[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
Feb. 28 IRANexecutions 2 Prisoners Hanged on Murder Charges 2 prisoners were reportedly hanged in western Iran on murder charges. According to close sources, one of the prisoners was executed at Qorveh Prison (Kurdistan province northwestern Iran) on Tuesday February 21. The prisoner has been identified as Hossein Darvishi Kouchaki, 32 years of age. Mr. Darvishi Kouchaki was reportedly sentenced to death on murder charges and was held in prison for more than 5 years before he was executed. "In the past few years, Hossein's family have made many attempts to convince the murder victim's family to spare Hossein's life, but they have not agreed," a source close to Mr. Darvishi Kouchaki's family tells Iran Human Rights. According to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network, a prisoner was hanged at Dizel Abad Prison (Kermanshah province, western Iran) on Wednesday February 22. This report, which has been confirmed by Iran Human Rights, identifies the prisoner as Farshid Sajjadi Asl. Iranian official sources, including the Judiciary and the media, have not announced these 2 executions. Rise in Executions and Crackdown Against Iran's Youth Executions and crackdown against Iran's youth is increasingly on the rise. Many inmates in their 20's and 30's have been executed or killed during the past months, while hundreds have also been arrested or mistreated. Wrote Donya Jam in 'News Blaze' on February 26, 2017. Dozens of prisoners have been hanged during the 1st 2 weeks of February, including a mass execution of 12 prisoners in Gohardasht Prison, west of Tehran, on Feb. 15. 13 inmates, including prisoners aged 29 and 30, were executed between Feb. 11-13 in the prisons of Qom, Zabol, Jiroft and Mashhad. On Jan. 29, regime authorities publicly executed 4 prisoners in the cities of Bandar Abbas and Mashhad. These prisoners were all in their early to mid 20's. Reports indicate 87 inmates were sent to the gallows in the month of January alone. Many of those executed never received due process and some were hanged while their cases were still open. Hamid Ahmadi, a juvenile offender, has also been reported to be at imminent risk of hanging. The United Nations and prominent human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have been campaigning to halt his execution. 160 juveniles are on death row in Iran, according to the United Nations. The number, however, could be higher. On Feb. 9 in Shadegan (Khuzestan Province in southwest Iran), state security forces shot and killed a young Iranian-Arab man named Hassan Ablu Ghabish. Alongside hangings and killings, regime authorities are also continuously arresting and attacking youths for absurd reasons. In Shiraz, a teenage girl celebrating her birthday along with friends was brutally beaten and arrested for wearing ripped jeans. 2 young women were arrested in Dezful for riding a motorcycle. And hundreds have been arrested between 2016 and January 2017 for attending mixed-gender parties. In some instances, the regime has also brutally punished the arrestees. Back in May 2016, Iranian authorities arrested and flogged 30 students for attending a mixed-gender graduation party. Their flogging sentence was implemented within 24 hours of their arrest. Each student received 99 lashes. Imprisonment for attending mixed-gender parties continues. It was reported on Jan. 28 that another 13 boys and girls were arrested in Gilan Province, northern Iran. One may ask why is the regime increasingly targeting youths? If we recall the 2009 nationwide anti-government uprising in Iran, the youth took the forefront of the demonstrations. They played one of the most significant roles throughout the protests. Therefore, the regime is using suppression as a method to spread fear in society in order to prevent the youths from uprising. And part of the reason why the regime is heavily cracking down on parties and get-togethers is because they fear people's gatherings could turn into anti-government uprisings. The regime is doing everything in its power to prevent a reoccurrence of the 2009 demonstrations. Now that reform in Iran has been proven to be nothing but a myth, another question that may be asked is what is the true solution to bring an end to the suffering of Iran's youth? This is where Iranian youth activists want their voices heard by the international community. They want to see an end to deals and negotiations with the regime, and instead yearn for the international community to recognize the Iranian people's aspirations for freedom and democracy. Sourosh Abouthalebi, an Iranian student in Belgium majoring in political science, expressed his deep concern about the executions. He called on the international community to end economic deals with Iran because the continuation of such agreements signals to the regime's leaders to carry on with their human rights
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., FLA., LA., ARK., USA
Feb. 28 TEXAS: SCOTUS refuses appeals from 3 on Texas death row The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review appeals in 3 Texas death row cases, including one where a man pleaded guilty to a triple slaying The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to review appeals in 3 Texas death row cases, including one where a man pleaded guilty to a triple slaying in South Texas. The high court's rulings moved 2 inmates closer to execution: LeJames Norman, 31, condemned for the 2005 shooting deaths of 3 people during a botched robbery of a home in Edna, about 100 miles southwest of Houston, and Bill Douglas Gates, 67, condemned for strangling a Houston woman in 1999. Neither has an execution date. Norman and an accomplice also now on death row, Ker'Sean Ramey, were convicted in the slayings of Samuel Roberts, 24, Tiffani Peacock, 18, and Celso Lopez, 38, inside the home they shared in Edna, in Jackson County. Roberts' parents discovered the bodies Aug. 25, 2005. Court records indicated Ramey and Norman believed there was 100 kilograms of cocaine in the house and hoped to steal it, but they never found any drugs. Norman was arrested trying to cross a bridge into Brownsville from Mexico about 5 months after the killings. He pleaded guilty to capital murder, leaving a jury to decide only on punishment. Norman's appeal raised questions about the competence of his trial attorneys. Texas prison records show when Gates was arrested for the slaying of Elfreda Gans, 41, at her Houston apartment, the Riverside County, California, man was on parole after serving 6 years of 2 life prison terms in California for robbery, assault on a peace officer and possession of a weapon by a prisoner. His appeal also questioned whether his trial lawyers were deficient. The 3rd case refused by the high court involved prisoner Michael Wayne Norris, whose case was returned by a federal district judge in 2015 to his trial court in Houston for a new punishment hearing. A federal appeals court last year upheld that decision. Norris has been on death row nearly 30 years for fatally shooting a Houston mother and her 2-year-old son. Patrick McCann, Norris' attorney, said Monday the ruling involved legal procedural point related to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Norris is awaiting his new punishment trial and Monday's ruling had no effect on that, McCann said. Norris was on parole after serving time for murder when he was arrested for fatally shooting Georgia Rollins, 38, and her 2-year-old son, Keith, at their Houston apartment in 1986. His appeal challenged the instructions provided to his jurors during the punishment phase of his 1987 trial in Harris County. At the time, trial courts were wrestling with evolving jury instructions about mitigating evidence, like mental impairment or dysfunctional childhood, and how it should be applied to punishment in capital murder convictions. The Supreme Court visited the issue several times, refining trial procedures through its rulings, and several cases of Norris' era were returned to trial courts for new punishment hearings. (source: Associated Press) GEORGIA: Justices to Consider Scope of Habeas Review in Death Penalty Appeals The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to weigh into the issue of which prior state court rulings a federal court should evaluate when deciding the merits of a condemned inmate's appeal. The case involves Marion Wilson Jr., a Georgia inmate, who, along with co-defendant Robert Earl Butts, was sentenced to death for the 1996 killing of state prison guard Donovan Parks. The 2 men had approached Parks in a Milledgeville, Ga. Wal-Mart parking lot and asked him for a ride. Parks invited them into his car, but a short time later, they ordered him to pull over to the side of a residential street, where they killed him with a sawed-off shotgun blast to the head. After a jury trial, Wilson was convicted of malice murder, felony murder, armed robbery, hijacking a motor vehicle, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. The jury later came back and sentenced him to death for the murder, finding as a statutory aggravating circumstance that Wilson killed Parks while engaged in the commission of an armed robbery. The sentence was later affirmed by a Georgia superior court judge and the state Supreme Court. Wilson appealed his sentence to the federal court in Atlanta, and after failing to have it overturned there, asked the 11th Circuit to intervene. But that's where things got complicated. The appeals court had to decide which of 2 lower court rulings it would consider when deciding the merits of Wilson's appeal: the short, summary opinion of the Georgia Supreme Court, or the far more detailed ruling handed down by the superior court judge. Lawyers for Wilson and the state attorney general's office both argued the panel they should give the most weight to the superior
