[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----CONN., GA., ALA., MO., USA
March 19 CONNECTICUT: The GOP's strange lust for the death penalty So we're really re-arguing the death penalty? That's what the Republicans' nearly unified position against Supreme Court Justice Andrew McDonald is about? The 2018 elections are going to be a referendum on capital punishment? Right. And I would like to sell you some artifacts from another ship that already sailed - and sank - nearly 106 years ago: the R.M.S. Titanic. Yes, there is a level of homophobia in the General Assembly over McDonald's sexual orientation. Hatred of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy? Darn tootin'. Connecticut Republicans, so tantalizingly close to the brink of gaining control of the House and Senate, maybe even the Governor's Residence, are essentially using a lost argument to cover up their importation of Washington-style partisan GOP tactics to Connecticut. You know what we haven't had to deal with during the 3 years since the Connecticut Supreme Court essentially spared 11 death row inmates from lethal injections, while condemning them to darkness in forgotten cells until they stop breathing? Think about it for a minute. We haven't seen Russell Peeler's murderous eyes in photographs taken during a latest courtroom appearance for ordering the murder of a Bridgeport mother and her young son in 1999. He won't be getting day passes for yet another appeals session before a judge in a packed courtroom. He is locked away and the next time we hear about him, it will be a day or 2 after he dies in prison. Remember the courtroom circus that surrounded the horrendous Cheshire triple murderers in 2010? Every time the thugs Joshua Komisarjevsky and Stephen Hayes were taken to court, it required a convoy of security vehicles to drive them from the prison to the courthouses. They were the twisted, evil stars in the courtroom. Now, they're out of sight. In tiny rooms. For years, paying for their crimes, until they breathe their anonymous last. Even before the 2012 bill, signed by Malloy, ended the death penalty for crimes going forward, there was no capital punishment in Connecticut. Instead, it was decades of mandatory appeals for death row inmates, for another trip to the courthouse for families to relive the horror, to rehash the bloody facts, to face the intrusion of press and TV cameras. There was no end in sight. At worse, somewhere, way off in the future, was the possibility of a syringe full of poison. Why people thought that the state's most-violent criminals should be put to sleep like faithful old family pets - after millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded appeals - is beyond me. It also made sense for McDonald, on the high court in 2015, to join the majority in admitting that if capital punishment ends for some, it should end for all. But listening to one after another lawmaker in the House of Representatives last week during the debate on McDonald's nomination for chief justice, it seems like the GOP thinks they should run their 2018 election campaigns on bringing back the death penalty. I don't think that plays in Connecticut. I think at this point we've joined the civilized part of the world that realizes that capital punishment makes the state no worse than the criminals themselves. McDonald's nomination is hanging fire in this partisan moment and if Senate Republican Leader Len Fasano of North Haven wants to go nuclear, he'll hold his 18 members in rejecting McDonald. It sounds easier than it might be, it being an election year. There's growing public interest. The state's leading law school deans and law firms are warning of legislative meddling with the independence of courts. And one Democrat, Sen. Gayle Slossberg of Milford, has announced she won't be voting. "A lot of what it is is petty politics," said Scott McLean, a political science professor at Quinnipiac University. "Some want to stick it to Malloy. But it would seem to me that we're seeing the politics of Washington, D.C., filter down to the state level." He said the attempt to end McDonald's candidacy in Malloy's final year is right out of the GOP tactics used at the end of the Obama administration. "All of that stuff is a way for Republicans to sort of normalize the idea that the legislature should be scrutinizing every decision made on the Supreme Court," McLean said. "The national partisan polarization has infected the process here, and we wouldn't see this if the parties weren't as evenly divided." So if McDonald's nomination fails in the state Senate, does he save the state Democratic Party? (source: Ken Dixon, Connecticut Post) GEORGIA: Judge sets arraignment date in death penalty case Ocmulgee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge E. Trenton Brown III has set April 17 as the date for the arraignment of Donnie Russell Rowe, who is accused of shooting to death 2 state corrections officers during a June 13 escape from a state transport bus in Putnam County.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
March 19 SAUDI ARABIAexecution Saudi Arabia beheads Indonesian worker despite Jokowi's pleas for clemency Saudi Arabia has beheaded an Indonesian migrant worker for murder despite President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's repeated pleas that the man be granted clemency. M. Zaini Misrin from Bangkalan, East Java, was executed on Sunday, according to Migrant Care, an Indonesian organization focusing on the welfare of Indonesian migrant workers. Zaini, who worked as a driver, was sentenced to death on Nov. 17, 2008, after being found guilty of murdering his employer, Abdullah bin Umar Munammad Al Sindy. He was arrested on Jul. 13, 2004. Migrant Care suspected that the 53-year-old Bangkalan resident had been forced to confess to the murder. The group further claimed that Zaini did not receive legal assistance during his trial and was only accompanied by a translator believed to be complicit in forcing him to confess to the crime he claimed he did not commit. "Saudi Arabia also did not notify Indonesia [about the execution] either through the consulate general in Jeddah or the Foreign Ministry," the group said in a statement released on Monday. The Indonesian Foreign Ministry confirmed the execution and Migrant Care's claim that it was not notified by Riyadh beforehand about Zaini's beheading. President Jokowi has requested that Zaini and other Indonesians on death row in Saudi Arabia be granted clemency on at least 3 occasions: During his visit to Riyadh in September 2015, during King Salman's visit to Jakarta in March 2017 and through a letter sent to the Islamic kingdom in November 2017. The Indonesian Consulate General in Jeddah had also requested that Zaini's case be reviewed and a reinvestigation was conducted between 2011 and 2014, according to Migrant Care. The legal efforts, however, failed to overturn his conviction. (sdource: The Jakarta Post) JAPAN: 1995 Aum sarin attack on Tokyo subway still haunts, leaving questions unanswered Hitoshi Jin describes his younger brother spending the booming 1980s "cult surfing," exploring what new religions had to offer to fill the gaping spiritual void left by a childhood scarred by an abusive father. Like others seeking refuge from the rampant materialism of the era, he appeared to find a form of salvation in the Buddhist-Hindu influenced teachings espoused in what was then a yoga-training circle run by a long-haired, bearded former acupuncturist called Shoko Asahara. Jin, a Buddhist priest, recalls his brother showing him a periodical published by the group claiming its guru could levitate. He brushed it aside as nonsense. "I should have listened to him more carefully," he said. Jin's brother was found dead at the age of 27 in an apparent suicide from inert gas asphyxiation. Among the pile of occult books and magazines found in his room were those written by Asahara, who the following year orchestrated the worst terrorist attack in modern Japanese history. It's unclear to what extent Jin's brother was involved in Aum Shinrikyo, the doomsday cult responsible for staging the March 20, 1995, sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system that left 13 dead and injured around 6,300 people. During the final years of his troubled life, Jin's brother had experimented with various prescription drugs and other substances to induce an altered state of consciousness - to "see Buddha." Members of the cult would later testify that Aum resorted to numerous tactics to instill its doctrine in its ranks, including the use of LSD and other hallucinogens. But for Jin, 57, one thing is certain. "Despite being a man of religion, I couldn't save my brother," he said. Jin is among those whose lives have been confounded by the cult that burst onto the national stage 23 years ago, with an act of terror that crippled postwar Japan's long-held sense of security and left policymakers, media, academics and counterterrorism agencies scrambling to make sense of the new dangers posed by religious extremism. The series of crimes committed by the group, which culminated in the toxic nerve gas attack during the morning rush hour, also launched an unprecedentedly long and complicated judicial process that finally wrapped up this January, paving the way for the execution of Asahara - whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto - and 12 other disciples on death row. Speculation is rife that they could be hanged before the Heisei Era draws to an end with the abdication of Emperor Akihito in April 2019. For those who were involved with the cult, however, an enigma remains. Asahara visits Orie Miyama in her dreams. Not often, only occasionally, and usually during stretches when she hasn't been thinking about the cult she joined in 1986. Miyama, a pseudonym she uses to protect her privacy when speaking to the media, was a graphic designer when she discovered the cult through one of Asahara's books. She was
