[Deathpenalty] death penalty new----N.C., OHIO, US MIL.
Sept. 2 NORTH CAROLINA: Testimony in capital murder trial starts Tuesday After 4 weeks of jury selection, testimony will begin Tuesday in the capital trial of a man accused of hiring men to kill his stepmother. Robert Dennis Dixon, 49, could face the death penalty if a jury finds him guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit 1st-degree murder and 1st-degree burglary. Sara Jones Bright Dixon was found dead of gunshot wounds inside her McCray Road home Nov. 30, 2007. The last of 3 alternate jurors was selected Thursday. Robert Dixon's case will be heard by a jury of 7 women, 5 men and 3 female alternates. Testimony is scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday in the superior courtroom of the Alamance County Historic Courthouse. Testimony in the case is expected to last between 3 and 4 weeks. Alamance County District Attorney Pat Nadolski and Alamance County Assistant District Attorney Sean Boone will argue for the state. Defense attorneys Terry Alford and Stephen Freedman represent Robert Dixon. Robert Dixon allegedly hired Thomas Clay Friday, 40, to kill Sara Dixon for $10,000. The state believes Robert Dixon was angry with her for putting his father in a nursing home and selling the family land to pay for the care. Friday pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder, conspiracy and 1st-degree burglary last year in exchange for a life sentence. He testified that Robert Dixon agreed to pay him. Friday said he hired Matthew Devon Fields, 25, to assist with the staged burglary and kill Sara Dixon. Friday is expected to testify for the state. Depending on the verdict, the trial could stretch weeks longer. If found guilty of 1st-degree murder, the jury must then weigh a life sentence versus the death penalty in a sentencing phase. Prosecutors and defense attorneys would argue their sides before the jury began to deliberate the sentence. (source: The Times-News) OHIO: Ohio's vanishing stock of execution drugs is yet another sign that its time to eliminate the death penalty in Ohio: editorial There's a reason most doctors won't administer the lethal drugs now used to execute prisoners under sentence of death. It's the same reason Ohio is about to run out of pentobarbital, the current drug of choice on death row: Most medical professionals and many of those who manufacture drugs do not want to participate in the taking of a human life. Ohio's depleted stock of death-penalty drugs is yet another reason why Ohio and other states that still execute prisoners should reconsider on moral, ethical, legal and practical grounds. Pentobarbital is essentially the same drug used to put many animals to sleep. Like other drugs previously used for human executions, how humanely it executes a grown man (or woman) has never been systematically studied. A federal court filing earlier this month suggested Ohio will run out of pentobarbital after executing Garfield Heights killer Harry Mitts Jr. on Sept. 25. Mitts was convicted of murdering one of his neighbors in what was believed to be a racially motivated assault and then killing a Garfield Heights police sergeant. That means Ohio will need another execution plan for Ronald Phillips of Akron, scheduled to die in November for the rape and murder of a 3-year-old girl. The Associated Press reports that will be the third time Ohio has had to shift drug execution protocols. Ohio first switched to a single drug method in 2009 after the botched execution of Romell Broom, called off after numerous unsuccessful efforts to find a vein to inject the three-drug cocktail then used to execute prisoners. Questions also were raised about whether the paralytic drug in that cocktail prevented the prisoner from expressing pain during the execution. Ohio then moved to a single drug, sodium thiopental, but had to switch again in 2011 to pentobarbital. The problem, according to The New York Times, is that many drug makers will no longer supply drugs to prisons to be used in executions. Pentobarbital supplies are dwindling because the Danish manufacturer restricted supplies to U.S. corrections departments, the Times reported. In Georgia, documents the AP obtained show the state turned to a compounding pharmacy for pentobarbital after its supply of conventionally manufactured pentobarbital expired in March. Yet questions have been raised about quality control at some compounding pharmacies after more than 50 people died from contaminated drugs distributed by the New England Compounding Center last year. Missouri meanwhile is moving ahead with plans to use propofol, the drug that contributed to the death of Michael Jackson. It's hard to feel sympathy for murderers and rapists. But if the state is going to assume the awesome burden of taking a human life, it better have the best people and the best drugs to do it, and that clearly isn't happening. It is time to end the death penalty and the inequities
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
Sept. 2 NIGERIA: Shell denies involvement in crude theft, opposes death penalty Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) has denied the reports linking oil companies with the theft of crude oil in the Niger Delta region, saying they were complete misunderstanding of happenings in the oil industry. Reacting to reports that as much as 400,000 barrels were lost daily to illegal bunkering against the backdrop of recent increase in oil theft in the Delta/Bayelsa states axis of the delta, Shell's General Manager, Communication, Mr. Philip Mshelbila said, such figure did not necessarily represent what were stolen by criminals, but production lost as a result of shutdown of operation in the affected areas.. Speaking with newsmen in Warri, Delta State at the weekend, he said the figure given by a top official of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, is lost by all players in the oil and gas industry - including multinationals and local firms. Msehilbila said loss by his company fluctuates on a daily basis, adding that it could hit as much as 60,000bpd. He explained that when oil facilities like flow stations are shut down in the event of attack by criminals, productions from wells serviced by the facility is deferred, giving rise to the figure bandied. Specifically, he disclosed that about 150,000bpd would be deferred if such attack forces SPDC to shut down its Nembe Creek Pipeline, which conveys crude to Bonny Terminal. Also debunking allegation of underreporting of exported crude oil, SPDC's Asset Manager, Swamp West, Mr. Mesch Maichibi said there were meters for crude inlets and what is loaded from terminals, maintaining, DPR (Department of Petroleum Resources) has the key and the password. It is impossible to do anything (allegation) because as you pump it is recording and no way anybody can falsify account. As far as I am concern the problem is between the trunk line and terminal, he said. Mshelbila said crude theft had increased in recent times and expressed concerns over increase in crude oil theft in the Western Delta, comprising facilities in Delta and Bayelsa states. He called for all hands to be on deck to tackle the scourge, stressing, If we keep finger pointing, we will never address the situation. We have a duty to protect our future and pipelines. However, while canvassing for sterner measures to tackle the crime, Mshelbila dissociated the company from calls for to make illegal bunkering punishable by death. He said, We are not talking about extreme measures. Some people have talked about death sentence, but we say 'No'. What we ask for is due process and appropriate punishment should be given but by no way do we support the extreme measure. (source: worldstagegroup.com) TANZANIA: Women MPs want 51 pct rep, scrap of death penalty Tanzanian women parliamentarians have decided to set aside their political ideologies to advocate for 51 % representation in various positions while also clamouring for eradication of death penalty. The gathering is a Constitutional Forum of the Tanzania Women Parliamentary Group (TWPG) which has one thing in mind, to ponder over what should be incorporated in the coming Mother Law. The Speaker of the National Assembly Hon. Anne Makinda compares women legislators with headlights saying they are the ones to show the way for the 51 % women representation in various fields. Makinda says statistics indicate that women account for more than 1/2 of Tanzanians and as such all economic, social and cultural programmes should also take this into account. The new Constitution should incorporate inheritance matters and special groups' rights such as women, children and persons with disabilities due to their vulnerability, says Makinda. Makinda calls upon the need to come up with a Constitution that will make it mandatory for men and women to engage into lawful income generating activities to curb not only poverty but also Gender Based Violence (GBV) problem. Experience indicates that non-involvement into income generating activities makes women prone to various forms of violence thus turning them into slavery for fear that once they leave the marital bliss, they can never cater for their basic needs. A legal expert who is also a member of the Committee of Experts on Constitution matters from the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) Advocate Magdalene Rwebangila calls upon the need for the country to come up with an anti-GBV law as well as shelter homes for its victims. This is so because, more often than not, victims of GBV end up returning to the very same homes where they have been abused and thus causing such acts to prevail. This trend has led to loss of life, and the only way to salvage the situation would be to shelter victims, while at the same time counselling and giving them medical care. TWPG's Secretary General Hon. Angellah Kairuki is of the view that
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, US MIL.
Sept. 2 USA: These Are The Only 13 Women Executed In America In The Past 40 Years A jury will likely decide this month whether notorious murder defendant Jodi Arias should get the death penalty for murdering her ex-boyfriend. It would be unusual if she were executed. In the last century, only 40 women have received the death penalty in America - 13 have been executed since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The total number of executions in the United States since 1976 is 1,343. BI looked into the stories of the 13 women on death row since the mid-'70s, many of whom killed their lovers. 1.) Velma Barfield, a drug addict from North Carolina, forged her boyfriend's checks to fund her habit. Fearing he might find out about a $300 forged check, she poisoned his beer, the Associated Press reported. As the 1st woman sentenced to die in 22 years, Barfield eventually confessed to killing 3 others, including her own mother, The New York Times reported. She died by lethal injection in 1984. 2.) Karla Faye Tucker and an accomplice wanted to end three days of drug-induced shenanigans by stealing a motorcycle. So they killed the owner of the bike and his friend with a pickax in 1983, CNN reported. Sentenced to die for her crimes, Tucker became a born-again Christian and waited for a pardon until hours before her lethal injection. 3.) Judy Buenoano poisoned her husband and drowned her son, earning her the name black widow, CNN reported. Buenoano attempted to bomb her fiance's car in 1983, which then led investigators to realize she had drowned her partially paralyzed son and poisoned her husband years earlier. She died in 1998 in Florida's electric chair. 4.) Betty Lou Beets shot and killed her 5th husband in 1983, CNN reported. She claimed she was a battered wife and killed him in self-defense in an attempt to get clemency from then-Gov. George W. Bush. He rejected that claim. In 2000, Beets became the 2nd woman executed in Texas since the Civil War. 5.) Christina Riggs tried and failed to kill her 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter by injecting them with potassium chloride, BBC reported. Instead, she smothered them with pillows. She died in 2000 - the 1st woman Arkansas executed in 150 years. 6.) Wanda Jean Allen got the death penalty by lethal injection for killing her lover Gloria Leathers, whom she met in prison, USA Today reported. The American Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter for her clemency. The letter said she had severe, untreated mental disabilities that prosecutors knew about but never revealed during court proceedings. When she died in 2001, she became the 1st black woman executed since 1954. 7.) Marilyn Plantz plotted with her lover and another man to kill her husband and collect on his $300,000 life insurance policy, BBC reported. The 2 men bludgeoned her husband to death while her children sat in another room. She died from lethal injection in 2001 in Oklahoma, which attracted attention from Amnesty Intentional as the state with the highest rate of capital punishment. 8.) Lois Nadean Smith stabbed and killed her son's 21-year-old ex-girlfriend, Cindy Baillie, by shooting her 9 times and stabbing her in the throat, The Philadelphia Daily News reported. Smith died at the age of 61 from lethal injection in Oklahoma. 9.) Aileen Wuornos, working as a prostitute along Florida's interstate highway, killed one of her male clients in 1989. Over the next year, she murdered 5 more. During her decade on death row, she garnered many titles: a man-hating lesbian killer or a feminist hero who murdered in self-defense, The New York Times wrote. Her life inspired the major motion picture, Monster, starring Charlize Theron. She died from lethal injection in 2002. 10.) Frances Newton, the 1st woman Texas executed since the Civil War, killed her husband and 21-month-old daughter, the Austin Chronicle reported. Newton maintained her innocence, speculating that a drug dealer whom her husband owed money did the crime. The state refused her a pardon, and she died by lethal injection in 2005. 11.) Teresa Lewis plotted to kill her husband and stepson and collect the insurance money. Instead of pulling a trigger on a gun, she pulled a couple of young men in to pull the trigger for her, Prosecutor David Grimes told a judge at the time, The Washington Post reported. Virginia sentenced her to die by lethal injection. She was the 1st woman executed in the state in more than 100 years. 12.) Kimberly McCarthy got the death penalty in Texas for killing her 71-year-old white neighbor, the Guardian reported. Lawyers attempted to get her pardoned because the police might have used her race as a factor to gain evidence. As the 500th person to die since capital punishment's reinstatement in the U.S. in 1976 as well as a black female, her case caused a bit of a frenzy. (source: Business Insider) US MILITARY:
