[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide----GHANA, UK, JAP., PAKIS., INDIA, MOROC., IRAN
Sept. 27 GHANA: Waiting To Die: 180 On Death Row, No Executions Since 1993 Some 180 condemned prisoners are languishing on death row at the Nsawam Medium Security Prison because successive Presidents had, since 1993, refused to sign their death warrants. The condemned prisoners include 174 men and 6 women, with many of them being sentenced to death by hanging for murder. The Nsawam Medium Prison is the only prison in the country with a condemned block that can hold 200 prisoners. Speaking to the Daily Graphic in Accra last Wednesday, the Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Prisons Service, Superintendent Vitalis Aiyeh, said he was not in a position to explain why Ghana’s Presidents would not sign death warrants. “Of course, we are in a democratic dispensation and all over the world people are clamouring for the abolition of the death sentence, so that could be a reason,” he, nonetheless, said. The laws The Criminal Code lists crimes punishable by death as murder, treason, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and smuggling The Constitution states that individuals who commit treason against the constitutional order “shall, upon conviction, be sentenced to suffer death”. Genocide includes acts committed with the intent of destroying in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: killing or causing serious mental or bodily harm to members of the group, inflicting conditions intended to destroy the group and imposing measures to end births in the group. For smuggling, the law says any individual concealing or carrying away from Ghana any gold or diamond without lawful authority or with the intent to evade any enactment concerning the export of gold or diamond “shall be liable on conviction to a sentence of death”. After the conviction, the President will have to append his signature to a death warrant before the death penalty will be carried out. Mental torture Supt Aiyeh said condemned prisoners went through a lot of psychological torture “because the man is there and he wouldn’t know when he will be killed”. ”So when you are there, it is between you and your God, unlike the normal prisoner who knows one day he will go home,” he added. He explained that one relief for condemned prisoners was that they could have their sentences commuted to life sentences after serving 10 years or more in prison, saying, however, that that would have to be done through the process of amnesty. The last time such amnesty was granted in Ghana was in 2016 when three people had their sentences commuted to life. Lawyers clash Speaking to the issue, 2 lawyers, Nana Obiri Boahen and Mr Francis-Xavier Sosu, gave divergent views on the death sentence. Nana Boahen, who is based in Sunyani, faulted Presidents of the Fourth Republic for failing to sign death warrants when nothing stopped them from doing so. “Rawlings, Kufuor, Prof. Mills, Mahama, Nana Akufo-Addo — none of them signed the death warrant, why?” he asked. He said there was brazen impunity in the country, with people committing murder, sometimes in public places and in broad daylight, adding that he believed the death sentence, when carried out, would help check the killings. He said failure to carry out the death sentence had emboldened criminals to go out to kill, without any fear. The legal practitioner said there were four ways in which the death sentence could be carried out — hanging, firing squad, electrocution or lethal injection. “In all these cases, the pronouncement must be made by the judge,” he said. Human Rights lawyer But Mr Sosu, a human rights lawyer, said no one had the right to take another person’s life. He said there had been many instances of people who were alleged to have killed being later found to be innocent. According to him, the reason Presidents had not signed death warrants could be that they were sensitive to the provision concerning the right to life. He also argued that the international community had moved away from killing people who had killed others. “Punishment has revolved over the time. It used to be retributive, but now it is more of corrective,” he explained. Touching on how the country should deal with people who had been condemned to death, he said their sentences should be communed to life sentences. “Keeping them in condemned cells is different from keeping them as life prisoners. In the condemned cells, you sometimes don’t have the right to sunshine; they are kept in dark rooms for many years and that affects their health in general,” he said. Mr Sosu posited that to keep people in condemned cells without signing their death warrants and not make them lifers was a clear violation of the dignity of those people. He said if Presidents were not ready to sign the death warrants of prisoners on death row, then the courts must begin to move away from giving death sentences, providing the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ARK., MO., OKLA., USA
Sept. 27 ARKANSAS: White supremacist on death row who killed three of family seeks relief, says 'junk science' gave him 'psychopath' tag Daniel Lee along with Chevie Kehoe, who wanted a whites-only country, killed the family and dumped them in Illinois Bayou in 1999. A man who murdered an entire Arkansas family in 1999 and is currently on death row has now filed for relief from the sentence. Daniel Lewis Lee, 46, from Oklahoma, had been convicted of slaying a Pope County family, which included an 8-year-old girl, along with Chevie Kehoe. The 2 were said to be white supremacists who had wanted to steal guns and money from the family, with ambitions to start a whites-only country in the Pacific Northwest. The two were convicted of a number of charges, including the murders of Bill Mueller, 53; Nancy Mueller, 28; and Sarah Powell, 8. Prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice had said that Lee along with Kehoe had first shot the three with a stun gun, covered their heads with plastic bags, and sealed them with duct tape. He then threw the weighted bodies into the Illinois Bayou. While Lee was given the death penalty, Kehoe was given a life sentence. Prosecutors believed that Kehoe had been the leader of the group and Lee was not the ring leader. A psychological evaluation said Lee was a psychopath and a danger to others. His lawyer Morris Moon said in a statement to MEAWW that Lee's sentence was unconstitutional. The attorneys filed a habeas petition on September 26 and asked the court in Indiana – which does have the power to consider these claims – to overturn Lee’s unconstitutional death sentence and prevent him from being executed on December 9, Moon said. Moon said the "dangerous psychopath" tag was a result of "junk science." “The government obtained a death sentence against Danny Lee using junk science. It promoted the fiction that Mr. Lee was a ‘dangerous psychopath’ based on a forensic instrument that even the government’s own trial expert now admits lacks any scientific validity," he said in a statement. He further added that the jury had also been misled. “That junk science was not the only false evidence the government used to secure a death sentence. It also misled the jury into believing that Mr. Lee had committed a prior murder as a juvenile," he said. "The government’s presentation about Mr. Lee’s ‘history of violence’ was not only highly inflammatory, it was also categorically false. Court records demonstrate that a state judge had actually dismissed the inflated murder charge against Mr. Lee after looking at the evidence," he said. Pointing out the fact that Kehoe was slapped with a life sentence without parole, he said that it was also "important to remember that Mr. Lee’s more-culpable co-defendant, Chevie Kehoe, does not face execution." Lee's execution is back on after Attorney General William Barr's July announcement to resume the federal death penalty. Murderers Lezmond Mitchell, Wesley Ira Purkey, Alfred Bourgeois and Dustin Lee Honken are others currently scheduled to be executed. (source: meaww.com) Arkansas judge asks that bid to reassign cases get tossed An Arkansas judge who demonstrated against the death penalty is asking the state Supreme Court to dismiss the attorney general's request to prohibit the judge from hearing cases involving her office. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen told the state Supreme Court Thursday that the request by Attorney General Leslie Rutledge to reassign the civil cases is a "blatant attempt" to defy Arkansas' constitution and its process for investigating complaints against judges. Rutledge has accused Griffen of regularly demonstrating bias against her staff in his court. Griffen was prohibited from handling execution cases in April 2017 after he was photographed participating in a death penalty demonstration the same day he blocked Arkansas from using a lethal injection drug. The court last week rejected Griffen's request to resume hearing execution cases. (source: Associated Press) MISSOURIimpending execution Missouri Governor Is Last Hope For Death Row Inmate Missouri is scheduled to execute Russell Bucklew by lethal injection on Tuesday, but his advocates want Gov. Mike Parson to stop it because they say a medical condition would make him endure needless pain. The Cape Girardeau man was convicted of murder, rape and kidnapping in 1997. His lawyers and advocates are not challenging his guilt, but instead say Bucklew’s rare medical condition would cause him to suffer a cruel and unusual punishment. Bucklew has a condition that causes blood-filled tumors to grow in his head, neck and throat. A medical exam completed by Joel Zivot, an associate professorat Emory University’s School of Medicine, concluded that Bucklew had a “very high risk” of choking to death on his own blood if executed by lethal
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, FLA., TENN., KY., ILL.
Sept. 27 TEXAS: Texas Recently Murdered a Man for a Crime Experts Say He Did Not CommitLarry Swearingen was put to death for a murder and a rape that the science says he did not do. His last words were those of Jesus Christ. Pious Catholic barbarians say things like, “Oh well! La di dah! If he’s innocent then he’ll to heaven! No harm done! Let’s kill some more because of something something retributive justice! Ignore the teaching of Holy Church calling for the abolition of the death penalty. I have a book here by Ed Feser that says killing prisoners is fine so that makes it okay to fight the Church. And besides, abortion is worse and so it’s okay if I wink at the murder of an innocent man. It’s just one guy. God won’t notice if I cheer for just one murder.” What they don’t seem to grasp is that pious barbarians could have said the same thing when they murdered Jesus. The thing is, the fact he went to heaven did not do his murderers any good. That’s the thing: the death penalty doesn’t just kill the victim. It kills the soul of the person who cheers for the death of innocents in the lust for the blood of the guilty. The problem with the death penalty is, then, basically tripartite: 1.It kills people who do not need to be killed. 2.It kills completely innocent people in order to kill people who do not need to be killed. 3.It makes the people who kill them into people who are eager to kill completely innocent people in order to kill people who do not need to be killed. In addition to this, it makes Catholic death penalty defenders into people willing to make war on the Church in order to become people who are eager to kill completely innocent people in order to kill people who do not need to be killed. (source: patheos.com) DNA Testing Could Save This Texas Man’s Life. But Prosecutors Are Opposing It.Rodney Reed, set to be executed on Nov. 20, is innocent of a rape and murder, his lawyers say, and untested evidence will prove it. But prosecutors have pushed back, arguing the evidence is contaminated. For the last 2 decades, Rodney Reed has said he can prove he is innocent of the crimes that landed him on Texas’s death row. The key to his freedom, he has argued, lies in a box in the Bastrop County clerk’s office. The box contains items—including a belt, name tag, shirt, and two beer cans—found in 1996 near the dead body of 19-year-old Stacey Stites. On these items, Reed has maintained, is biological material from Stites’s killer, and testing will show that material does not belong to him. Prosecutors, however, have said that Reed, who in 1998 was convicted of raping and murdering Stites, could not be innocent. They have opposed testing the evidence, which includes the murder weapon, as the case has wound its way through state and federal courts. In August, Reed’s attorneys filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, arguing that executing him without first conducting DNA testing is a violation of his constitutional rights. And on Tuesday, they asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider his innocence claims. In that filing, Reed’s attorneys asked whether convicting or executing a person who is innocent violates the U.S. constitution. Reed is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Nov. 20. As DNA testing has become more advanced, so has its ability to provide crucial information that can reconstruct who was present at a crime scene. Test results, as part of a larger case, can carry enormous weight: They can help prove that someone is innocent and in some cases, identify the person who committed the crime. Or they can do the opposite and confirm a person’s guilt. In death penalty cases, testing has saved lives. Of the 166 people exonerated from death row since 1973, 21 of those were freed using DNA testing. Still, some prosecutors continue to oppose this testing to re-examine convictions in capital cases. Vanessa Potkin, director of post-conviction litigation at the Innocence Project, told The Appeal that during her time there, at least 6 people have been executed, despite the availability of DNA testing that could prove their innocence. Prosecutors fought against the testing in all of those cases. “We have a human system we know it doesn’t always get it right,” she said. “It’s pretty shocking when you get to a capital case, where the stakes couldn’t be higher, to encounter prosecutorial resistance to simple tests that could get to the truth.” There were no eyewitnesses to support the state’s theory that Reed abducted Stites on her way to work; raped and murdered her; and abandoned her body. Instead, the state’s case hinged on three sperm cells found inside Stites. Prosecutors argued at trial that the cells, which a 1996 DNA test confirmed were Reed’s, proved that he had raped Stites just before killing her. Reed’s attorneys have not disputed that the sperm belongs to their client.
