[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
May 14 PAPUA NEW GUINEA: AG to announce how death penalty will be executed The death penalty will be applicable to murder, piracy, treason, rape and other major criminal cases, depending on their severity, says Minister for Justice and Attorney-General Alfred Manase. He told The National that he was still waiting to receive an updated report on it. “Hopefully, the report will be on my desk this week or early next week,” he said. “Once I receive this report, I will issue a statement on what methods will be used in implementing the death penalty and on what crimes will it be applicable to.” According to previous reports in The National, the death penalty was passed in Parliament in 2013 and since 15 people had been placed on death row. However, 2 have died in custody and 2 were recently acquitted by the Supreme Court in Port Moresby last Dec 2017. Father and son Selman and Misialis Amos were acquitted by the Supreme Court on Dec 11, 2017 of the murder charges against them, citing errors by the trial judge who convicted them. Both have since rejoined their families in East New Britain and New Ireland. The 2 who died while in custody were Gregory Kiapkot, 41, from Lokanai in New Ireland, convicted of murder and sea piracy, and Martin Pigit, 39, from New Ireland, also convicted of murder and sea piracy. The remaining 7 on death row are either at the Kerevat prison in ENB or at Bomana in Port Moresby. (source: The National) MALAYSIA: George Clooney: Brunei boycott over gay death penalty 'warning shot' to Malaysia, Indonesia The hotels boycott that forced the Sultan of Brunei to back down from imposing the death penalty for homosexuality will serve as warning for other countries considering this, US actor-producer George Clooney said. Speaking on US talk show Ellen, the Hollywood celebrity singled out Malaysia and Indonesia as among countries purportedly considering such laws. Clooney earlier said that while shaming was ineffective from deterring countries from pushing such laws, going after their finances and business ties have now been shown to work in forcing them to reconsider. “[...] And more important is the reason for this is this is something that is manageable, because it sends a warning shot over to countries like Indonesia and Malaysia who also are considering these laws, that the business people, the big banks , those guys are going to say ‘don’t even get into that business, so that’s the reason you do it,” the Hollywood celebrity said. Brunei controversially announced on April 3 that it was imposing death by stoning for homosexuals as part of the country’s shariah laws. This triggered an international outcry and boycott of hotels Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah owned across the world, leading to the Brunei ruler to announce a moratorium on the penalty this month. “The way you make it difficult is by boycotting his hotels. That doesn't matter so much to a rich guy, you can’t shame the ‘bad guys’, but you can shame the people who do business with them. “And when the banks and financial institutions started saying ‘well, we are out of the Brunei business’, then he backed off, and changed and said ‘put a moratorium’ on it,” Clooney said, referring to Brunei-owned hotels such as the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles and the Dorchester in London. Malaysia does not have laws against homosexuality per se but criminalises unnatural sex in its Penal Code. (source: malaymail.com) CHINA: Canadian officials visit former diplomat Michael Kovrig in custody in China Diplomats have visited a Canadian whose detention in China is believed to be an attempt to pressure Canada to release Huawei executive Sabrina Meng Wanzhou. Consular officials visited Michael Kovrig on Monday, the country’s diplomatic service said. Chinese state media have accused Korvig, a former diplomat and Asia expert at the International Crisis Group, acted with Canadian businessman Michael Spavor to steal state secrets. Both were arrested on December 10 after Meng was arrested in Vancouver on December 1 at the request of US authorities who want her extradited to face fraud charges in connection with US sanctions against Iran. Global Affairs Canada said it was concerned about the men’s “arbitrary” detentions and called for their immediate release. Meng, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, is accused of lying to banks about the company’s dealings with Iran in violation of US trade sanctions. Her lawyer argued that comments by US President Donald Trump suggested the case against her was politically motivated. Washington has pressured other countries to limit use of Huawei’s technology, warning they could be opening themselves up to surveillance and theft of information. (source: South China Morning Post) BAHRAIN: Court Upholds Death Sentence For Smuggling Hashish The Supreme Court of Appeals yesterday
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----OHIO, TENN., KY., COLO., CALIF., USA
May 14 OHIO: Joseph McAlpin, convicted of killing couple at Mr. Cars dealership, faces sentencing Joseph McAlpin, the man convicted of murdering a local couple at Mr. Cars dealership in Cleveland, will learn his fate during his sentencing hearing Monday. He faces the death penalty for the April 2017 murders of Michael and Trina Kuznik, and their dog. On Monday, before the sentencing phase, McAlpin made a motion for a new trial, upset about some of the things prosecutors said in their closing arguments during his trial. The judge denied his request for a new trial. McAlpin represented himself during the weeks-long trial that ended on April 16 after a jury found him guilty on charges relating to the murders and the robbery at the dealership. Prosecutors will present evidence during the sentencing phase to show the jury that McAlpin should get the death penalty. The jury can make a recommendation to the judge to give him either life, life without parole or the death penalty. The jury selection began on March 15 and closing arguments wrapped up on April 15. (source: news5cleveland.com) TENNESSEEimpending execution Death row inmate Donnie Johnson will die by lethal injection unless Gov. Lee intervenes If death row inmate Donnie Edward Johnson is executed as scheduled Thursday, it will be by lethal injection. Johnson's attorney Kelley Henry announced the decision Monday, after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider a challenge to Tennessee's lethal injection protocol. Johnson, 68, will not launch any more legal challenges. His execution will go forward unless Gov. Bill Lee stops it. Johnson was among dozens of inmates who argued in 2018 that Tennessee's 3-drug protocol, led by the controversial sedative midazolam, fails to block out torturous pain as inmates die. Tennessee courts repeatedly denied arguments that the lethal injection method was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court declined to intervene. Johnson was sentenced to death for the 1984 murder of his wife Connie Johnson in Memphis. Because he was sentenced for a crime committed before 1999, Donnie Johnson could have chosen the electric chair for his execution. Henry, a federal public defender who handles capital cases, said Johnson had declined to choose, and the state would default to lethal injection. Johnson has decided not to try and stop his execution in court. He has asked Lee for mercy — the governor is still considering his application for clemency. (source: The Tennessean) * U.S. Supreme Court declines to stop Don Johnson’s execution The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it would not halt the execution of convicted murderer Don Johnson, declining to take up a legal appeal that questioned the three drugs used in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol. The decision clears the way for the execution of Johnson on Thursday, unless Gov. Bill Lee grants a commutation to Johnson. Kelley Henry, Johnson’s attorney, said Johnson had held off signing a form choosing his execution method until they had heard from the court. A state law grants Johnson the choice between execution methods because he committed his crime before 1999, around the time Tennessee adopted lethal injection as its primary execution method. Tennessee death row inmates and their attorneys have repeatedly argued that the 1st drug in the lethal injection sequence – Midazolam – doesn’t keep inmates from feeling excruciating pain from the administration of the next 2 drugs. The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the state’s current lethal injection protocol last year in part because the inmates couldn’t prove that an alternative lethal injection drug was available in Tennessee, many of which have become scarce due to efforts from anti-death penalty advocates. In the original court hearing last year, TDOC officials had testified that no other types of drugs were available for lethal injections, but they wouldn’t show the inmates or their attorneys information about which drug providers they had spoken to, citing state secrecy laws protecting groups and people involved in executions. Attorneys for Johnson and nearly 2 dozen other death row inmates had argued to the U.S. Supreme Court that it wasn’t constitutional for judges to rely on TDOC’s say-so alone about the availability of other drugs. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected that argument on Monday. Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed the decision of most of the court in a dissent, saying the requirement that inmates must prove the availability of alternative lethal injection drugs, coupled with Tennessee’s secrecy laws regarding that information, is “perverse.” The court decision means only Gov. Lee can likely save Johnson’s life, by commuting his sentence to life in prison. Historically, governors have waited until all legal options are exhausted before making a final decision. Supporters of Johnson
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., S.C., GA., FLA., ALA., LA.
May 14 TEXAS: The DissenterTexas’ highest criminal court turned Elsa Alcala into one of the state’s most prominent death penalty critics. Elsa Alcala began her legal career in the Harris County DA’s office, joining a prosecutorial machine famous for cranking out death sentences. 3 decades later, she’s a prominent critic of the death penalty. Alcala, a Republican, says serving as an appellate court judge opened her eyes to systemic inequities in the criminal justice system. During her 7 years on the Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas’ highest criminal court, she became known for lengthy dissents that challenged other judges, particularly in high-stakes appeals from death row. In one 2016 dissent, she questioned whether the death penalty in Texas is even constitutional. And in one of her final opinions last year, Alcala broke from a majority ruling that would have allowed for the execution of a mentally disabled man. Alcala, who chose not to run for re-election last year, has spent this legislative session lobbying for death penalty reforms at the Capitol on behalf of Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit that represents capital defendants. She spoke with the Observer about her evolution from a prosecutor seeking death sentences to one of the most prominent voices questioning capital punishment in Texas. Your career unfolded alongside some big changes in the criminal justice system. How did your thinking evolve over time? I started out as a prosecutor under [former Harris County District Attorney] Johnny Holmes in ’89. It was basically pre-DNA, so back then the gold standard was an eyewitness. If you had an eyewitness, you thought, ‘Wow, we’ve got a rock-solid case.’ The hard cases were the circumstantial evidence cases. It sounds so simplistic today, but that’s where we started. During the [job] interview they asked, ‘How do you feel about the death penalty?’ I said I was against it, they asked me why, and I didn’t really know, so I just answered what the law school professors had told me: that it didn’t make fiscal sense. That seemed to satisfy them that I wasn’t just some bleeding-heart liberal. I remember one of the senior lawyers said something like, ‘We’ll see what you think in 5 years.’ I started off handling misdemeanors, little bitty property crimes and speeding cases, but within five years I was trying murder cases. I tried three death penalty cases, and I got the death penalty on two of them. One was Eddie Capetillo, who was 17 years old at the time of the crime. I have kids now who are 19 and 16 years old. The thought of using the death penalty on somebody that young is just horrific to me now, but I wasn’t really thinking about it from that point of view then. Back then I was looking at the cases really only from the point of view of the victims. One was a 9-year-old girl shot between the eyes. There was a 7-year-old boy killed in the same incident. Just horrible crimes. I really wasn’t thinking about the defendant beyond the technical analysis — did he intend to commit the crime, what are the mitigating factors, is he a future danger? So you didn’t start thinking differently about the system until your time as a judge? After 9 years at the DA’s office I became a trial judge for 3 1/2 years. Then I went on to the court of appeals for nine years. It was just general jurisdiction, which was probably the best thing that ever happened to me, because I was exposed to civil law and some of the brightest civil lawyers around. You’d see drug-addicted parents, kids removed to go live with grandparents, things like that. So I’m starting to get a bigger picture. By the time I ended up on the Court of Criminal Appeals, I’d been away from the death penalty for almost a decade, so I feel like I was looking at the issue with fresh eyes. Over time, I started forming the opinion that, generically speaking, we have all these laws out there and they sort of give us this illusion of justice, but in many cases, justice wasn’t really happening. Were you surprised to find yourself developing a reputation as a voice of dissent? In some ways Texas has been very progressive on criminal justice matters, from a junk science commission to expanding the appointment of counsel. But those are things that have occurred outside of the courts. For whatever reason, I think there’s just a lot of entrenchment on the courts. Some people have been there for way too long. After enough time, I kept thinking, “If I stay, what am I going to become?” You’ve called yourself a “Republican hanging on by a thread.” What does that mean? I was Republican long before Trump was, but somehow he came along and changed everything. I don’t feel included in that. I can’t join that kind of negativity and hatred. I am not an us-versus-them kind of person. We’re all in this together, whether we’re talking about the person on death row or the immigrant at
