[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----S.C., GA., FLA., ALA., MISS., MO., KAN., OKLA.
May 27 SOUTH CAROLINA: Why SC's death row inmates continue to avoid execution Serial killer Todd Kohlhepp avoided a death penalty by pleading guilty Friday, but even if he had gone to trial and had been given a death sentence, he likely would not have been executed. Solicitor Barry Barnette said, "Kohlhepp deserves the death penalty, but the reality of the situation is that our state doesn't have a functioning death penalty. The last execution occurred in 2011 and the state's supply of lethal injection drugs expired shortly thereafter. "The victims' families as well as Kala Brown wanted closure instead of the uncertainty of a death sentence," Barnette said. The State of South Carolina currently has 38 inmates serving sentences on death row. Half of the death row population has served at least 15 years awaiting their fate. The oldest case dates back to 1983. Barnette cited the Spartanburg County case of Richard Bernard Moore as an illustration of the problem with the current law. Moore was sentenced to death in 2001 for fatally shooting convenience store clerk James Mahoney. He is still on death row, with additional appeal matters that need to be addressed. "The family of James Mahoney has endured what appears to be an endless wait for justice," Barnette said. "I don't want anyone else go through something like this. I hope the families involved in the Kohlhepp case can rest easier knowing he will leave prison in a casket." Use of the death penalty has steadily decreased in South Carolina, partially due to the uncertainty of the process, but also because of the high costs associated with it. The Death Penalty Information Center reported that Prosecutor David Pascoe initially planned to seek the death penalty for a mother who killed her two children, but changed his mind, with cost being one factor: "Once you file for the death penalty, the clock gets moving and the money, the taxpayers start paying for that trial." Rep. Tommy Pope, a state legislator and former prosecutor who sought the death penalty for Susan Smith in a similar murder, now would tell victims' families to consider agreeing to a life-without-parole sentence instead of the death penalty. Life without parole was adopted by the state in 1995. "(Life without parole) offers a measure of closure that 3 retrials in a death penalty case never would," Pope said. The death penalty in South Carolina: The youngest person executed was a 14-year-old black male. The oldest was a 66-year-old black man. Since Aug. 6, 1912, 282 executions were carried out by the State of South Carolina. Prior to 1912, executions were by hanging in the individual counties. Of the 282, 74 were white and 208 were black. Of those executed, 280 were men and 2 were women. In 1988, the new Capital Punishment Facility was relocated to the Broad River Correctional Institution. An execution held in 1990 was the 1st in the new CPF. The 1st execution in South Carolina by lethal injection was carried out on Aug. 18, 1995. Since 1985, there have been 43 executions in South Carolina. All South Carolina death penalties have been for murder. 6 people were executed in the electric chair. The rest were executed by lethal injection. Dylann Roof was sentenced in January to death by lethal injection for the Charleston church killings. (source: WYFF news) GEORGIA: Judge Closes His Oldest Case by Vacating a Death Sentence - Again Lawrence Joseph Jefferson's 1985 death penalty sentence for years has troubled federal judges who have reviewed the case. Filed on April 23, 1996, it is the oldest case on U.S. District Senior Judge Clarence Cooper's docket - one he kept long after he became a senior judge in February 2009. Ten years ago, Cooper vacated Jefferson's death sentence for the first time. On April 10, 2017, Cooper vacated Jefferson's death sentence once again. In a 71-page opinion, Cooper reaffirmed the position he took a decade ago that Jefferson's trial counsel???one of whom is now a Cobb County Superior Court judge - had been constitutionally ineffective. In the intervening decade, Cooper's original ruling was reversed by a split panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. The ruling included a strong dissent on Jefferson's behalf by U.S. Circuit Judge Edward Carnes, who as an assistant attorney general in Alabama had built a reputation repeatedly and successfully defending that state's death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently took up the case, filed one day before the enactment of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which greatly narrowed federal judges' authority to grant habeas petitions. In 2010, the high court vacated the Eleventh Circuit ruling and remanded the case for a determination as to whether the state court's habeas findings deserved the presumption that they were full and fair. In his recent ruling, Cooper noted that
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
May 27 VIETNAM: Man indicted for murder of Vietnamese girl Prosecutors indicted a man Friday for murdering a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl who attended an elementary school east of Tokyo where he was head of the parents' association. The 46-year-old suspect, Yasumasa Shibuya, was also indicted on other charges including abandoning the body of Le Thi Nhat Linh, a third grader at the school in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, who went missing on March 24. Her body was found 2 days later. The identity of the girl was previously withheld because police suspect she was a victim of sexual assault, but her name is now being reported in accordance with her father's wish. Shibuya, who was head of the parents' group at the time of the girl's disappearance, will be tried under the lay judge system. He has refused to speak about the case during questioning, investigative sources said. The prosecutors decided to indict Shibuya based on evidence including a DNA sample taken from the victim's body that matched Shibuya and hair found in the suspect's car matched the victim's DNA. Following the indictment, Le Anh Hao, the 34-year-old father of the girl, told reporters at his home in Matsudo that he "cannot forgive the perpetrator." "I want the culprit never to forget that he killed my daughter, not just 'a girl,'" he said, asking media to use her name when reporting on the case. After Shibuya's arrest, Hao had requested that media not state his daughter's name. Hao said he hopes to be present during the trial and that the death penalty will be imposed if Shibuya is convicted. The girl is believed to have been strangled to death, given marks on her neck. She disappeared shortly after leaving home to walk to school on the morning of March 24. Shibuya, who lives about 300 meters from the victim's home and is accused of abducting her by car, was initially arrested on April 14 on suspicion of abandoning her body near a drainage ditch in Abiko, Chiba. On May 5, he was served with a fresh arrest warrant on charges including murder. Autopsy results suggest that the girl was likely murdered not long after her abduction. (source: Japan Today) GAZA: Human Rights Watch opposes : The executions in Gaza not the rule of law In response to the execution today of three men convicted of charges related to the killing of Hamas leader Mazen Fuqaha, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch, said: "Rushing to put men to death based on an unreviewable decision of a special military court days after announcing their arrests and airing videoed confessions smacks of militia rule, not the rule of law. Reliance on confessions, in a system where coercion, torture and deprivation of detainee's rights are prevalent, and other apparent due process violations further taint the court's verdicts. Death as government-sanctioned punishment is inherently cruel and always wrong, no matter the circumstance." Since it took control of Gaza in 2007, Hamas authorities have carried out 25 executions, most recently in April, and courts in Gaza have sentenced 111 people to death, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances, because it is inherently cruel and irreversible. (source: Palestine News Network) IRANexecutions 3 Prisoners Hanged on Murder Charges 2 prisoners were reportedly hanged at Mashhad's Vakilabad Prison (Razavi Khorasan province, northeastern Iran) on Tuesday May 23 on murder charges. On the same day, prisoner was reportedly hanged at Zahedan Central Prison on murder charges. The state-run newspaper, Khorasan, identifies one of the prisoners from Vakilabad Prison as H.N., 42 years of age, imprisoned for 17 years before his execution. According to the Khorasan newspaper, there was no evidence or confessions in the prisoner's case file, the prisoner was sentenced to death based on the testimonies of 50 relatives belonging to the murder victim. The report says that the prisoner claimed to be innocent throughout the entire imprisonment. The report identifies the other prisoner from Vakilabad Prison as A.Kh., a 34-year-old prisoner who was arrested in 2009 during a street fight at an intersection in the town of Sabzevar (Razavi Khorasan province). The Baluch Activists Campaign reported on the execution at Zahedan Central Prison. The report identifies the prisoner as Abdolkarim Shahnavazi, 30 years of age. Prior to his execution, Abdolkarim and two other prisoners, identified as Habib Golbeigi and Saeed Hoot, were transferred to soliatry confinement in preparation for their executions. According to the report, Saeed's execution sentence was postponed by the complainants on his case file, and he was returned to his cell. The fate of Habib is not known at this time. (source: Iran Human Rights) GLOBAL: Countries Using
