[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
Oct. 4 IRANexecutions Iranian authorities execute 6 prisoners, including 1 in public Iranian authorities executed 4 prisoners on Wednesday, October 2, at Raja’i Shahr Prison in the city of Karaj, near the capital, Tehran. 2 of the victimes identified as Hossein Roshan and Mohsen Kounani were sentenced to death on charges related to moharebeh (“enmity against God”), while Mohammad Reza Ghanbari and Hamid Sheikhi were hanged on murder charges. As a consequence of the clerical regime’s failure to categorize murders according to their degrees, anyone committing murder is sentenced to death, regardless of their motives. On Wednesday, October 2, the Iranian regime executed a man in public in the northern ciry of Rasht. He was hanged for killing a security agent. Another prisoner identified as 24-year-old Razgar Zandi was executed on Tuseday, October 1, in Sanandaj Prison. He was charged with killing a man during a group fight. The clerical regime also executed at least 12 prisoners including 2 women on September 24 and 25, 2019. The news of these executions has not been announced by any of the state media in Iran. The unidentified woman hanged with 7 men on September 25, 2019, in Gohardasht Prison was accused of deliberately murdering her husband. An eye-witness said she had been taken for implementation of her death verdict to Gohardasht from either Shahr-e Ray (Qarchak) or Kachouii Prison. The woman has not been identified yet as this news is being posted. Taking into account the execution that took place on September 25, the number of women executed during Rouhani’s tenure reaches 96. Eight of these women have been hanged in a period of slightly over 3 months. One of these women was Leila Zarafshan who was executed on Thursday, September 26, 2019, in the Central Prison of Sanandaj. This should be compared to the 9 women executed during the entire year 2016, ten women in 2017, and 6 women in 2018. The Iranian regime is the world’s top record holder of per capita executions. At least 3800 persons have been executed during Rouhani’s terms in office. (source: Iran Human Rights) SAUDI ARABIA: Verdict in Saudi dissident case expected October 10 A Saudi court will issue a verdict in the case of dissident Sheikh Salman al-Awda on October 10, the prominent cleric’s son said today, amid concerns he will be sentenced to death. “Today, my father, Salman al-Awda, was present in a Riyadh court,” Abdullah al-Awda tweeted. “Next Thursday (October 10) will be the sentencing hearing.” Awda was among 20 people, including writers and journalists, arrested in September 2017 as part of a crackdown on dissent in the ultra-conservative kingdom. Awda’s family and Saudi media have said prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. The charge sheet has not been made public. Human rights groups have said the trial is a political reprisal against Awda, a leading figure in a 1990s Islamist movement associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. In the past 2 weeks, at least 7 sessions in the cleric’s case were convened, according to his son. In one of the hearings, the prosecution presented “what it called evidence against (Awda), which was about 2,000 tweets posted to his Twitter account”, he added. The cleric’s family have said Saudi authorities had demanded that Awda and other prominent figures publicly back the kingdom in a dispute with neighbouring Qatar, but he refused. Riyadh and several allies cut off all diplomatic and economic ties with Doha in June 2017, accusing it of links to Islamist extremists, a charge Qatar has denied. (source: malaymail.com) INDIA: SC commutes man’s death penalty to life imprisonment 8 years after awarding sentence The Supreme Court commuted a man’s death penalty to life imprisonment more than 8 years after the apex court awarded the sentence. The man had been found guilty of killing his wife and 4 kids including 10-month-old baby in Maharashtra. The Supreme Court has now found fault in its verdict for coming to the conclusion about the severity of the offence to justify the extreme punishment and commuted his sentence to imprisonment for the entire life. (source: indiatimes.com) ** 2-year-old baby's rape and murder: India Supreme Court confirms death sentenceHe kidnapped, apparently kept on assaulting her over 4-5 hours till she breathed her last The Supreme Court on Thursday confirmed the death penalty to a man convicted of murder and rape of a 2-year-old girl. The sentence was confirmed by 2:1 majority by a three-judge bench of Justices R. F. Nariman, Surya Kant and R.Subhash Reddy. The top court was hearing convict Ravi's plea challenging a Bombay High Court order which has confirmed the death penalty after holding him guilty of murder and rape. Justices Nariman and Kant observed that the victim was barely a two-year old baby whom the convict
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----KAN., OKLA., ORE., USA
Oct. 4 KANSAS: U.S. Supreme Court to hear Kahler death sentence appealCourt schedules three Kansas cases for fall docket 3 appeals involving Kansas will be on the U.S. Supreme Court docket when the court reconvenes for its October term, with 1 case centered on a capital murder conviction and subsequent death penalty sentence delivered by a jury and judge in Osage County, Kan. On Oct. 7, the first day of this year’s term, the Court will hear the defendant’s appeal in Kansas v. James Kraig Kahler, the capital murder case arising from Osage County. In the appeal, defendant Kahler does not dispute killing his wife, the couple’s 2 daughters, and his wife’s grandmother in November 2009, but argues Kansas law unconstitutionally prevented him from asserting an insanity defense in his case. The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and death sentence, and the U.S. Supreme Court granted the defendant’s request to review that decision. The Kansas Attorney General’s Office reported it is the first time in modern Kansas history that the state has had three cases pending before the high court at one time. The attorney general’s office will represent Kansas in all three appeals as it does in all U.S. Supreme Court litigation. “The U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear only about 1 % of the cases they are asked to review each term,” said Attorney General Derek Schmidt. “It is highly unusual for a single state, especially a small state like Kansas, to have 3 cases pending before the Court simultaneously. We are working vigorously to prepare for these 3 arguments and look forward to presenting the State’s cases in the fall.” Kansas last participated in oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015, when the attorney general successfully argued that that the death sentences imposed on two capital murder defendants in Wichita and one in Great Bend did not violate the U. S. Constitution. Those cases were Kansas v. Jonathan and Reginald Carr and Kansas v. Sidney Gleason. (source: osagecountyonline.com) OKLAHOMA: More benefits planned for some Okla. death row inmatesSome of the 44 death row inmates will be moved to a unit that gives them more benefits and access to the outdoors The Oklahoma Department of Corrections plans to move some of the 44 death row inmates housed at the prison’s maximum-security H-Unit to another unit to give them more benefits and access to the outdoors. The agency’s interim Director Scott Crow says in a letter released Thursday to the American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma that he plans to move “qualifying inmates” to another unit by the end of October. Crow says the move will allow those inmates to have direct sunlight, better access to the outdoors and unrestricted conversation with other inmates. The ACLU of Oklahoma warned Crow in a July letter about numerous potential constitutional violations of the rights of death row inmates, mostly by confining them to their cells for 23 hours per day. (source: Associated Press) OREGON: Death penalty for Jeremy Christian is not an option, given Oregon’s new law, defense attorneys tell judge Defense attorneys for Jeremy Christian -- who is accused of aggravated murder for the killings of 2 strangers on a Northeast Portland MAX train -- filed court papers this week asking a judge to dismiss the death-penalty murder charges against their client. The attorneys say that, due to a new law passed by the state Legislature and that went into effect Sunday, Christian can no longer be tried for aggravated murder and therefore is no longer eligible for the death penalty if he’s found guilty. The new law, which was signed by the governor and passed into law as Senate Bill 1013, narrows the definition of aggravated murder, which is the only crime in Oregon that can draw a death sentence. In order to be convicted of that crime, a defendant must have killed two or more people as an act of organized terrorism; intentionally killed a child younger than 14 with premeditation; killed another person while locked up in jail or prison for a previous murder; or killed a police, correctional or probation officer. Under the new law, Christian’s attorneys say that prosecutors could choose to pursue him under the newly created charge of first-degree murder. That crime calls for sentences ranging from life in prison with a 30-year minimum to a “true life” prison term, meaning Christian would spend the rest of his life locked up if convicted of 1st-degree murder. Christian, 37, is currently scheduled for trial starting Jan. 21. Christian was arrested on allegations of fatally stabbing Ricky Best and Taliesin Namkai-Meche in the neck on a train as it pulled into the Hollywood MAX station on May 26, 2017. A third passenger, Micah Fletcher, was stabbed in the neck but survived. Although Christian is accused of killing two people, he no longer appears to be
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, MASS., FLA., MISS., OHIO
Oct. 4 TEXASimpending execution Next Thursday, 10 October 2019, World Day against the Death Penalty, Randy Halprin is scheduled to be executed in Texas. The Community of Sant’Egidio has published an urgent appeal on her website to stop this execution. It can be sent online to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles – and to Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Because this execution is scheduled on such a particular day I invite you to all sign this petition and ask others to do the same. Just click on the following link: http://nodeathpenalty.santegidio.org/ [nodeathpenalty.santegidio.org] Thank you ! (source: Annemarie Pieters, Community of Sant’Egidio) * Judge won’t reduce bond for Border Agent accused of killings A judge in Texas has declined to reduce the bond for a U.S. Border Patrol agent accused of killing 4 women last year who prosecutors say were sex workers. KGNS-TV says the judge in the border city of Laredo on Thursday denied the bond reduction request for Juan David Ortiz. Ortiz, who is charged with capital murder , remains in Webb County jail on $2.5 million bond. Those testifying at the hearing included Erika Pena , who told investigators she escaped from Ortiz’s truck after he pointed a gun at her. She ran to a state trooper who was refueling his vehicle and, with her help, authorities were able to find Ortiz and arrest him in September 2018. The district attorney has said he’ll seek the death penalty in the case. (source: Associated Press) * False witness: why is the US still using hypnosis to convict criminals? For decades, US law enforcement has used ‘forensic hypnosis’ to help solve crimes – yet despite growing evidence that it is junk science, this method is still being used to send people to death row. In January 2016, Charles Flores, a Texas prisoner, was moved to death watch, where inmates awaiting execution spend their final months. Seventeen years earlier, Flores had been convicted of murdering a woman in a Dallas suburb in the course of a robbery, a crime he says he did not commit. All of his appeals had been denied and his lethal injection was scheduled for 2 June. Flores’s new neighbour on death watch, who was due to die in two weeks, gave him the name of his attorney, Gregory Gardner. Gardner specialised in fighting capital punishment convictions and had helped this man take his case to the US supreme court. Flores wrote to Gardner, telling him about the troubling course his trial had taken. No physical evidence had been presented to tie him to the murder, his defence had failed him in multiple ways and, perhaps most troublingly, the only eye witness who claimed to have seen him at the scene of the crime had been hypnotised by police during questioning. Hypnosis has been used as a forensic tool by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies since the 2nd world war. Proponents argue that it allows victims and witnesses to recall traumatic events with greater clarity by detaching them from emotions that muddy the memory. In the case that led police departments across the country to begin using forensic hypnosis, a school bus driver in California, who had been abducted and buried alive with 26 students in an underground trailer, later accurately recalled most of the licence plate of his abductors while under hypnosis. (All 27 captives survived the ordeal, after they dug themselves out of the trailer with a piece of wood.) That was in 1976. In recent decades, the scientific validity of forensic hypnosis has been called into question by experts who study how memory operates, especially in police interviews and courtrooms. It is one example of a growing number of forensic practices – including the analysis of blood spatter patterns and the study of what distinguishes arson from accidental fires – that prosecutors once relied on to secure convictions, but which are now considered to be unreliable. “The breadth of scientific error in forensic disciplines is breathtaking,” Ben Wolff, an attorney for Flores, told me. After reading about Flores’s case, Gardner got in touch with a hypnosis expert named Dr Steven Lynn. As a young psychologist in the 1970s, Lynn was a “true believer” in the power of hypnosis to retrieve memories, he later testified in a hearing in Flores’s case. But when Lynn began to test this assumption, he found that in study after study, hypnosis actually harmed subjects’ recall. It led them to “recover” at least as many false memories as accurate ones, while increasing their confidence in the memories’ accuracy. “Maybe they’re having a very vivid experience during hypnosis, but that experience is not necessarily a truthful experience,” Lynn told the court. After contacting Lynn, Gardner filed an appeal before the highest criminal court in Texas. He based the appeal on a law passed in Texas three years earlier, in May 2013, known as the junk
