[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
April 26 UNITED KINGDOM: A third of Tory MPs want to bring back the death penalty 1/3 of Tory MPs support the reintroduction of capital punishment in the UK, Yahoo News can reveal. An exclusive poll of MPs carried out by YouGov found that 18% of Conservative MPs strongly support bringing back the death penalty and 13% somewhat support doing so. The poll has shocked activists, who have condemned MPs for “hankering after the return of a grotesque and cold-blooded ritual”. Not a single Labour MP said they support bringing back capital punishment. In November, Conservative MP John Hayes urged the Government to consider bringing back hacking for perpetrators of violent crimes in response to the Westminster Bridge attacked carried out by Khalid Masood. Mr Hayes said the option “should be available to the courts” in cases such as Masood’s, and it would have been “appropriate” to hang him if he had survived the attack. Amnesty International condemned the MPs who support the reintroduction of the death penalty. Commenting on the poll, Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK’s Director, told Yahoo: “The vast majority of countries in the world have stopped using the death penalty in recognition of its cruelty and the ever-present danger of miscarriages of justice. “We would urge any MP still hankering after a return of the grotesque ritual of cold-bloodedly condemning people to be hanged to consult our latest global report on the death penalty. “It shows in case after case how people around the world are still being sentenced to death arbitrarily, after unfair trials - sometimes involving false confessions - and even for political reasons. “Do we really want the UK to join China, Saudi Arabia and Iran in the dwindling band of countries that still execute their citizens? “The death penalty is a cruel relic of the past and there should be no place for it in the modern world.” The last execution in the UK took place in 1964 when Gwynne Evans and Peter Allen were hanged for murder. The Government’s policy is to oppose the reintroduction of the death penalty. The most recent official briefing paper, published in 2015, says: “It is the longstanding policy of the UK to oppose the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle. “There is a growing international momentum towards abolition of the death penalty - in the past two decades we have seen a significant rise in the number of countries becoming abolitionist, and we are keen to see this trend continue.” YouGov’s most recent poll of the public, carried out in 2014, found 45% of Brits support the reintroduction of the death penalty. (source: Yahoo News) INDIA: HC upholds death sentence for murder of family The Punjab and Haryana high court has upheld death sentence of Fatehgarh Sahib resident for killing 4 members of a family, including 2 children, in 2004. The convict, Khushwinder Singh, had killed Kulwant Singh (40), his wife Harjit Kaur (38), their daughter Ramandeep Kaur (16) and son Avrinder Singh (14) in June 2004 by pushing them into the Sirhind canal. Khushwinder had revealed details of the 2004 murders during interrogation after his arrest for murders of another 6 people in similar fashion in 2012. He is already on death row for the 2012 murders. “The present case falls within the ambit of rarest of rare cases. The appellant has killed 4 persons, including 2 minor children. Whether the extreme penalty of death sentence is to be awarded, a balance sheet of aggravating and mitigating circumstances has to be drawn up,” said the high court division bench, comprising Justice Rajiv Sharma and Justice Gurvinder Singh Gill, after dismissing the appeal filed by Khushwinder challenging his death sentence. The high court said the prosecution has proved its case against the appellant beyond reasonable doubt and the trial court had correctly appreciated the oral as well as documentary evidence. “The case though based on circumstantial evidence, the chain is complete. The motive attributed to the appellant is that he wanted to grab money of Kulwant Singh, who had recently sold land. The appellant had taken Kulwant and his family to Bhakra canal on the pretext of receiving blessings from some “Baba.” He pushed them into the canal on June 3, 2004 while they were offering prayers. Bodies of Kulwant and his daughter Ramandeep were recovered. However, the bodies of his wife and son were never recovered,” the high court observed while upholding the sentence. Special CBI court in Mohali had on August 28, 2018 ordered that Khushwinder should be hanged by the neck till he is dead for the murders and imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on him. (source: The Times of India) *** HC sends death penalty ruling back to trial court 3 years after a Thane cour awarded death penalty to a man for raping and murdering a 7-year-old girl, the Bombay
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
April 26 SAUDI ARABIA: Will the Saudi Crown Prince's legacy only be executions and imprisonment? The execution of 37 prisoners in Saudi Arabia is a scathing indictment of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's 'liberalising reforms'. Earlier this week, Saudi Arabia put 37 of its citizens to death in the single largest mass execution the Kingdom has ordered since January 2016 when 47 people were beheaded, including a prominent Shia cleric, Nimr al Nimr, who was well-liked by Iran for his anti-establishment rhetoric against their Arab rival. While the death penalty is a punishment still practised by many developing and developed countries around the world, including the United States, what is most concerning about these executions is that they occurred during the reign of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, better known as MBS, a man already infamous for jailing dissidents and ordering extrajudicial killings. Crushing dissent, sending a message Again, this time, the majority of those executed appear to be from the Shia minority. Interestingly, however, the executions swiftly followed an attack by 4 Sunni Daesh extremists who died after attacking a security installation north of the capital Riyadh. While it is tempting to frame these executions as being motivated by sectarianism, this is highly unlikely as the most shocking display of state violence was reserved for a Sunni death row inmate. It, therefore, appears clear that Riyadh wanted to send a general message. Khalid bin Abdulkarim al Tuwaijiri was beheaded, and his headless body was crucified and put on display for several hours as a grim message designed to deter anyone else from following in his footsteps. According to Saudi-funded and Emirates-based Alarabiya, Tuwaijiri has been on death row since 2007 after he killed and then beheaded his uncle who was an officer in the Saudi security establishment on behalf of Al Qaeda. His accomplice, Aziz al-Umari, was also beheaded during the same mass execution. While their rhetoric is rooted in sectarian division, the analysis of some, including human rights organisations, that Saudi Arabia’s bloody executions are motivated by sectarianism is incorrect. We cannot ignore the fact that the majority of the most prominent political dissidents currently languishing in Saudi dungeons are conservative Sunni clerics who opposed MBS’ “liberalisation” reforms. These reforms are laughable considering the sheer body count MBS has amassed since deciding Saudi needed to relax its more hardline tendencies. Amongst those who have died at the altar of MBS’ liberalisation drive was the vicious extrajudicial slaying of columnist Jamal Khashoggi that shocked the world last year. Riyadh is now also seeking the death penalty against prominent Saudi Sunni cleric Salman al-Awda, who was imprisoned after a mild-mannered social media post which shows absolutely no one is safe from MBS’ cruel grasp. It is a mistruth peddled by the Saudi Arabian regime that they are the defenders of Sunni Islam against a growing Shia threat emanating from Iran. The Saudi royal family and their army of pro-regime scholars who issue fatwas, or religious edicts, at the whim of their masters, use their Sunni identity and custodianship of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, in order to silence critical voices and to gather and maintain support amongst the Sunni majority across the Arab and Islamic world who are rightly concerned about Iranian expansionism. However, Saudi Sunni protectionism is a myth and cannot be farther from the truth. Days before the executions, the Saudi authorities granted one of the highest honours in Islam to a radical Iraqi Shia cleric and pro-Iran militia leader, Sami al Masoudi, by allowing him to enter the Kaabah in the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Aside from running the Iran-linked Promise of Allah militia, Masoudi currently serves as an advisor to the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) whose litany of sectarian murders against Sunnis has been well-documented. He also famously threatened vengeance against the Saudi regime after they executed Shia cleric Nimr in 2016. Despite all this, he was allowed to enter the sacred building that is the focal point of 1.8 billion Muslims’ daily prayers. All of this proves that Riyadh does not care about what sect or religion someone follows, as long as that someone does not interfere with their ambitions, which right now, appear to be the complete reversal of the Arab Spring and fomenting closer ties with Israel at the expense of the long-standing plight of the Palestinian people. A bloody legacy MBS and, let us never forget, his father King Salman bin Abdulaziz, have accomplished very little that is positive since coming to power and will leave behind a legacy of mass imprisonment, unfair trials, dubious executions, and failed wars – the humanitarian disaster that is now Yemen is a case in
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, N.Y., S.C., FLA., LA., ARK., NEB., WYO., USA
April 26 TEXASimpending execution Death Watch: Was Dexter Johnson Condemned by His Own Attorney?Inmate's new co-counsel seeks to terminate longtime attorney for bad lawyering Dexter Johnson isn't going to die without a fight. The 30-year-old, who suffers from brain damage and schizophrenia, has filed a flurry of court motions since his death date was set in December by a Houston judge – several months before the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his last round of appeals. With his execution scheduled for May 2, Johnson has stay requests filed in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and in federal district court in Houston. Johnson also has a motion pending in the Houston court to terminate his longtime appellate counsel Patrick F. McCann; in February, U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett denied an earlier request to remove McCann but also appointed the Federal Public Defender's Capital Habeas Unit as co-counsel, directing FPD to "explore" Johnson's claims of ineffective counsel assistance. According to FPD's April 5 filing, their review of McCann's work cast "serious doubt on the constitutionality" of Johnson's conviction and death sentence, while leaving "no doubt" that McCann's work on the case "falls far below prevailing professional norms." McCann, who was appointed Johnson's appellate attorney on the day he was sentenced to death in 2007, failed to collect the trial team's "voluminous" files, which FPD calls the "most basic duty of post-conviction counsel in a capital case" and "essential" to provide "competent" representation. During his years as Johnson's only attorney, FPD alleges, McCann failed to raise "numerous viable claims for relief" in state and federal courts, including Johnson's likely intellectual disability, his trial counsel's conflicts of interest as a former Harris County prosecutor, and errors by the Houston police crime lab, along with numerous mistakes made by McCann himself. Another appeal was filed in the CCA on April 22. Johnson was sentenced to death in 2007 for the double murder of a young couple whom he and several friends carjacked and robbed before Johnson allegedly raped the woman and shot the pair. During his trial, jurors were told of other murders Johnson was suspected of committing. Despite his age (he was 18 at the time) and his schizophrenia, jurors returned a guilty verdict in 2 hours. In closing, the lawyers of FPD offered: "Absent a stay of execution, Mr. Johnson will not receive the meaningful assistance of counsel he is entitled to." After James Byrd's killer John William King was executed Wednesday evening, Johnson is in line to be the 4th man killed by the state this year. (source: Austin Chronicle) On the Execution of John William King Wednesday in Texas, an avowed white supremacist, John William King, was executed for his part in the gruesome killing of James Byrd Jr. in 1998. King and his friends Shawn Berry and Lawrence Brewer beat James Byrd then chained him to the back of their pickup and dragged him for miles along a country road. Still alive during his ordeal, Byrd was finally killed when he hit a culvert and his right arm and head were torn off. If you have the stomach for it, you can read the whole sickening story here. Berry was sentenced to life in prison. Brewer was executed in 2011 and King yesterday. Brewer and King never expressed remorse for their crimes saying they would do it again if they had the chance. King had several racist tattoos: a black man hanging from a tree, Nazi symbols, the words “Aryan Pride”, and the patch for a gang of white supremacist inmates known as the Confederate Knights of America.[19] In a jailhouse letter to Brewer that was intercepted by jail officials, King expressed pride in the crime and said that he realized while committing the murder that he might have to die. “Regardless of the outcome of this, we have made history. Death before dishonor. Sieg Heil!” King wrote.[2] An officer investigating the case also testified that witnesses said that King had referenced The Turner Diaries after beating Byrd. So here we have 3 guys who are just about as despicable and disgusting specimens of humanity that you can imagine. What is your reaction? Should Brewer and King have been executed? I’m a Catholic and my church teaches that the death penalty is wrong. Until recently the wording in our teaching on the matter has been that the death penalty should not be used, but it still left an opening for its use in extreme circumstances, but more recently Pope Francis has changed this article in the Catechism to read: 2267. Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good. Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the
