[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
June 23 CHINA: Chinese courts call for death penalty for researchers who commit fraud An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth - a life for a lab book? In the past few months, China has announced two new crackdowns on research misconduct - one of which could lead to executions for scientists who doctor their data. Scientists have been sounding alarms for years about the integrity of research in China. One recent survey estimated that 40 % of biomedical papers by Chinese scholars were tainted by misconduct. Funding bodies there have in the past announced efforts to crack down on fraud, including clawing back money from scientists who cheat on their grants. This month, in the wake of a fake peer review scandal that claimed 107 papers by Chinese scholars, the country's Ministry of Science and Technology proclaimed a "no tolerance" policy for research misconduct - although it's not clear what that might look like. According to the Financial Times, the ministry said the mass retractions "seriously harmed the international reputation of our country's scientific research and the dignity of Chinese scientists at large." But a prior court decision in the country threatened the equivalent of the nuclear option. In April courts approved a new policy calling for stiff prison sentences for researchers who fabricate data in studies that lead to drug approvals. If the misconduct ends up harming people, then the punishment on the table even includes the death penalty. The move, as Nature explained, groups clinical trial data fraud with counterfeiting so that "if the approved drug causes health problems, it can result in a 10-year prison term or the death penalty, in the case of severe or fatal consequences." Phony peer review: The more we look, the more we find We've long called for sterner treatment of science cheats, including the possibility of jail time - which, by the way, most Americans agree is appropriate. But we can't support the Chinese solution. Even if we didn't abhor the death penalty (which we do), the punishment here far outweighs the crime. Yet if extremity in the name of virtue can be vice, it serves as reminder that science fraud is, simply put, fraud. And when it involves funding - taxpayer or otherwise - that fraud becomes theft. Think about it the same way as you would running a bogus investment fund or kiting checks. So, jail for major offenders - yes. Execution - no. One objection to our position here might be that financial criminals typically don't kill anyone - directly, at least. If you drain my bank account or steal my 401(k), I'm still alive. A scientist who cheats on a drug study could, at least in theory, jeopardize the health of the people who take that medication, with potentially fatal consequences. But the reality is quite different. In the United States, at least, drug approvals hinge on data generated from many scientists or groups of researchers. They never rest on a single person. So unless everyone involved in a study is cheating, a fraudster's data would stick out if they strayed too much from the aggregate. Ironically, then, to succeed, a would-be fraudster would be most successful if they made their bogus results look like everyone else's - thus diluting their influence on the outcome of the trial. Should science fraudsters have to serve jail time? And stopping short of capital punishment, jail time for fraud would itself be a big change. According to our own research, only 39 scientists worldwide between 1975 and 2015 received criminal penalties for misdeeds somehow related to their work. However, some of those cases didn't involve research directly but instead related to incidental infractions, such as misusing funds, bribery, and even murder facilitated by access to cyanide. And in the United States, fewer than 2 % of the 250-plus cases of misconduct over the same period reported by the Office of Research Integrity resulted in criminal sanctions. Most of the time, fraudsters earn temporary bans on federal research funding, with some dusting themselves off after a timeout and getting back in the game. So there's room to strengthen penalties without taking the draconian step of invoking the death penalty. Some of that may requiring rewriting relevant statutes, to give agencies overseeing research funds more authority. And we acknowledge that not everyone thinks criminal sanctions are a good idea; some have said that such sanctions would only encourage fraudsters to double down on attempts at denial through lawyers, and might even dissuade colleagues from blowing the whistle. That's certainly possible, but it's not as though investigators' close rate is so high at this point anyway. (source: Ivan Oranksy; statnews.com) Woman dealer gets death reprieve A woman has been sentenced to death - with a 2-year reprieve - for selling and transporting drugs. Shanghai No.3
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----MO., NEB., ID., ARIZ., CALIF., USA
June 23 MISSOURI: Haley Owens' accused killer wants death penalty off the table The Springfield man charged with kidnapping, raping and killing10-year-old Hailey Owens wants the death penalty taken off the table. Craig Wood's lawyers filed the paperwork with the Greene County Circuit Court this week. The defense lays out its case to remove the death penalty in almost 50 pages of documents. Wood is charged with kidnapping, raping, and killing Owens in Springfield in February 2014. He's been in jail ever since, only going back and forth to court appearances.. In court, prosecutors have pushed for the death penalty. However, the families of Wood and Owens have both said they don't want him to see him executed if he's convicted. Hailey's mother said if Wood gets life in prison instead, it would avoid him and the family having to go through the pain of a trial. In the documents just filed, Woods argues that the death penalty should be excluded from the case because of concerns about how the jury will be selected when the case goes to trial later this year. KSPR News reached out to Wood's defense attorney but he would not comment on the filing. The judge will have the final say on the issue. Another hearing in the case is scheduled for next week. (source: KSPR news) NEBRASKA: Lawyers contest constitutionality of Nebraska death penalty Attorneys for an inmate accused of strangling his cellmate have asked a judge to declare Nebraska's death penalty unconstitutional. Concerns over the recently reinstated capital punishment that was repealed in 2015 are among the 11 arguments in a motion filed Monday by Todd Lancaster and Sarah Newell, attorneys for Patrick Schroeder. The move prompted a delay in Schroeder's arraignment that was set for Tuesday. Instead, District Judge Vicky Johnson scheduled a July 28 hearing on Schroeder's motion. "Our society can no longer kill to show that killing is wrong," the motion stated. Schroeder has been serving a life sentence for murder but now also faces a potential death sentence for allegedly choking cellmate Terry Berry Jr. to death in April at the Tecumseh State Prison. Lancaster said the state's death penalty is racially and geographically discriminatory. He alleged that of the 9 men sent to death row in Nebraska since 2002, only one was white. The rest were black or Hispanic. Nebraska's capital punishment law was repealed in 2015 but recently reinstated by voters. In an effort to create a viable death penalty procedure in the wake of that vote, the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services changed the lethal injection protocol earlier this year. Under the former protocol, inmates on death row were given lethal injections of 3 substances in a specific order. The new protocol gives the prisons director more authority in deciding the types and quantities of drugs to be used. Lancaster said the decision to seek the death penalty is arbitrary because it's left to individual county attorneys. "The decision to file aggravating circumstances can be affected by the legal experience of the prosecutor, the size and resources of the particular county, any prejudice or bias of the prosecutor, the political ambition of the prosecutor or other political circumstances," the motion stated. (source: Associated Press) IDAHO: When I witnessed death by appointment TV kliegs lit up live shots in one corner of the parking lot, where protesters prayed, preached and crowded onto the scene. Midnight, January 5, 1994, was coming fast. I rushed to clear the first gate and head down the empty, well-lit walkway past B Block, a close supervision wing at the Idaho State Penitentiary. Prisoners screamed and banged on the steel security panels over their windows, and 1 voice howled. "You're going to see him die every night the rest of your life!" Inside, I lined up with other reporters in the press pool to cover the execution of Keith Wells. The 31-year-old had beaten barmaid Brandi Rains and her friend John Justad to death with a baseball bat in 1990 while robbing the Rose Bar in Boise. Wells pleaded innocent at trial, was convicted and, a month before the execution, called a newspaper to confess. He ordered his attorneys to stop fighting the execution, and the state granted his wish to die. America continues to grapple with the death penalty, most recently the controversy over Arkansas' trying to rush the executions of eight prisoners because the state's supply of a lethal injection drug was expiring. As someone who has served as an official witness to an execution, the death penalty is no abstraction, but it's also no horror. My response, or lack thereof, makes me suspect we lack the moral acumen to carry out the death penalty. The witness lottery There is no smaller talk than the mumblings of reporters waiting to be picked to witness an execution. We shuffle around on the buffed
