[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ARKANSAS----Urgent Action: Fair Trial Concern Revisited As Execution Looms (USA: UA 67/17)
Urgent Action FAIR TRIAL CONCERN REVISITED AS EXECUTION LOOMS Stacey Johnson, aged 47, is scheduled to be executed in Arkansas on 20 April for a 1993 murder. Three state Supreme Court Justices argued that he was deprived of a fair trial by being denied access to information regarding the credibility of a key witness against him. Write a letter, send an email, call, fax or tweet: * Calling for clemency for Stacey Johnson and for his death sentence to be commuted; * Noting the selective use of the therapist/patient privilege, which three state Supreme Court judges said led to an unfair trial by keeping from the defence information about the credibility of a key prosecution witness; * Explaining that you are not seeking to condone violent crime or to downplay its consequences. Contact these two officials by 20 April, 2017: Important note: Please do not forward this Urgent Action email directly to these officials. Instead of forwarding this email that you have received, please open up a new email message in which to write your appeals to each official. This will help ensure that your emails are not rejected. Thank you for your deeply valued activism! The Honorable Asa Hutchinson, Governor of the State of Arkansas State Capitol, Suite 250, 500 Woodlane St, Little Rock, AR 72201, USA Fax: +1 501 682 3597 Email: http://governor.arkansas.gov/contact-info/ (use US detail) Salutation: Dear Governor ___ A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu DeathPenalty mailing list DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty Unsubscribe: http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/options/deathpenalty
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS
March 28 TEXAS: Justices side with Texas death row inmate who argued intellectual disability The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a Texas man on death row who argued he was mentally disabled and could not be executed. In a 5-3 ruling, the court said the state's definition and standards for assessing intellectual disability "create an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed." Those standards, known as the Briseno factors, take into account whether neighbors, teachers and friends think the person is intellectually disabled, makes plans or was impulsive, is a leader or a follower, responds in a rational way to situations, respond coherently to oral or written questions and can hide facts or lie to others in their own interest. In delivering the opinion of the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said adjudications of intellectual disability should be informed by the views of medical experts. "Texas cannot satisfactorily explain why it applies current medical standards for diagnosing intellectual disability in other contexts, yet clings to superseded standards when an individual's life is at stake," she wrote in the majority opinion, which Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined. The case centered on Bobby James Moore, who was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for fatally shooting a store clerk during a botched robbery that occurred when Moore was 20 years old. Evidence at his trial showed that he had significant mental and social difficulties beginning at an early age. At 13, he lacked basic understanding of the days of the week, the months of the year and the seasons. He could hardly tell time or understand the basic principle that subtraction is the reverse of addition. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA), however, said Moore had failed to prove significantly sub-average intellectual functioning with an IQ score of 74. Ginsburg said, however, that when an IQ score is close to, but above, 70, court precedent requires courts to account for the test's "standard error of measurement" and consider a defendant's adaptive functioning. She said the court also deviated from prevailing clinical standards in considering his adaptive functioning. Chief Justice John Roberts filed a dissenting opinion that Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined. Roberts said he agrees that the state used unacceptable standards to analyze Moore's adaptive deficits, but disagreed that it erred in analyzing Moore's intellectual functioning. "The Court overturns the CCA's conclusion that Moore failed to present sufficient evidence of both inadequate intellectual functioning and significant deficits in adaptive behavior without even considering 'objective indicia of society's standards' reflected in the practices among the states," he wrote. "The Court instead crafts a constitutional holding based solely on what it deems to be medical consensus about intellectual disability." (source: thehill.com) ___ A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu DeathPenalty mailing list DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty Unsubscribe: http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/options/deathpenalty
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
March 28 BANGLADESH: Dhaka court awards death penalty to 5 for killing Bangladesh's award winning journalist A Dhaka court on Tuesday sentenced 5 persons to death for killing award-winning photojournalist Aftab Ahmed in 2013, a media report said. The verdict was announced by Judge Abdur Rahman Sarder of Dhaka Speedy Trial Tribunal 4. The convicts are Humayun Kabir, Habib Hawlader, Belal Hossain, Raju Munshi and Md Rasel, the Dhaka Tribune reported. Of them, Rasel and Raju have been absconding since the case was filed. The court also sentenced Sabuj Khan to 7 years imprisonment and fined him. If he doesn't pay, he will serve an extra year in jail. According to the case details, on December 25, 2013, the 80-year-old photojournalist was killed at his house in Rampura here. Aftab was awarded 'Ekushey Padak', the 2nd highest civilian award in Bangladesh, in 2006. He had an illustrious career during which he served as chief photographer for the Bangla newspaper The Daily Ittefaq. (source: hindustantimes.com) MALAYSIA: Assigned lawyers will still represent those facing death penaltyChief Justice says this is important as it involves offenders' lives. The judiciary will continue to assign lawyers to represent accused persons, including foreigners, who are facing the death penalty, Chief Justice Arifin Zakaria says. "The government gives priority to this matter as it involves the life of accused persons," he told reporters after the launch of a coffee table book titled "Palace of Justice" by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Azalina Othman Said. Arifin, who retires this week, said this when asked if payments of legal fees to court-appointed lawyers were affected since the government had slashed allocations to ministries. It is a practice that those who face charges carrying capital punishment must be represented by lawyers if they cannot afford to engage counsel. Such lawyers appear during trial in the High Court and during appeals in the Court of Appeal and Federal Court. Among the offences that carry the death penalty are murder, drug trafficking, kidnap and discharge of firearms. Meanwhile, Azalina in a speech today said "something would be in store from the government" for Arifin after his retirement. "I will make sure of this as long as I am the de facto law minister," she said. When approached later, Arifin declined to comment. To questions about his post-retirement plans, Arifin, who was interviewed by the media yesterday, said he would accept a consulting position at a law firm in a manner similar to that of other retired judges. "Why not? You need some income and something to fill up the time. I need to be active, otherwise my mental capacity will be reduced," he had said. (source: freemalaysiatoday.com) JAPAN: Death-row inmate convicted of killing 4 people in 1993 dies of illness Gen Sekine, a former pet breeder on death row for killing 4 people in Saitama Prefecture in 1993, died Monday while in detention, a person familiar with his condition said. The 75-year-old inmate - who was convicted of conspiring with his former wife Hiroko Kazama to kill 3 people in a financial dispute stemming from his dog breeding business - is believed to have died of an illness, according to the source. Kazama, 60, is also on death row. Sekine, who was also convicted of a separate killing the same year, died at the Tokyo Detention House on Monday morning. He had collapsed there in November last year, according to the source. In 1993, he murdered a 39-year-old company employee, a senior member of a crime syndicate and the man's driver by making them swallow poison capsules. He then dismembered their bodies before incinerating and abandoning the remains, according to a court ruling. In the separate case, Sekine murdered a 54-year-old woman after selling dogs of foreign origin to her in a scam. Sekine and Kazama were initially arrested in January 1995. In March 2001, a district court in Saitama Prefecture sentenced them to death for committing, in the words of its presiding judge, "cruelly ruthless and extremely heinous crimes." The Tokyo High Court rejected the pair's appeal in July 2005, and the Supreme Court upheld the decision in June 2009. (source: Japan Today) UNITED ARAB EMIRATES: British lord joins call to save Jennifer Dalquez from death row A member of United Kingdom's House of Lords or upper parliament has called on the government of the United Arab Emirates to grant Filipina domestic helper Jennifer Dalquez clemency to save her from death row. "It is clear from the evidence that her action was not pre-meditated, but a desperate response to an unprovoked sexual attack," Inderjit Singh, Lord of Wimbledon CBE, said in a letter addressed to UAE Ambassador Sulaiman Hamid Almazroui. "I am writing to you to use your good offices to remove the threat of the death penalty and
