[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
April 21 BANGLADESH: Youth gets death penalty for friend's murder A court on Thursday convicted and sentenced a young man to death for the 2011 murder of his friend in the Lalkhan Bazar area of the port city. Jahed Mahmud, 26, a resident of Baghmoniram area of the city, is said to had taken his friend Kafil Uddin, then a 2nd year student at the International Islamic University, to a hill on the south side of Jamiatul Falah Mosque in Lalkhan Bazar following dinner at a local restaurant on December 18, 2011. There he later strangulated Kafil, before snatching his laptop and cash. Police recovered Kafil's body from the hill on December 19. The same day, Kafil's father Mohammad Rafiq filed a case with the Kotowali Model Police Station. Jahed was put under arrest in connection with the murder same days later, and the Police submitted the chargesheet accusing him on May 3, 2012. After examining the records and 11 witnesses, Additional Session's Judge Mohammad Shah-e Nur handed down the verdict. (source: prothom-alo.com) PAKISTAN: Pakistan and the Death PenaltySince lifting its moratorium on the death penalty in 2014, Pakistan has become one of the world's leading executioners. In its "Death Sentences and Executions Report 2015," Amnesty International ranked Pakistan as the 3rd most prolific executioner in the world, right after China and Iran. Taken together, Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia accounted for almost 90 % of all recorded global executions (excluding China's figures, as the number of executions is considered a state secret by Beijing). While Amnesty's report only covered the year 2015, since 2014 Pakistan has hanged at least 389 death row inmates. After a brutal terrorist attack on schoolchildren in Peshawar, Pakistan lifted a 6-year de facto moratorium on use of the death penalty - 1st for terror-related cases and then, in March 2015, in all capital cases. In making its decision, government seemed quite convinced that capital punishment was the only effective way to deal with the scourge of terrorism. When the moratorium was lifted, it was viewed in the broader context of Pakistan's fight against terrorists and militancy. But after following this policy for almost a year and a half now, a quick glance at the data of executions carried out in Pakistan calls this narrative into question. As per the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), 389 death row convicts have been hanged through mid-April 2016. Out of these, 49 were tried by the Anti-Terrorism Courts (ATCs) and 12 by the military courts. Based on the HRCP data, only around 10 % of those executed in Pakistan were associated with terrorism, while 73 % are ordinary murderers. The others were convicted of murder after rape, murder after robbery, or murder after kidnapping. The Pakistani government's assertion that the moratorium on death penalty was lifted to tackle terrorism loses ground here. Furthermore, Pakistan employs a broad definition of "terrorism." Subsection (b) of Section 6(1) of the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, as amended in 2013, spells out terrorism as "the use or threat of action" intended "to coerce and intimidate or overawe the Government or the public" or "create a sense of fear or insecurity in society." Any murder can be deemed to "intimidate" the public and "create a sense of fear" in the neighborhood. No wonder more than one in 10 of all death row prisoners in Pakistan is tried as a "terrorist." It's also a very unfortunate reality that juveniles and people with disabilities were also among those executed in Pakistan. Several such controversies have come to the fore during the trials of non-terrorism related case in ATCs, which resulted in condemning juveniles to death. Shafqat Hussain, for example, was allegedly sentenced to death when he was 14 years old; he was hanged in August 2015. Likewise, Aftab Bahadur was hanged in June 2015 despite pleas from international human rights groups that he was a juvenile when convicted of murder. Amnesty International reports that 5 men who were juveniles at the time of their crimes were among those executed by Pakistan in 2015. Meanwhile, a paraplegic death row prisoner received a last-minute stay of execution in November 2015 to the relief of many human rights activists in the country. However, the news that the officials were simply uncertain of how to hang a man incapable of standing up unsupported was both sickening and painful. There are also questions about the fairness of the judicial process. There have been cases where the court-appointed lawyer does not ever meet the suspect outside of court, present evidence in his defense, or properly challenge witness statements. Poorer families cannot hire afford to private lawyers and very often lose the battle of life against poverty. Despite these issues, there seems to be strong public support for the death penalty. According to a
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., VA., N.C., FLA., ALA., NEB., USA
April 21 TEXAS: Texas is using "Of Mice and Men" to justify executing this man. Seriously. Bobby James Moore has an intellectual disability, yet he sits on death row because of deeply unscientific evidence Bobby James Moore has a lifelong intellectual disability, yet he sits on Texas's death row because the courts there used John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" to decide his fate. That's right - the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals went with a fictional novel over science and medicine to measure Bobby's severe mental limitations. The justices heard a vast body of evidence demonstrating these limitations, which meet the widely accepted scientific standards for defining intellectual disability. Then they rejected it all according to 7 wildly unscientific factors for measuring intellectual disability, drawn in large part from the fictional character Lennie Small. Bobby was no Lennie, they concluded, ruling that his disability wasn't extreme enough to exempt him from the death penalty. On Friday, the Supreme Court will decide whether to take Bobby's case. Executing people with intellectual disabilities is unconstitutional. The grey area is that the Supreme Court allows the states to define intellectual disability, leaving an opening for Texas to create a standard based partly on "Of Mice and Men." With its decision in Hall v. Florida 2 years ago, though, the Supreme Court made clear that states may not adopt definitions of intellectual disability that don't conform to accepted scientific standards. It's hard to come up with a less scientific standard than a novel written nearly 80 years ago. No one's life should depend on an interpretation of Steinbeck. Under current professional standards, a person with intellectual disability has significant deficits in intellectual functioning (IQ) and significant deficits in adaptive functioning (how well one adjusts to daily life) that manifest before the age of 18. Bobby has a clear intellectual disability that has been evident his entire life. Living in Houston in the 1970s, Bobby's family was so poor that they often went without food. Bobby and his siblings found discarded food in the neighbors' trash cans. When they got sick from the scraps, Bobby's siblings stopped eating from the trash cans, but Bobby never learned that lesson. He would eat the discarded food and get sick, over and over again. Growing up, Bobby rarely spoke. His teachers suspected that he had an intellectual disability, but they did not know what to do with him. They would ask Bobby to sit and draw pictures while they taught the rest of the class reading, writing, and math - or worse, they would send him to the hallway to sit alone. Bobby failed the 1st grade twice but was socially promoted to 2nd grade. His abusive and alcoholic father slammed the door in the face of the few teachers who tried to intervene on Bobby's behalf. When he reached age 13, Bobby still didn't know the days of the week, the months of the year, the seasons, or how to tell time. The school system finally acknowledged that Bobby should receive some intervention, and counselors recommended that his teachers drill him daily on this basic information. But by that point it was too late. The schools continued to socially promote him until he dropped out of school in the 9th grade. Without support for his disability and in an effort to escape his violent home life, Bobby was left to survive on the streets. He got caught up with the wrong crowd, and at 20 years old, he followed 2 acquaintances who had made plans to rob a store. Bobby was armed with a shotgun, though the group just wanted money and had no intention to kill anyone. But Bobby panicked when an employee screamed, and he accidentally discharged the shotgun. He did not learn until later that his shotgun blast had hit a clerk. Bobby was charged with homicide in 1980 and sentenced to death later that same year. He and his lawyers didn't have a chance to present evidence of his intellectual disability until more than 20 years later, when the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Constitution forbids the execution of people with intellectual disability. Bobby's attorneys then petitioned for a hearing to show that he should be exempt from the death penalty. They presented evidence from multiple experts and decades of records showing Bobby's intellectual disability. Over the years, his IQ scores have ranged from the low 50s to the 70s, with an average score of 70.66. Using the appropriate scientific standards, the judge found that Bobby met the current definition of intellectual disability and should be sentenced instead to life without parole. But the state appealed. That's when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals used its unscientific factors, roughly based on Lennie, to uphold Bobby's death sentence. The court ignored the Supreme Court's ruling in Hall that determining
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS
April 21 TEXAS: Closing arguments in capital murder trial set for Thursday The prosecution and the defense have rested their cases in the capital murder trial of Demond Bluntson, who is facing the death penalty. Closing arguments will be delivered to jurors in the 49th District Court on Thursday morning. Jurors will then retire to begin their deliberations. Bluntson announced Wednesday he will not be testifying during the guilty or innocence phase of the trial. He previously declared, since the trial began Monday, he intended to testify. If convicted, the trial will shift into the punishment phase, during which jurors will be tasked with deliberating on whether to give Bluntson a life sentence or the death penalty. Bluntson is accused of fatally shooting his girlfriend's 2 sons, ages 1 and 6, in a local hotel room in June 2012. Authorities allege Bluntson came to Laredo with the children after he killed their mother, Brandy Cerny, in El Campo. (source: Laredo Morning Times) * What You Need to Know if the Supreme Court Takes the Case of Duane Buck Was he sentenced to death "because he is black"? The U.S. Supreme Court will soon consider whether to hear the Texas case of Duane Buck, who was sentenced to die in 1997 for shooting his ex-girlfriend Debra Gardner and her friend Kenneth Butler while Gardner's daughter pleaded, "Don't kill my mama." His small army of advocates don't dispute his guilt but argue he is facing the harshest possible punishment primarily "because he is black." At his trial, Walter Quijano, a psychologist called by the defense, told jurors that Buck was more likely to commit a violent crime again because of his race. (Death sentences in Texas require that a defendant be judged a "continuing threat to society.") Quijano later told The Texas Tribune he was describing a statistical relationship, and not a causal connection between race and violence, but Buck's lawyers say his comments tainted the jury's decision. Since then, Buck's attorneys at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund have turned his case into a symbol for the argument that the administration of the death penalty is rife with racial bias, part of the legacy of lynching and the ultimate manifestation of the racism that permeates the wider criminal justice system. Many capital defense attorneys see their work as an heir to the civil rights movement and a precursor to Black Lives Matter. "It is impossible to take race out of the death penalty because that's what it???s for," defense attorney Danalynn Recer said at an American Bar Association conference in Austin, Texas, last month. "We spare the people that we identify with." Later at the same conference, Stephen Bright, who has argued at the Supreme Court against efforts to keep blacks off death penalty juries, said the court "talks a good game but does nothing." Buck's new appeal to the Supreme Court has been accompanied by a drumbeat of news releases, op-ed articles, and blog posts (even MTV noticed). His lawyers are asking the justices to decide whether his original trial lawyer was "constitutionally ineffective" for putting Quijano on the stand, framing this specific concern with the question of "whether and to what extent the criminal justice system tolerates racial bias and discrimination." (The justices halted Buck's execution in September 2011, but then decided not to hear arguments on his case, though Justice Sonia Sotomayor called his death sentence "marred by racial overtones.") Regardless of what happens to Buck, these questions of race and the death penalty will remain unsettled. So now is a moment to look back at the reasons why, and the long line of cases his has joined. Many historians (including David Oshinsky last week in the Wall Street Journal) see the contemporary death penalty as the latest stage in a history that stretches back to lynchings, pointing out that most executions continue to take place in the states of the former Confederacy. "We've used the death penalty to sustain racial hierarchy by making it primarily a tool to reinforce the victimization of white people," the lawyer Bryan Stevenson told The Marshall Project last year. Rachel Aviv's New Yorker story on the Louisiana case of Rodricus Crawford made prominent mention of the Confederate flag waving outside the courthouse during his trial. But how can lawyers prove that their black clients are being subjected to racism? The difficulties center around the 1987 Supreme Court decision McCleskey v. Kemp. Warren McCleskey had been sentenced to death for murdering a police officer in Georgia, but the NAACP Legal Defense Fund argued that his sentence was part of a pattern of bias. They presented a study by law professor David Baldus finding that black murderers were 1.1 times more likely to get a death sentence than white murderers, controlling for dozens of other variables, and that killing a
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
April 21 SAUDI ARABIA: President Obama Can Help Save Saudi Youth Facing BeheadingHe can save lives and help ease religious tensions in the region. One concrete outcome that President Obama could pursue on his visit to Saudi Arabia is saving the lives of three Shia youth sentenced to be executed, most likely by beheading, for participating in nonviolent protests. Sparing their lives could also help ease the Shia/Sunni tensions that have engulfed the region. Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoon, and Abdullah al-Zaher are members of the minority Shia community that has, for decades, been demanding equality and full civil rights. The Shia represent 10-15 percent of the Saudi population and live mainly in the oil-rich Eastern province. Ever since the Saudi state was founded in 1932 by forming a pact with the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, the Shia in Saudi Arabia have endured state-sponsored discrimination, social marginalization, and campaigns of violence waged by anti-Shiite hardliners. According to Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, "All the Saudi Shia want is for their government to respect their identity and treat them equally. Yet Saudi authorities routinely treat these people with scorn and suspicion." The persecution of the three youth is deeply sectarian, and reflects the long history of oppression the Shia have faced in Saudi Arabia. Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables in 2008 reported a campaign to close Shia mosques and prevent Shia celebrations, as well as ongoing arrests of people trying to take part in these celebrations. There is also discrimination in the education system. Shia cannot teach religion in public schools and Shia pupils are told by Sunni teachers that they are infidels. Saudi textbooks traditionally characterize Shiism as a form of heresy worse than Christianity and Judaism. Shia cannot become school principals and there are unofficial restrictions on the number of Shia admitted to universities. The discovery of oil in the Eastern Province brought the Shia jobs as skilled and semi-skilled workers, but they receive little of the contracting wealth the industry generates and they complain that the region does not get its fair share of the oil revenue. Shia are also discriminated against in government employment, especially in positions that relate to national security, such as the military, police, or the security services. There has been only 1 Shia minister, appointed by King Abdullah in 2014 as the Minister of State, and only a handful of Shia members have been appointed to the 150-seat Shura Council that advises the king. The Sunni-Shia divide, and the resulting persecution of Shia, becomes more open and dangerous in times of regional upheaval and heightened tensions with Iran. The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the subsequent rise of Iranian influence in the region intensified the hostilities. The Saudi government began to view dissent among the Shia as part of an Iranian conspiracy to destabilize the kingdom. This was the climate during which the 2011 Shia protests took place, inspired by the Arab Spring. The protests began with calls for Shia rights and the release of political prisoners, but in the summer of 2012, after at least 16 people died at the hands of government forces, the demands turned into far-reaching calls for a constitutional government and an end to the monarchy. Ali, Dawood, and Abdullah were among the hundreds arrested during those protests. Their grossly unfair trials were based on "confessions," extracted under torture, that they attacked police. Dawood was so badly beaten that he signed a blank piece of paper; his tormentors later filled in the "crime" without even bothering to show it to him. These young men were sentenced to death for activities that, in the United States, are guaranteed by the First Amendment of our Constitution. The fact that they were sentenced to death for actions committed as juveniles is all the more shocking. Saudi Arabia is one of the only countries in the world that executes people arrested as minors. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which the Saudi government is a party, prohibits capital punishment for individuals who were under 18 at the time of the alleged crime. So do the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights. While the United States itself still uses the death penalty, in 2005 the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty for juveniles was cruel and unusual punishment and therefore prohibited by the Constitution. Aside from the issue of minors, Saudi Arabia is one of the top three executioners worldwide, surpassed only by China and Iran. In 2015, Saudi Arabia broke its own previous records, executing 158 people. This year, if the current rate is maintained, Saudi Arabia will execute about 320 prisoners, almost one a day.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, ARIZ., CALIF., USA
April 21 OHIO: Ohio high court upholds death penalty for former Toledoan The Ohio Supreme Court today upheld the death sentence for a former Toledo man who shot a convenience store clerk during a 2008 robbery. The high court rejected the argument that Anthony Belton, 30, should have been allowed to have a jury determine his sentence after he'd already pleaded no contest to aggravated murder and 2 counts of aggravated robbery and had a 3-judge panel consider his case. "In short, Ohio law does not permit a jury to sentence a capital defendant if the defendant has elected to enter a plea of guilty or no contest to capital charges," wrote Justice Sharon Kennedy for the 6-1 majority. The court also disagreed with Belton's argument that not allowing a jury to weigh the factors that determine whether a death sentence is appropriate in the case violated his Sixth Amendment rights. "...a defendant is not deprived of his right to present a defense simply because he does not present his evidence to a jury...," Justice Kennedy wrote. "And Belton does not claim that he was prevented from presenting a full mitigation defense to the 3-judge panel." Belton was convicted of shooting Matthew Dugan, 34, in the back of the head during the holdup of the former BP gas station at Dorr Street and Secord Road on Aug. 13, 2008. The 3-judge panel that considered his case determined that the fact that Belton committed the murder in the course of another felony, robbery, was sufficient to outweigh mitigating factors such as Belton's troubled childhood. The Supreme Court's sole dissenting vote belonged to Justice William O'Neill, who has previously stated he believes Ohio's death penalty is unconstitutional. Belton, on death row at Chillicothe Correctional Institution, still has a path of federal appeals that he may pursue. Ohio has not executed an inmate since January, 2014 amid under court and gubernatorial moratoriums as the state has struggled to obtain the drugs it would prefer to use in lethal injections. The current moratorium will expire at the end of this year. (source: Toledo Blade) ARIZONA: 7 Mohave County inmates currently on death row There are 7 inmates from Mohave County who sit on Arizona's death row. Mohave County has 2 death penalty cases pending in Superior Court. There are currently 7 convicted inmates from the county awaiting execution. Justin James Rector, 26, who faces the death penalty if convicted, is charged with 1st-degree murder for the Sept. 2, 2014, death of 8-year-old Isabella Grogan-Cannella and leaving her body near her Bullhead City home Darrell Bryant Ketchner's conviction for 1st-degree murder and burglary was overturned in December 2014. He had been sentenced in March 2013 for the July 4, 2009, murder of Ariel Allison, 18, in Kingman. Ketchner, 57, again faces the death penalty if convicted of Allison's murder. The cases of 3 death row inmates from Mohave County, Brad Lee Nelson, Frank Anderson and Charles David Ellison, are on appeal, according to Indigent Defense Administrator Blake Schritter. There are 117 men and 2 women on death row in Arizona. Of the 119 death row inmates in the state, 70 are Caucasians, 25 are Mexican-Americans, 16 are African-Americans, 1 is a Mexican national, 3 are Native Americans and 2 are listed as other. Daniel Wayne Cook was the last Mohave County inmate to be executed. He was put to death in August 2012 for killing a man and a 16-year-old boy in Lake Havasu City in July 1987. Nelson, 45, is the most recent inmate sentenced to death. He was sentenced in December 2009 for the June 2006 beating death of 13-year-old Amber Leann Graff of Golden Valley. Ellison, 50, of Lake Havasu City, was sentenced to death in February 2004 for killing an elderly Kingman couple in February 1999. Anderson, 68, was sentenced to death in December 2002 for killing 3 members of a Golden Valley family in August 1996. Anderson's co-defendant, Bobby Poyson, 39, was sentenced to death in September 1998 for his participation in the murders. The oldest inmate, Graham Saunders Henry, 69, was convicted and sentenced in February 1995 for kidnapping and killing an elderly Las Vegas man in a remote desert about 40 miles north of Kingman in June 1986. Danny L. Jones, 51, was sentenced to death in December 1993 for the baseball bat beating death of a Bullhead City man, his 74-year-old grandmother and his 7-year-old daughter in March 1992. Roger W. Murray, 45, was sentenced to death in October 1992 for the May 1991 shotgun slaying of a Grasshopper Junction couple. His brother, Robert W. Murray, was also sentenced to death for the murders but he died in June 2014. (source: Mohave Valley Daily News) CALIFORNIA: Don't Let California Jumpstart Executions Officials at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) are doing everything they can to jumpstart executions
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.Y., DEL., VA., S.C., FLA., ALA.
April 21 NEW YORK: Professor Lectures on Consequences of Death Penalty Prof. John Blume, law, argued that the United States should abolish the death penalty because of its racial bias and global ineffectiveness at a debate on Tuesday. Blume - who said he has spent the past 30 years studying this issue and representing people on death row - said he believes the death penalty "has run its course." One in 10 people convicted of the death penalty are innocent, according to Blume. He added that the proportion of convicts on death row is disproportionately comprised of African Americans convicted of killing white victims. The death penalty's legality also weakens America???s position in international debates about human rights, Blume said. "When the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty for juveniles, one of the most important briefs was filed by U.S. ambassadors, who said they faced difficulties [in the past] negotiating agreements with many countries," Blume said. "These countries would say, 'Don't lecture us, you still kill kids.'" Blume added that the power that the death penalty grants to the government may seem excessive to citizens. "At the end of the day, one thing about the death penalty that is inescapable is that at the bottom, it is just another government program," Blume said. "If you are a person who is suspicious of government power, then why would you give the government the power to decide who lives and who dies?" At the conclusion of the lecture, organizers opened the floor to students for public debate. Arguing against the death penalty, Jason Jeong '19 said he believes the punishment does not align with the U.S. criminal system's primary goal. "Criminal system is not just about retribution, but also rehabilitation," Jeong said. In a final vote, audience members overwhelmingly agreed that the death penalty should be abolished. (source: Cornell Sun) DELAWARE: Public defenders: Death penalty law is unconstitutional As the Delaware Supreme Court continues to weigh the constitutionality of the death penalty statute, public defenders used their last chance at written arguments to refute the claims of state prosecutors. 3 assistant public defenders argued in a 25-page brief Monday that the state's arguments failed to recognize that Delaware's capital punishment law has many of the same constitutional infirmities that led the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down Florida's sentencing law. "The constitutional deficiencies are so fatal that they render Delaware's capital sentencing scheme entirely invalid," they wrote. The U.S. Supreme Court found in January that Florida was giving too much power to judges - and not enough to juries - when imposing death sentences. This decision left attorneys and judges in Delaware questioning how to proceed in capital punishment cases because Delaware, like Florida, allows judges to override a jury's recommendation of life, and, instead, impose a sentence of death. The Delaware Supreme Court agreed to resolve the issue by considering five certified questions of the law. It is using as a test case that of Benjamin Rauf, the Temple University law graduate charged with gunning down classmate Shazi Uppal, 27, in the parking lot of a Hockessin nursing home last summer. Monday's brief from the public defenders was the final written argument on the matter. Before making a final decision, the court will likely hear oral arguments in Dover from the parties, but no date has been announced. In Delaware, the process of sentencing someone to death requires multiple steps. Once a person is found guilty of 1st-degree murder, the jury must unanimously agree that the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt that at least one of 22 statutory aggravating factors exists. Then, each juror has to decide whether the aggravating factors outweigh the non-aggravating factors. That decision need not be unanimous, and the judge is not bound by those findings. The jury's verdict is advisory, leaving judges with the final authority in sentencing. Prosecutors have argued that Florida's death penalty process looked similar to an older version of Delaware's statute. They said that at the courts beckoning, the General Assembly in 2002 changed the statute, barring the Superior Court from imposing a death sentence unless a jury first determines unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that at least one statutory aggravating circumstance exists. Public defenders pushed back against that notion this week and called the analysis "faulty and incomplete." They said that the 2002 change still violates the Sixth Amendment requirement that a jury find the factors necessary for a death sentence. The public defenders also once again said the state Legislature should be the one to resolve the issue of making the death penalty statute fit with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.
