[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
August 12 IRAN: Campaign Pressuring Tehran to Release 8 Environmentalists Social media users have interacted regarding the issue of 8 environmentalists facing security charges in Iran, 1 week after they started a hunger strike. 2 hashtags were launched to pressure Iran to release the activists. Kaveh Madani, water management expert, tweeted that 564 days have passed since arresting the activists, and 8 days since the hunger strike. He stressed that their only demand is to work based on justice. Human Rights Watch said last week that the authorities should immediately release all eight environmentalist experts detained for over 18 months without being provided with the evidence concerning their alleged crimes. "Members of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation have languished behind bars for over 550 days while Iranian authorities have blatantly failed to provide a shred of evidence about their alleged crime," said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "The authorities should take the long-overdue step of releasing these defenders of Iran’s endangered wildlife and end this injustice against them," Page added. HRW quoted a reliable source as saying that the environmentalists on hunger strike are demanding that authorities end their legal limbo and either release them on bail until a verdict is issued against them or transfer them to the public ward of Evin prison. They are inward 2-Alef of Evin prison, which is under the supervision of the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization, the source added. Their trial in Branch 15 of Tehran’s revolutionary court was halted before March, then resumed at the beginning of August. The court reportedly did not allow lawyers to review the evidence before the trial opened on January 30. Article 48 of Iran’s 2014 criminal procedure law says that detainees charged with various offenses, including national or international security crimes, political, and media crimes, must select their lawyer from a pre-approved pool selected by Iran’s judiciary during the investigation. Defendants had been under psycho-social torture and were coerced into making false confessions, experts said. On February 10, 2018, a few weeks after their arrests, family members of Kavous Seyed Emami, a Canadian-Iranian professor and environmentalist arrested with the other members of the group, reported that he had died in detention under suspicious circumstances. Iranian authorities claimed that he committed suicide, but they have not conducted an impartial investigation into his death. Several senior Iranian government officials have said that they did not find any evidence to suggest that the detained activists are spies. On May 22, 2018, Issa Kalantari, the head of Iran’s Environmental institution, said that the government had formed a committee consisting of the ministers of intelligence, interior, and justice and the president’s legal deputy, and that they had concluded there was no evidence to suggest those detained are spies. Kalantari added that the committee said the environmentalists should be released. On February 3, Mahmoud Sadeghi, a member of parliament from Tehran, tweeted that according to the information he has received, the National Security Council headed by President Hassan Rouhani also did not deem the activities of their detained conservation activists to be spying. On October 24, 2018, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, the Tehran prosecutor, said that the prosecutor’s office had elevated the charges against four of the detainees to "sowing corruption on earth," which includes the risk of the death penalty. Dolatabadi claimed that the activists were "seeking proximity to military sites with the cover of environmental projects and obtaining military information from them." (source: aawsat.com) CHINA: China Clarifies Inmate Rights in Death Penalty Cases In an effort to improve the protection of death row inmates’ rights and welfare, China’s Supreme People’s Court released a new guideline on August 9 to clarify and control capital punishment "review and execution procedures," according to China Daily. Set to take effect on September 1, the guideline is composed of 13 articles and states, among other things, that inmates nearing the date of their execution are only able to meet with close family members - including spouses and children. More distant relatives, as well as friends, are also allowed to meet with a death row inmate ":subject to reason." The guideline goes on to state that courts are responsible for informing convicts on death row that they have the right to meet with family, and, if a person refuses an invitation to visit an inmate, the incarcerated individual must also be notified. Meetings with children or family members under 18 years of age require parental approval; video calls can be arranged after review if it is concluded that an in-person
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, S.C., FLA., TENN., USA, US MIL.
August 12 TEXAS: Routier defense can explore evidence A judge in Dallas County, Texas, has issued an order giving defense attorneys representing Darlie Routier, a former Altoona woman on death row for the 1996 murder of one of her young sons, access to the district attorney’s files in the case. Routier’s mother, Darlie Kee, who was raised in Altoona and still has many relatives in the area, sees this as another positive sign that her daughter is close to receiving a long-awaited hearing that could result in her either receiving a new trial or exoneration. Darlie Routier’s case has been the subject of many reviews on television, including a recent airing of ABC’s “The Last Defense,” which explored several cases in which the alleged perpetrators continue to maintain their innocence despite serving many years in prison. Routier was arrested in June 1996 for the stabbing deaths of her 2 older children, Devon, 6, and Damon, 5, that occurred in the upscale home she shared with her husband, Darin, in Rowlett, Texas. While Routier reported that an intruder entered the home during the early morning of June 6, 1996, stabbing her and the two children, who were sleeping in a downstairs television room. Police, however, quickly concluded that there was no intruder and that Routier committed the murders, even though she also suffered many serious knife wounds, including one on her neck that was 2 millimeters - about 5/64 of an inch - from her carotid artery. The young mother, while charged with the killings of both children, was tried in early 1997 only in the killing of 5-year-old Damon because it was a crime that carried with it the possible death penalty. Routier is represented by several Texas attorneys, including Richard B. Smith and J. Stephen Cooper and the Innocence Project of New York. The Routier post-conviction appeal has been stalled for more than a decade as DNA testing of blood samples from the crime scene have been underway. According to an update filed in June by the defense and prosecution attorneys with the U.S. District Court for West Texas, the DNA testing is continuing. But as of late last year and early this year, several developments have occurred that have brought hope to Routier’s mother. The Innocence Project has joined the defense, and Dallas County District Judge Gracie Lewis has ordered the running of 2 bloody fingerprints that were collected from a coffee table at the scene but as of yet, have not been identified. Kee hopes the prints the may lead to a possible suspect who, Routier claims, entered the home that fatal night. Just a couple of weeks ago, Judge Lewis issued another order granting the defense access to the district attorney’s files in a effort to determine if the prosecution withheld exculpatory information from the defense in preparation for the 1997 trial. Prosecutors are mandated to provide information in their possession that may be helpful to the defense. The judge went to great lengths in her order to limit access to the files to representatives of the defense, expert or other witnesses for the defense, and Routier. Before Routier or prospective witnesses can review items in the file, the defense attorneys must redact addresses, telephone numbers, driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and bank account numbers that would tend to identify the individuals in question. Any information that the defense wants to disclose publicly must first be reviewed by the court, the Lewis order stated. Kee this past week commented, "I think it is a good motion because they (the defense) will review everything (the) prosecutors did." Post-conviction hearings in both the Dallas County Court and Federal District Court for West Texas remain on hold. (source: Altoona Mirror) SOUTH CAROLINA: Dad who killed his 5 kids sentenced to death Timothy Jones Jr, 37, had been given custody of Merah Jones, 8, and her siblings Elias, 7, Nahtahn, 6, Gabriel, 2, and 1-year-old Abigail when he split from his wife Amber. Amber had had an affair with a 19-year-old neighbor after her husband’s devout religious beliefs saw him expect her to be always subservient. After the split, Jones, who had a well-paying IT job, was given custody of the children. He began to beat his children, following the Biblical instruction, 'thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell,' reported AP News. In August 2014, Jones forced Nahtahn, who had expressed his wish to live with his mum again, to exercise for hours until he collapsed as punishment for breaking a power socket and denying it. Jones found his son dead in his bed at their home in South Carolina afterwards, and then strangled or choked his other children to death. Jones put the 5 bodies into his car and drove around for nine days during which he searched for how to 'disintegrate' bodies. He
