[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
April 23 IRAN: Iranian MPs to decide on limiting capital punishment Iranian parliament's judiciary commission has agreed with a proposal on the abolition of death penalty for a group of convicts of drug-related crimes. Under the bill, the drug-related death penalty will be abolished except for those involved in organized and armed narcotics offenses, Mehr news agency reported. According to the bill, this group of convicts will face at least 25 years in jail instead of execution. However, the bill still needs to pass the parliament and move through Guardian Council, the country's constitutional watchdog body, in order to become a law. (source: azernews.az) MALAYSIA: Royal pardon, end to death penalty sought during coronation Human rights lawyer P Uthayakumar has appealed for a royal pardon to commute death sentences and reduce jail terms for prisoners in conjunction with the official installation of Sultan Muhammad V as the 15th Yang di-Pertuan Agong tomorrow. In a letter to Prime Minister Najib Razak today, he also asked that the death penalty be abolished, saying Malaysia was supposed to mature into a civil and developed society by 2020. The lawyer asked Najib to advise the Royal Pardons Board to announce that prisoners facing death row, natural life and life imprisonment have their sentences respectively commuted to life imprisonment, maximum 20 years jail and 15 years jail. "To err is human and to forgive is divine. Prisoners deserve a second chance to make amends for their past mistakes," he wrote. "In appreciation of this most precious 'earlier freedom' they would surely want to keep out of trouble. The state's compassion and guidance can therefore yield results. Please temper justice with mercy." He said he was making the appeal after having gone through pain and suffering and "cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment" at Kajang Prison for 2 years on sedition charges. "My saddest day in Kajang Prison was when one Mohamad was hanged in the wee hours of Friday the 14th day of March 2015 immediately after the suboh prayers (Muslim prayer at dawn)," he said He also cited the hanging of the Batumalai brothers, Rames and Suthar, on March 15, despite appeals and representations for a royal pardon. Uthayakumar also asked that all prisoners on good behaviour while serving jail terms of 1 year or less for non-violent and non-sexual crimes be granted royal pardons and released. He said 1st-time offenders, juveniles and women prisoners on good behaviour while serving terms of more than a year for non-violent and non-sexual crimes should be granted pardons and made to serve only 1/2 of their sentences while qualifying for parole. He added that all other well-behaved prisoners of non-violent and non-sexual criminal cases be granted pardons and made to serve only 55% of their prison sentences while also being granted parole. For 1st-time violent and sexual crime prisoners on good behaviour, he asked that they be granted pardons and made to serve only 60% of their prison sentences. He also appealed for all laws on detention without trial, including under the Prevention of Crime Act 1959 involving commercial cases, be abolished. (source: Free Malaysia Today) NIGERIA: LASG and death warrants When he addressed the press last Tuesday, the Lagos State Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Adeniji Kazeem, spoke of the preparedness of the state to decide on the death sentences passed on the General Overseer of Christian Praying Assembly, Chukwuemeka Ezeugo, a.k.a. Rev. King, and others. The cleric, in particular, had been tried for murdering a church member in 2006. The death sentence passed by a Lagos High Court in 2007 was eventually affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2016, an inordinate 9 years after the lower court first determined the case. The Lagos attorney general did not say why the state appears to be in a quandary over the signing of death warrants: whether the state should go ahead and simply affirm the Supreme Court decision and sign the death warrants, as some expect, or to commute the sentences to life, as a few, including international activists, have campaigned. Whatever the eventual decision, finally, Lagos at least appears poised to decide one way or the other. In the words of the attorney general: "Some people say out there that even if we commit these infractions and they sentence us to death, they will never kill us. It does send the wrong signal sometimes...I've heard the people from the British High Commission and other embassies complain even on our recently-passed anti-kidnapping law; but I must say, you must have to look at your own local factors and deal with them. We are going to move in that direction. I'm sure you will hear from me, but I'm not sure that I want to openly state and give you a date when we are going to take that action." But judging from the drift of
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., FLA., OHIO, ARK., OKLA., CALIF., USA
April 23 TEXAS: Death Sentence on Line for Would-Be Rapper in Triple KillingA former University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff student who once aspired to become a famous rapper now faces a possible death penalty in a Dallas triple slaying. A former University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff student who once aspired to become a famous rapper now has his life on the line after his capital murder conviction in the shooting deaths of three people at a Dallas drug house. The Dallas Morning News (http://bit.ly/2pSU8ee) reports the penalty phase opens Monday in the trial of 24-year-old Justin Pharez Smith, in which prosecutors will present evidence in their bid for a death sentence. Prosecutors say a need for money compelled Smith to kill a man and 2 women in the August 2014 holdup. A woman and a man survived the attack and identified Smith as the killer. Prosecutor Kobby Warren said Smith came to Dallas intending to get "on the dope game." The problem was "he was a terrible drug dealer." (source: Associated Press) PENNSYLVANIA: Prosecution faces tough challenge in Frein death sentence phase If Pike County prosecutors succeed in putting convicted cop killer Eric Matthew Frein on death row, they will buck the national trend of death sentences dramatically dropping over the past few decades. Death sentences reached a peak between 1992 and 1994, when 315 defendants were sentenced to die, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The rate continued to drop over the years. In 2016, just 30 defendants were sentenced to death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit organization that provides information and analysis on death penalty issues. Legal experts say the decline is the result of several factors, including a reduction in the murder rate, increasing scrutiny by prosecutors in evaluating which cases to seek death, and the reluctance of jurors to impose death in all but the most heinous cases. Pike County District Attorney Ray Tonkin went to great lengths to try to convince the Chester County jury deciding Frein's fate that he deserves to die by lethal injection for the Sept. 12, 2014, sniper attack at the Blooming Grove state police barracks that killed Cpl. Bryon K. Dickson II,38, of Dunmore. Frein, 33, of Canadensis, was convicted of 1st-degree murder, 1st-degree murder of a law enforcement officer and 10 other charges on Wednesday, stemming from the ambush that also severely injured Trooper Alex Douglass, 34, of Olyphant. During the penalty phase that began Thursday, Tonkin presented several witnesses, including Dickson's widow and mother, who talked of the devastating impact his death had on them. The defense began presenting its case Friday afternoon. The hearing resumes Monday. The case comes at a time when public support for capital punishment is at an all-time low. A 2016 survey by Pew Research Center shows 49 % of Americans support the death penalty. That is down from a peak of 80 % who supported it the mid-1990s. "There has been a very effective effort by anti-death penalty folks to convince people the death penalty is unfair to minorities and is not being imposed fairly," said Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, a vocal death penalty supporter. "Some of that public campaigning has an impact on jurors." The decline in support has been fueled, in part, by the number of death row inmates who have been exonerated, said Robert Dunhan, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Since 1972, 158 people sentenced to death have been exonerated, according to the center. "Americans are reaching the point that they feel they can't trust the government," Dunhan said. "The public does not want a system that has a high risk of sentencing innocent people to death." Joshua Marquis, a board member of the National District Attorney's Association, said he believes the decline in death sentences is tied more to the reduction in the nation's murder rate. In 2015, the murder rate was 4.9 murders per 100,000 people, according to the Department of Justice. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, the per capita murder rate ranged from a low of 5.7 in 1999 to 10.2 in 1980. Morganelli and Marquis agree jurors today closely scrutinize cases and are only willing to impose death in the most egregious cases. That is how it should be, they said, and has led prosecutors to be more selective in the type of cases for which they seek death. Marquis, a district attorney in Clatsop County, Oregon, said he prosecuted about 12 cases where he could have sought death, but has only done so in 2. "As a prosecutor you have to ask, should you really be seeking death except only in the worst of the worst cases?" he said. "I have to look at the likelihood of success because it's extremely expensive for both sides." There is no dispute Frein's crime was heinous. His attorneys face a monumental task in
