[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
March 29 BRUNEI: George Clooney calls for hotel boycott over Brunei LGBT death penalty Film star George Clooney has called for a boycott of nine hotels because of their links to Brunei, where homosexual acts will from next week be punishable by death. In an opinion piece written for Deadline, Clooney decried Brunei's announcement that from April 3 the country will stone or whip to death citizens caught committing adultery or having gay sex. "Let that sink in. In the onslaught of news where we see the world backsliding into authoritarianism this stands alone," Clooney said. He called for the public to join him in immediately boycotting nine hotels -- 3 in the UK, 2 in the US, 2 in France and 2 in Italy. They include the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Bel-Air in Los Angeles, the Dorchester in London and Le Meurice in Paris. Clooney said the Brunei Investment Agency owns the hotels, which he described as some of the "most exclusive" in the world. He even admitted he had stayed in some, until he found out who owned them. "Every single time we stay at, or take meetings at or dine at any of these nine hotels we are putting money directly into the pockets of men who choose to stone and whip to death their own citizens for being gay or accused of adultery," he said. "Are we really going to help pay for these human rights violations? Are we really going to help fund the murder of innocent citizens?" Brunei is a small oil-rich kingdom of just over 450,000 people on the island of Borneo, close to the more moderate Islamic nations of Indonesia and Malaysia. In May 2014, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah announced he would be imposing a new penal code based on Sharia law, an Islamic legal system which outlines strict corporal punishments. At the time, the government's website quoted the Sultan as saying that his government "does not expect other people to accept and agree with it, but that it would suffice if they just respect the nation in the same way that it also respects them." The roll out of the new laws was at the Sultan's discretion and on December 29 it was quietly announced that capital punishment for homosexual sex would be imposed in April. Theft will be punished by amputation under the new laws. "Brunei must immediately halt its plans to implement these vicious punishments, and revise its Penal Code in compliance with its human rights obligations. The international community must urgently condemn Brunei's move to put these cruel penalties into practice," Rachel Chhoa-Howard, Brunei Researcher at Amnesty International, said in a statement. (source: CNN) *** If Brunei executes gays, it would be the 5th nation doing soBetween 7 and 11 nations with large Muslim populations have laws providing for the death penalty for gay sex or otherwise allow such executions. Many fewer countries actually impose the death sentence — by this blog’s count, probably four of them, which would expand to five if Brunei goes ahead with its plan to implement its law providing for executions for gay sex as well as for adultery. 7 is the number of countries that definitely have laws providing the death penalty for gay sex or that otherwise allow such executions to occur. (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Somali, Yemen, Sudan, and part of Nigeria) The list grows to 11 countries if four nations are included where it’s theoretically possible to interpret the laws as allowing executions for gay sex. (Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar and U.A.E.) The death penalty for gay sex is no longer on the books in Afghanistan. Because of military defeats, the Islamic State (ISIS) can no longer act impose the death penalty by acting as a de-facto government. EXECUTIONS Here is this blog’s best-information-available list of countries/regions where executions for gay sex are carried out: Nations with such laws on the books; executions have been carried out in the recent past: 1. Iran Iran is No. 2 in the world for frequency of executions of any kind, behind China. Those include executions for homosexual activity, although the facts are often unclear or misrepresented.(See, for example, “Bogus hanging in Iran, bogus tweets in Egypt” and “Series of public hangings in Iran, including 2 for sodomy.” When a man in Iran is hanged after being convicted of rape and sodomy, media coverage often wrongly describes the punishment as execution for homosexuality. ) 2. Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia is No. 3 among the world’s most avid executioners, with 90+ in 2014. At least in the past, beheadings were imposed for homosexual behavior, including three men in 2002. Imprisonment and lashings are a more common punishment for same-sex activity. Nations with no such law on the books; executions are carried out by militias and others: 3. Iraq The ILGA report of 2015 noted that “Iraq, although [the death penalty is] not in the civil code, clearly has judges and militias
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., LA., KY., CALIF., ORE., USA
March 29 TEXASstay of execution Supreme Court halts execution of Texas inmate seeking to allow Buddhist spiritual adviser in death chamber The Supreme Court agreed Thursday night to halt the execution of a Texas inmate, Patrick Henry Murphy, after he argued that the state was refusing to allow his Buddhist spiritual adviser to accompany him into the chamber. "The State may not carry out Murphy's execution," the court said in an unsigned order, "unless the State permits Murphy's Buddhist spiritual adviser or another Buddhist reverend of the State's choosing to accompany Murphy in the execution chamber during the execution." Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch would have denied the stay. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote to explain why he voted to grant the application. "The government may not discriminate against religion generally or against particular religious denominations," Kavanaugh wrote. The case marks the 2nd time in recent weeks that the justices have been asked to put an execution on hold because a prison policy allows Christian or Muslim chaplains who are prison employees to be present, but not advisers of other religions. The prison forbids advisers of other denominations who are not prison employees into the chamber out of security concerns. The cases pit an inmate's claims of religious liberty against prison officials who say the requests are meritless and simply last-ditch attempts to avoid execution. Murphy, on death row for the murder of police officer Aubrey Hawkins in 2000, was scheduled to die at 7 p.m. ET on Thursday, but the court stayed the execution after 9 p.m. In a flurry of last-minute petitions, lawyers for Murphy said the state violated his religious liberty because it blocked the Rev. Hui-Yong Shih from being present in the execution chamber. Back in February, in a strikingly similar case out of Alabama, a deeply divided Supreme Court split 5-4 and allowed the execution of an inmate, Domineque Ray, go forward despite the fact that Ray argued that his religious freedom rights were violated when the prison barred his imam from being present at the execution. The Alabama prison only employed a Christian chaplain. The conservatives on the court said they acted because Ray had waited too long to seek review. But Justice Elena Kagan wrote a scathing dissent, joined by the 3 other liberal justices on the bench, calling the majority's move "profoundly wrong." "Here, Ray has put forward a powerful claim that his religious rights will be violated at the moment the State puts him to death," Kagan wrote, saying that the treatment "goes against the Establishment Clause's core principle of denominational neutrality." She said her colleagues in the majority should have allowed the lower court to hear the claim in full. Supporters of religious liberty also heavily criticized the Conservatives' vote. Writing for the National Review, David French called it a "grave injustice." In explaining his vote in the Texas case Thursday night, Kavanaugh offered one reason -- in a footnote -- that might explain why he voted in favor of Murphy after he had cleared the way for Ray's execution. "I conclude that Murphy made his request to the State in a sufficiently timely manner, one month before the scheduled execution," Kavanaugh wrote. Kavanaugh also said that states had 2 options going forward: allow all inmates to have a religious adviser of their religion in the execution room or allow inmates to have a religious adviser, including a state-employed chaplain, only in the viewing room, not the execution room. "What the State may not do, in my view, is allow Christian or Muslim inmates but not Buddhist inmates to have a religious adviser of their religion in the execution room," he said. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had argued in briefs that the court should rule against the inmate because "he is dilatory, he fails to show likely success on the merits for a variety of reasons, he fails to show irreparable harm" and that the prison's execution protocol that prohibits chaplains who are not employees from the execution chamber has been in place since July 2012. Paxton said the policy is meant to ensure the "safety and security" of the execution process. The case prompted a friend of the court brief filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit law firm. Lead lawyer Eric Rassbach said he was filing the brief to "clarify the law" because he was concerned that the "time-compressed nature" of the appeal could "obscure" important religious liberty issues at stake, and that the justices were sure to face similar petitions in the future. "The right of a condemned person to the comfort of clergy -- and the rights of clergy to comfort the condemned -- are among the longest-standing and most well-recognized forms of religious exercise known to civilization," he wrote. "Texas is no doubt capable
