will be released with certain stipulations, including a required GPS monitor purchased by his attorney and a no-contact order with the victim's family. The bond hearing took place Monday less than a week after prosecutors dropped the death penalty. This was in response to new evidence showing that Carter's DNA did not match the blood at the crime scene.

Dunnellon, Florida—Every night, one of the men Ron McAndrew killed would sit at the foot of his bed and stare, blankly, into his tortured soul. He knew they were coming. He’d shift over in his sheets to make room. “They never said anything,” McAndrew recalls, his aged voice straining from the weight of the memory. “They just sat there and looked at me.” But their eyes would talk. They would ask, "How could you do such a thing?’” says McAndrew. “You always claimed to be a good person. And now you’re killing people.”

TOKYO—Why fight to keep a murderer alive? asks Aera magazine (Sept 21-28). Defense lawyer Yasushi Mizutani’s profession qualifies him to explain. On July 5, 2009, at 4:15 in the afternoon, a man walked into an Osaka pachinko parlor, doused the floor with gasoline and set it on fire. Five burned to death. Ten others survived their burns. The next day police in Hiroshima arrested Sunao Takami, then 41. He confessed immediately. “Why did you do it?” they asked him. He shrugged. “I wanted to kill. It didn’t matter who.”

‘ Phua Chu Kang’ actors Lim Kay Siu and Neo Swee Lin are charged with taking part in a public assembly outside the State Courts Six Singaporeans , including journalist Kirsten Han and Phua Chu Kang actors Lim Kay Siu and Neo Swee Lin, were charged on Monday with taking part in public assemblies. The assemblies were held in prohibited areas, with one held outside the State Courts in support of abolishing the death penalty, as well as candlelight vigils held outside Changi Prison for death row inmates.

Iran's Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence of Mozhdeh Hashemi Bazargani, a 27-year-old Red Crescent worker who said in a recording from Qazvin prison that interrogators beat her until her teeth broke and made her sign a confession, a source told Iran International. Hashemi Bazargani was denied a lawyer of her own choosing throughout the proceedings, the source said. She is held in Qazvin Central Prison, in the city 150 kilometers west of Tehran, and is accused of sending the location of a military site to "the enemy," a charge she has denied.

(TNND) — As Tennessee prepares for a Sept. 30 execution, the Tennessee Supreme Court has denied death row inmate Christa Gail Pike’s request to stop it. The court rejected Pike’s challenge to the state’s lethal-injection protocol, finding that her thrombocytosis diagnosis, a condition involving elevated blood platelets, did not show the execution would violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

President Marcos Confirms Decision to Grant Absolute Pardon to Mary Jane Veloso  President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. has signed an absolute pardon for Mary Jane Veloso after more than a decade.  On Friday (September 25, 2026), the President confirmed the decision during a visit to Guiuan, Eastern Samar.  According to him, the pardon was officially signed the previous day, marking a major development in the case.  

Douglas Stewart Carter, 71, was sentenced to death in 1985 after a jury found him guilty of murdering Eva Olesen Prosecutors are dropping their plan to seek the death penalty in an upcoming retrial of a Utah man who spent decades on death row for a 1985 killing in which newly analyzed DNA evidence did not match him. Douglas Stewart Carter, 71, was sentenced to death in 1985 after a jury found him guilty of murdering Eva Olesen, the aunt of a former Provo police chief. The state Supreme Court last year ordered a new trial, citing misconduct by investigators. Carter remains in custody and maintains his innocence.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed an exe­cu­tion war­rant for 74-year-old pris­on­er William ​“Bill” Thompson less than 24 hours after he was released from the hos­pi­tal to the hos­pice wing of the prison. After his attor­neys raised seri­ous con­cerns about his men­tal com­pe­ten­cy and dete­ri­o­rat­ing phys­i­cal health, Gov. DeSantis agreed to tem­porar­i­ly stay the exe­cu­tion so Mr. Thompson’s com­pe­ten­cy can be eval­u­at­ed on October 1. If he is found com­pe­tent, his exe­cu­tion remains sched­uled for October 13.

A district judge found Lucio “actually innocent" in 2024 and ruled the state had suppressed evidence in her death penalty case. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday struck down a lower court’s finding that death row inmate Melissa Lucio is innocent of the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter. Lucio has spent 18 years on death row after being convicted of killing her daughter, Mariah Alvarez. But questions about Lucio’s possible innocence have lingered for years, stemming from questions on the origin of Mariah’s fatal head trauma: from abuse or an accidental fall down the stairs.

Iranian authorities have executed three prisoners, including two Lors and one Arab, in separate cases at prisons in Dezful, Isfahan, and Ahvaz. The prisoners, Emad Mirdoraghi, Mostafa Karimzadeh, and Seyed Sadegh Mousavi, had been sentenced to death on charges of murder or drug-related offenses. Based on information received by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Emad Mirdoraghi, a Lor from Andimeshk, was executed at Dezful Central Prison in Khuzestan Province at dawn on Wednesday, September 23, 2026.

Thai police have arrested a 26-year-old Hong Kong man after seizing about 350 kilogrammes of crystal methamphetamine, known as "ice," worth an estimated 700 million baht (about HK$165 million, US$21.04 million) at a residential property in Bangkok's Min Buri district. The raid was carried out on Monday night by the Department of Special Investigation's Crime Suppression Bureau and narcotics police at a house on Rom Klao 11 alley in the Saen Saep sub-district. Officers found three large plastic barrels containing the drugs, along with plastic bags, cardboard boxes, electronic scales, blenders, vacuum sealers, suitcases, and plastic containers.

Texas executes man for a triple killing, days after other man convicted in case was put to death  A man was executed Wednesday evening in Texas for a triple killing committed during an attempted robbery at a rural home, 1 week after the other man convicted in the case was put to death.  Ker’Sean Ramey, 41, was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. CDT following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was the 6th person executed this year in Texas, with 3 more lethal injections scheduled in the state over the next 2 months. 

Tomasz Kosowski sat each day alone at the defense table, wearing orange jail garb and rubber sandals with socks. In a rare and largely unprecedented move for a death penalty case, Kosowski represented himself, waiving his right to a jury trial and allowing a judge in Pinellas County, Florida, to decide his fate. Prosecutors presented the state’s case over six days, laying out for the judge how the former plastic surgeon accosted Steven Cozzi in the bathroom of his law office on a Tuesday morning, and Cozzi was never seen again.