[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
May 26 CHINAexecution Former Chinese official executed following supreme court's approval China's Supreme People's Court (SPC) announced Friday that Zhao Liping, a former senior political advisor in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, had been executed after the SPC approved the death sentence. Zhao, former vice chairman of the Inner Mongolia regional committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, was convicted of intentional homicide, taking bribes and possession of firearms, according to an SPC statement. Zhao was found guilty of having shot dead a 26-year old woman, identified only with her surname of Li, in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, on March 20, 2015. He also took advantage of his post to secure business contracts and official positions for associates, and accepted bribes totaling 23.68 million yuan (3.45 million U.S. dollars) from 2008 to 2010, as the police chief of Inner Mongolia. During the investigation police located 2 guns, 49 bullets and 91 detonators that led back to Zhao. The SPC stated that the death penalty was given on the basis of clear facts and solid and sufficient evidence. Zhao had committed crimes with serious consequences and vile social effects. The Intermediate People's Court of Taiyuan in north China's Shanxi Province executed Zhao Friday. (source: xinhua.net) VIETNAM: State of secrecy on death row in Vietnam Vietnam has been revealed to be the 3rd-highest global executioner but details of who is on death row and why remains as elusive as ever. Hidden behind the term "state secrets", Vietnam carries out lethal injections with an unknown cocktail of homemade drugs, while plans to build 5 new execution centres have stoked fears more deaths are to come. In January 2008 the bloodied bodies of 2 well-liked young female postal workers were found in their office in the rural district of Long An in the Mekong Delta region of southern Vietnam. One was knocked out with a cutting board and had her throat slit, the other was hit with a chair before suffering the same fate, police said. 68 days later, recent college graduate Ho Duy Hai was brought in for questioning. For 6 months, the family and lawyers were blocked from seeing the 23-year-old. When they did, Hai had lost 9kg and was too scared to say anything more than "I'm in pain", his aunt Nguyen Thi Ruoi says. Hai was given just 2 15-minute sessions to speak to his legal team before trial. At trial, as Hai proclaimed innocence, his defence pointed out dozens of prosecutorial mistakes and instances of police misconduct. There was no physical evidence placing him at the scene and the so-called murder weapon had been bought at a nearby market after the murders had taken place, his lawyers said. Nevertheless, Hai was sentenced to death on December 1, 2008. Following tireless lobbying from Hai's family, a day before his scheduled execution in 2014 President Truong Tan Sang ordered a review. The following year, then-deputy chair of the National Assembly's Judicial Committee, Le Thi Nga, found there were "serious violations" within the investigation and the court's ruling was inconsistent with evidence, the Vietnamese newspaper Nguoi Lao Dong reported. Nevertheless, Hai remains on death row. "He is from a poor family, his parents divorced when his sister was 5 years old so it would be easier to target him and make him a scapegoat," Mrs Ruoi said. Long Trinh, activist and editor-in-chief of the legal affairs website Luat Khoa, said the case highlights the "most concerning" aspect of death row in Vietnam: courts "can put people on death row without any legal basis". Vietnam continues to classify figures on the death penalty as state secrets. What is known is that 18 offences still carry death - including drugs, murder and 'threats against national security'. "On the basis of these vaguely worded national security provisions, Vietnam can kill people for expressing alternative political views," Vietnam Committee on Human Rights (VCHR) Vice President Penelope Faulkner said. Organisations like hers have historically relied on monitoring local media to piece together what is going on. A leaked government report from the Ministry of Public Security earlier this year revealed it was worse than feared. According to the January 2017 report, 429 people had been executed between August 2013 and June 2016. As of July 2016, 681 people remained on death row. No explanation was provided as to why people were executed. In their annual report on the death penalty, Amnesty International last month placed Vietnam as the 3rd largest executor in the world, behind China and Iran. With overcrowded prisons, a government plan to build 5 new execution facilities and the creation of locally produced drugs for lethal injections, Ms Faulkner fears Vietnam's execution numbers are set to rise. "There is no real informat
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----MO., OKLA., CALIF., ORE.
May 26 MISSOURI: Wrongful convictions: From death row to freedom Joe Amrine selected the music for his funeral service. He wasn't sick, nor was he elderly. He was on Missouri's death row awaiting lethal injection. In November 2001, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon asked the Missouri Supreme Court to set an execution date for Amrine and 9 other men on death row. The court complied in 6 cases, but delayed in Amrine's case. By then a groundswell of support built for his exoneration in part because of a documentary, "Unreasonable Doubt: the Joe Amrine Case," by a group of university graduate students. The Missouri Catholic Conference, public policy agency of the state's bishops, distributed the video widely in their efforts to seek Amrine's release. The bishops' agency advocated on Amrine's behalf and now uses his example in citing reasons to oppose the death penalty. Convicted in 1986 of the murder of fellow prison inmate Gary Barber at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, Amrine, now 60, was released from prison in 2003 after the Missouri Supreme Court overturned his conviction and death sentence. He'd spent 17 years on death row after being sent to prison originally in 1977 on a robbery charge. 3 fellow inmates who had testified against him later recanted, admitting that they lied in exchange for favorable treatment. 6 other inmates had testified earlier that Amrine was in another area of the prison playing cards when Barber was stabbed. Amrine and fellow exoneree Reggie Griffin visited St. Louis May 20 to speak at a public event at the St. Louis Galleria hosted by Lush Cosmetics and the Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. The talk was consistent with views of Pope Francis, who last year encouraged all people to work not only for the abolition of the death penalty, but also for the improvement of prison conditions, "so that they fully respect the human dignity of those incarcerated." Rita Linhardt, senior staff associate for the Missouri Catholic Conference and chair of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said serious concerns have been raised about the death penalty as public policy because of wrongful convictions, questions of fairness and the costs of the death penalty. For every nine executions in this country, one person who received a death sentence was found to be wrongly convicted. Reasons innocent people are convicted, she said, include ineffective assistance of counsel, flawed evidence, faulty eyewitness testimony and police and prosecutorial misconduct. Exonerations highlight flaws in the death penalty, Linhardt said: "We can see where mistakes are made." Faith was a factor in his survival, Amrine said: "It would be hard for anyone to be on death row and not somehow get some faith. You gotta believe in something to survive on death row." He appreciates the position the Catholic Church has taken against the death penalty and wants to see more follow its lead. "We need Christians, Muslims and everyone to come up and say they're against the death penalty under any circumstances," he said. Amrine once was in favor of the death penalty but his experience showed him that it sometimes is imposed on innocent people, and "it can't be applied equally." Griffin, 56, grew up in St. Louis and was sentenced to 20 years in prison for 1st-degree assault, robbery and possession of drugs and stolen property. While at the Moberly Correctional Center, he was accused of the murder of inmate James Bausley, who had been stabbed in the prison yard. Griffin denied he'd been in the yard at the time but was convicted in 1988 on the word of 2 jailhouse informants who received reduced sentences in exchange for their testimony. In 2011, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the death sentence because prosecutors had withheld a sharpened screwdriver recovered from another inmate immediately after the stabbing. Both of Griffin's co-defendants consistently said the 3rd person involved in the crime was that inmate, not Griffin. Griffin, released from prison in 2013, said that "none of the things that happened for me and to me could not and would not have happened without the grace of God." Amrine and Griffin - African American men who were convicted by all-white juries in trials that lasted just a few days - give 2 or 3 talks a week and have been to several Catholic schools, mostly in the Kansas City area. They'll be in St. Louis Sept. 28 to speak to student representatives of Catholic high schools at the Cardinal Rigali Center in Shrewsbury. Amrine said he speaks out because "the Lord blessed me to put me out here. He wasn't through with me. We speak out against the death penalty, gangs, drugs, lawyers ... I did 26 years, he did 33. That qualifies us as experts." For someone wrongfully convicted, Griffin said, "when the state seeks the death sentence against you, you have a chance of los
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, DEL., FLA., ALA., MISS., LA., OHIO
May 26 TEXAS: Appeals court: Names of Texas execution drug suppliers should have been public A Texas appeals court ruled Thursday against expanding government secrecy in a case involving the public's right to know who supplies the lethal drugs Texas uses to execute death row inmates. The decision in favor of openness by the state's 3rd Court of Appeals addressed the broader question about when potential safety concerns should trump the public's right to know how the state is spending taxpayer money. The ruling likely has a limited effect immediately, however, because the Texas Legislature passed a law requiring state prison officials to keep the identities of the drug makers secret. But the case has been watched by open-government advocates who said its outcome could be significant in other cases where the state has withheld information by claiming that doing so could create "a substantial threat of physical harm" -- a litmus test put in place by the Texas Supreme Court in 2011 in a case involving gubernatorial security records. The appeal came after a state district judge in Austin ordered officials to make information about drug suppliers public under the state's open records act. The lawsuit and appeal were filed by attorneys representing two condemned convicts challenging their impending executions. Both convicts were executed while the case was pending. Lawyers for the Texas Department Criminal Justice argued that officials need to keep the names and details about the suppliers secret to prevent them from being threatened or harmed by death-penalty opponents. Attorneys representing the convicts argued that the threats were vague and should not preempt public disclosure. State officials could appeal the ruling to the Texas Supreme Court. Maurie Levin, an Austin attorney who was 1 of 3 parties who challenged the secrecy, said the ruling is significant because it overruled the state's assertion that the suppliers of lethal drugs were confidential under the Texas Public Information Act. And while the law has since been changed to allow state officials to keep the information secret, "it's a significant opinion because it affirms that the reasons (the state) used to withhold the information were not appropriate," she said. "Information may be withheld if disclosure would threat a substantial threat of physical harm," the opinion cites as the standard for releasing information. Levin said the appellate decision affirms that the state did not meet that standard. Representatives with the Texas Attorney General's Office and the state Department of Criminal Justice said they were reviewing the decision and had no immediate comment. (source: Houston Chronicle) DELAWARE: Smyk, Schwartzkopf vote in favor of death penaltyRetired state troopers say CO Lt. Steven Floyd shows need for capital punishment When the call came for a House vote on the bill reinstating the death penalty in Delaware, main sponsor Rep. Steve Smyk said he wasn't nervous. "It was easier than I thought. I thought it might just barely pass," said the Milton and Lewes area Republican May 16. "But, I believed I had the votes when I walked onto the floor that day." In August 2016, the state Supreme Court ruled Delaware's capital punishment law is unenforceable because the law allows a judge and not a unanimous jury to rule if a crime's aggravating circumstance justified a death sentence. House Bill 125, entitled the Extreme Protection Act, would require a jury to determine unanimously at least one statutory aggravating circumstance exists and to impose the death penalty. The bill passed through the House by a 24-16 vote May 9. All 9 Sussex County legislators voted in favor of the bill, but Smyk, a retired state trooper, said the bipartisan support from across the state - there were 10 Democrats - shows it's not just his district that wants the death penalty reinstated in Delaware. "That's the majority of the state," he said. Speaker of the House Rep. Pete Schwartzkopf, of Rehoboth was one of the Democrats who supported the bill. "I've said all along I wouldn't be driving the bus, but I'd be on it," he said. Schwartzkopf, also a retired state trooper, said most of his beliefs on the issue come from his years of experience as a police officer. He said people act tough when they're running around outside, but then they'll plead guilty and get life because they're afraid of dying. Once they're in the system with a life sentence, he said, nothing prevents them from doing something else if the death penalty is not an option. "I firmly believe that if the death penalty was a punishment, the homicide of Steven Floyd would not have happened," said Schwartzkopf speaking of the correction officer who was murdered during a prisoner uprising in February at Vaughn Correctional Center near Smyrna. "We???ll never know, but even if someone is found g
