[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
April 13 UNITED KINGDOM: How abolishing the death penalty led to more convictionsThe lesson from Victorian England is that juries convict more often when death is not an option Though no one has been executed in Britain for over 50 years, until 1998 someone convicted of high treason or "piracy with violence" could in theory be put to death. The law is now clearly against capital punishment, but Britons are not. Fully 1/3 would like the death penalty to be brought back; the leader of the populist UK Independence Party has suggested a referendum on the matter. Yet research presented at this week's Royal Economic Society conference suggests that if you really want to be tough on criminals, killing off capital punishment makes sense. Anna Bindler and Randi Hjalmarsson, both of the University of Gothenburg, examined over 200,000 cases from the Old Bailey criminal court in London from 1715 to 1900. During this period capital punishment was abolished for many offences, from counterfeiting money (in 1832) to robbery (in 1837). Making the necessary statistical controls, the authors looked at the change in the likelihood of conviction for offences that were no longer capital. The paper suggests that when capital punishment was an option, juries were often reluctant to convict at all. They may have felt it was a little rum to send someone to the gallows for stealing a cow, so they downgraded the charge or acquitted the defendant. The authors find that juries were particularly reluctant to convict women. Once death was off the table, however, jurors could convict with a clearer conscience. The paper finds that the abolition of capital punishment increased the chance of conviction for all crimes by around eight percentage points, with especially large effects for violent offences. The temporary halt of penal transportation during the American war of independence had a somewhat smaller effect on the likelihood to convict, suggesting that juries considered living in America to be a prospect slightly less awful than death. Past research has found that would-be criminals are more put off by an increased likelihood of conviction than they are by more severe sentences. If so, then getting rid of the most brutal punishments could make criminal-justice systems work better. If the third of Britons who would like the death penalty reintroduced got their way, the country might inadvertently end up letting more criminals walk free. (source: The Economist) YEMEN: Rebel court sentences Yemen journalist to death A Yemeni court in the rebel-held capital has sentenced a veteran journalist to death on charges of spying for neighbouring Saudi Arabia, the press union and rebel media said on Thursday. Since March 2015, oil-rich Saudi Arabia has been leading a deadly military intervention against the rebels and their allies in the kingdom's impoverished neighbour. Yahya al-Jubaihi, 61, was convicted of establishing "contact with a foreign state" and providing Saudi diplomats in Sanaa with "reports that posed harm to Yemen militarily, politically and economically," the rebel-controlled Saba news agency reported. Prosecutors alleged that Jubaihi had been receiving a monthly salary of 4,500 Saudi riyals ($1,200) from Riyadh since 2010, 4 years before the rebels overran the capital, Saba added. The Yemeni press union condemned the "arbitrary" sentence, accusing the rebels of "targeting the freedom of the press." It said Jubaihi was a "veteran journalist with a long record of professional work across Yemen." He was seized from his home on September 6, it added. The rebels and their allies -- renegade troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh -- have controlled all government institutions in Sanaa since they overran the capital in September 2014. Rival bodies loyal to internationally recognised president Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi operate out of 2nd city Aden or from exile in Saudi Arabia. The Aden-based information ministry said Jubaihi's trial was a "farce" and accused the rebels of looking to "settle political accounts... through a politicised judiciary." Jubaihi wrote regular columns in Saudi dailies Okaz and Al-Madina, as well as in Yemeni newspapers. He served at the government's press department in the 1990s and 2000s when Saleh was president and Hadi was his deputy. Press watchdogs and human rights groups have been deeply critical of the rebels' treatment of journalists as the conflict in the Arabian peninsula country has escalated over the past 2 years. In December, journalist Mohammed al-Absi, 35, died suddenly after publishing reports about alleged corruption. His family and human rights groups said a post-mortem found he had been poisoned. Eight reporters were killed in Yemen last year, according to the International Federation of Journalists. That made the country the 4th deadliest for journalists after Iraq,
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----ARK., OKLA., USA
April 13 ARKANSAS: 3 Arkansas reporters to witness deathsCrush of journalists from elsewhere expected at prison 3 Arkansas journalists will be allowed to witness each execution at the Cummins Unit this month, and prison system officials are preparing for a media contingent from around the globe. The state Department of Correction sent out Wednesday a revised version of its media protocol for executions, providing details on how information about the 7 planned deaths will be transmitted to the public. In addition to those who witness the lethal injection unfold, other reporters from state, national and international news outlets will be allowed to set up in a media center at the prison, where they will have access to 2 phones to call outside, according to the document. Media will be allowed to broadcast from the prison parking lot and from a roadblock set up on Arkansas 388. Journalists will be barred from taking any electronic devices into the prison, with the exception of audio recorders and cameras. The document says only credentialed journalists from Arkansas news organizations -- 1 print reporter; a radio, Web or TV reporter; and a member of The Associated Press -- will be allowed into the witness room. Reporters witnessing the execution firsthand will be required to sign a form agreeing not to attempt to record any part of the execution. The 1st execution is to begin at 7 p.m. Monday. Kelly Kissel, state editor for The Associated Press, said the news service plans to send a reporter to observe each execution. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette also plans to have its staff cover the executions. The death penalty in Arkansas -- last carried out in 2005 -- has traditionally been covered almost exclusively by the local press, Kissel said. The scheduling of 7 executions -- 8 were originally scheduled before 1 was blocked by a federal judge -- over an 11-day period has attracted much wider attention. Newspapers in New York and Los Angeles have dedicated coverage to the executions. In recent weeks, journalists from Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom have descended upon the state, attending clemency hearings and court cases. A crew from the British Broadcasting Corporation was in Little Rock on Wednesday filming a documentary. Prisons spokesman Solomon Graves said media requests also have come into his office from France, Canada, Sweden and Japan. It is the most media attention the department has received in his 14 months on the job, Graves said. Furonda Brasfield, executive director of the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said she has been getting daily calls from journalists across the United States and Europe, where most countries have abolished the death penalty. "It is unbelievable the press coverage and the worldwide concern and outrage," Brasfield said. The media center where reporters will be stationed will be at the prison's visitation center, which can normally accommodate more than 100 people, Graves said. Graves said the department will not know how many outlets or reporters plan to cover the executions until they arrive at the prison Monday. He said there are no plans as of Wednesday for a cap. A crush of reporters trying to file stories simultaneously around the world could prove to be a problem if they are all routed through 2 telephones, said Democrat-Gazette Managing Editor David Bailey. "They're imposing old-fashioned requirements on a pretty modern situation," Bailey said. In Oklahoma, where executions have been conducted in recent years, Kissel said reporters are allowed to take in laptops that can be hooked up to the Internet, which allows reporters to file stories throughout the process. He said the last time Arkansas had an execution, reporters in the media center were allowed laptops. That was more than 11 years ago, when cellular coverage in the prison's rural area of Lincoln County was scant. Bailey said the newspaper has asked the department to reconsider its prohibition on electronics and allow reporters more options for filing within the prison. Graves stood by the policy. "We are providing the resources we are able to provide, and we feel those are sufficient," Graves said. Other restrictions normally imposed on visitors to the prison also will apply for media covering the executions. For example, reporters will not be allowed to take tobacco past the walls. (source: Arkansas Online) ** Verify: What's the true cost of the death penalty?What's the cost of the death penalty? Whether you're for or against the death penalty, there is a heavy cost associated with the care of death row inmates. We wanted to verify the truth of it all by looking at the cost of execution versus incarceration. We ran across study after study on execution costs from many states. They all said the same thing; it costs 2 to 4 times more to work death
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., ALA., LA., OHIO
April 13 TEXAS: Death Row Inmate Rodney Reed Loses DNA Appeal The state's top criminal appeals court is refusing to allow additional DNA testing of evidence in the lengthy Central Texas death penalty case of Rodney Reed. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals says the request by Reed's attorneys was the latest of a number of legal moves to unreasonably delay his execution for the April 1996 abduction, rape and strangling of 19-year-old Stacy Stites. Her body was found off the side of a road in Bastrop County. Reed was arrested nearly a year later when his DNA surfaced in another sexual assault. He sought tests on more than 40 items collected in the murder investigation. Reed long has insisted he and Stites had a consensual sexual relationship and that her police officer fiance more likely was her killer. (source: Associated Press) PENNSYLVANIA: Defense: Test Murder Weapon in Death Penalty Case An attorney for a man on death row in the shooting death of a Pennsylvania police officer is asking that the murder weapon be tested to make sure it didn't go off by accident. The (Easton) Express-Times (http://bit.ly/2p8MjRc ) reports that defense attorney Jonathan Polonsky brought up the idea at a hearing Wednesday in Northampton County Court in the case of 51-year-old George Hitcho Jr. He was convicted of 1st-degree murder and sentenced to death in the 2011 shotgun slaying of Freemansburg police officer Robert Lasso, who responded to a disturbance call at Hitcho's home. Polonsky argued that his client's former attorney should have had the gun tested to counter an argument by prosecutors that had the weapon not jammed after the fatal shot, the defendant would have kept firing. (source: Associated Press) VIRGINIAimpending execution With Execution Date Approaching, Evidence Suggests Teleguz Is Innocent Pressure is building on Governor Terry McAuliffe to grant clemency in the case of a former Harrisonburg man who could be executed later this month. New evidence suggests prosecutors and police used questionable tactics to convict him, and witnesses who pointed a finger at him are now admitting they lied. Ivan Teleguz faces execution this month for a crime that supporters say he did not commit. When a young Harrisonburg mother was brutally murdered more than a decade ago, police were anxious to find the killer, and DNA from the crime scene led to Michael Hetrick - a man who said he didn't even know Stephanie Sipe and had no motive to kill her. Detectives thought the woman's former boyfriend and the father of her child hired Hetrick, and they urged him to confirm that theory: "The police just fed him every detail of their case. They even gave him this document that laid out their entire theory of the case, and said, 'We want you to read this so you can understand the facts of the case." Elizabeth Peiffer - staff attorney at the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center - says officers then called the Commonwealth's attorney, who said she would ask for the death penalty unless Hetrick could confirm that Ivan Teleguz was behind the killing. "That if he didn't give them Ivan - if he didn't repeat this story back to them, his own life would be in jeopardy - that they would seek the death penalty, and he would get it," she explains. Hetrick then said he was hired by Teleguz, and 2 other men testified that's what happened. One of them - an immigrant from Kyrgystan - was promised help in getting a visa from the federal government to save him from deportation. The other was told he might face the death penalty if he didn't implicate Teleguz. In court, attorney Peiffer says, the prosecutor claimed Teleguz had also committed a murder in Pennsylvania. "They told jurors that this is how he solves his problems. He has people commit murder for him, and jurors were really scared," she says. "They sent out a question to the judge during deliberations asking if he had their addresses, and the judge had them instructed that he did have this information, and jurors were so scared that they very quickly sentenced him to death." But it turned out the Pennsylvania murder they described never happened, and the 2 men who originally linked Teleguz to the crime in Virginia have since said they lied. Now the Virginia Capital Representation Resource Center and the law firm Kirkland and Ellis are asking the governor to pardon Teleguz or at least commute his sentence so he won't be executed. "We have asked that he grant a full pardon, because we believe the current state of the evidence, with 2 of the key prosecution witnesses recanting their testimony that no juror could have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." And, Peiffer says, public support for Teleguz, who - along with his family -- left the Soviet-controlled Ukraine as a child to avoid religious persecution, is growing. "Not only do we have over 113,000 people
