AUGUST 27, 2024:
PENNSYLVANIA:
Editorial: Baby Leon Katz deserves justice. Pursuing the death penalty will only delay it
There are no more emotionally gutting crimes than those that involve violence against children, especially the very smallest children. These crimes are a violation of primordial innocence, and there are almost never extenuating circ*mstances that mitigate them, let alone justify them.
And so it is right and just to feel outrage at stories like the gruesome death of 6-week-old Leon Katz in Shadyside in June, and to demand harsh justice. The death penalty, however, is never the justice that is called for.
District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr.’s announcement last week that he would seek the death penalty against alleged murderer Nicole Elizabeth Virzi may provide a glimmer of satisfaction to the victim’s family and to the public. But it will only extend the prosecutorial process possibly by decades, while achieving nothing of value except the satisfaction of vengeance. It will protect no one while costing taxpayers millions of dollars. It will not undo the horror visited upon baby Leon, but it will make the people party to another horror altogether.
No punishment is reversible, but capital punishment is uniquely permanent. For this reason, courts have instituted numerous safeguards to protect against executing the innocent. Capital trials require more expert witnesses and investigations and more complex jury selection, and include an automatic right to appeal.
These procedures stretch the conviction process into decades-long ordeal that delays justice while prolonging the trauma experienced by victims and the community. Even after appeals, post-conviction challenges delay most executions by roughly 20 years.
And in Pennsylvania, it’s all but impossible that all this expense and effort will actually result in an execution. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1978, the Commonwealth has convicted 400 people, exonerated 10, and executed only three. The cost of these efforts?
Over $1 billion.
Since 2015, governors including Josh Shapiro have refused to sign off on death warrants, halting all executions. Over 120 convicted criminals are now awaiting executions, one of the largest backlogs in the nation. Mr. Zappala’s efforts would do nothing except make Nicole Virzi the latest name added to a growing list of death-row inmates that isn’t being whittled down — except by exonerations and deaths in prison.
The details of the case of baby Leon are particularly upsetting and almost unfathomable: massive head trauma, apparently consistent only with a rag- doll-style bludgeoning, while in the care of a family friend. They make us question the goodness of the world itself.
But we don’t make the world better through vengeance. The evidence in this case doesn’t negate the proven ineffectiveness, and harm, of pursuing the death penalty. Further, no evidence has shown capital punishment is an effective deterrent to violent crime.
Baby Leon deserves justice. His family deserves justice. The court system can deliver justice, or at least a measure of it. The death penalty, however, is not justice, and pursuing it will only delay, and weaken, the measure of justice the system can provide.
(source: Editorial Board, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
SOUTH CAROLINA—-impending execution
South Carolina’s 1st execution in over a decade will likely be a Greenville County man
A Greenville man is expected to be the 1st person executed by the state since 2011.
The South Carolina Supreme issued the execution order to the South Carolina Department of Corrections for Freddie Eugene Owens, 46, late Friday. His execution has been scheduled for Sept. 20.
Shortly after the death penalty order, the state high court announced a pause in executions until resolving a request by death row inmates, including Owens, to set at least a 13-week interval between executions.
The other death row inmates listed in the motion include Richard Bernard Moore, Brad Keith Sigmon, and Mikal D. Mahdi.
According to the motion, the inmates argued that scheduling executions close to one another heightens the risk of error during the execution, likely resulting in cruel or unusual punishment. The inmates also said multiple executions in a small time period will overburden the corrections staff involved in the process, which would heighten the risk for an execution being cruel or unusual and scheduling executions at a more “frenetic pace” would result in hurried litigation and adjudication of any critical concerns that arise during the election and execution processes.
Owens’s execution date will stand despite the inmates’ request, according to the court.
In 1999, Ownes was convicted of murder, armed robbery, and criminal conspiracy in the 1997 Halloween murder of Irene Graves, 41, at a Speedway convenience store. He was sentenced to death.
Attorneys for Owens filed at least 2 appeals seeking to reduce his sentence to life in prison. Both were denied, the last in September 2006.
According to court documents, at 4 a.m. on Nov. 1, 1997, Owens and another person robbed the now-demolished convenience store on Laurens Road, with Owens shooting Graves in the head after she told them that she could not open the safe.
During the trial, prosecutors showed surveillance footage of the store. Two men were seen entering the building. Minutes later, one of the men was shown shooting Graves.
Owens maintained he was at home in bed at the time of the robbery turned murder. However, his co-defendant, Stephen Andra Golden, pled guilty before his trial started and told investigators that Owens shot Graves.
Owens was originally scheduled to be put to death on June 25, 2021, but he and other death row inmates filed a lawsuit that halted the execution.
The lawsuit contended the choices of execution, firing squad, and the electric chair went against the state constitution. Last month, the state Supreme Court deemed the choices constitutional.
Owens must decide on his method of death, lethal injection or firing squad, 14 days before execution day. If he declines to decide, he will automatically be given the electric chair. Another Greenville man, Jefferey Brian Motts, 36, was the last person the state executed in May 2011. He died by lethal injection.
Jace Woodrum, the American Civil Liberties Union executive director for South Carolina, condemned the order to execute Owens.
“The death penalty is costly in practice, arbitrary and racist in its application, and ineffective at deterring crime, Woodrum said. “We call on Governor McMaster to grant clemency to Mr. Owens before the state resumes killing in our name.”
Oklahoma, Mississippi, Idaho, and Utah, carry out firing squad executions. Five other states, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Arkansas, use the electric chair.
While incarcerated during his trial in 1999, Owens beat to death his cellmate, 28-year-old Christopher B. Lee. He admitted to investigators with the South Carolina Law Enforcment Division that he punched, kicked and choked Lee until he was sure Lee had stopped breathing. He also stabbed Lee multiple times in the face and eye with a pen.
During Owens’s confession to SLED investigators, he wrote “I really did it because I was wrongly convicted of murder.”
(source: greenvilleonline.com)
South Carolina Supreme Court to decide minimum time between executions—-The South Carolina Supreme Court won’t allow another execution until it determines a minimum amount of time between sending inmates to the death chamber
The South Carolina Supreme Court won’t allow another execution in the state until it determines a minimum amount of time between sending inmates to the death chamber.
The state’s next execution, scheduled for Sept. 20, is still on for inmate Freddie Eugene Owens. It would be the 1st execution in South Carolina in over 13 years after the court cleared the way to reopen the death chamber last month.
But as it set Owens’ execution date Friday, the court also agreed to take up a request from 4 other death row inmates who are out of appeals to require the state to wait at least 3 months between executions.
In its response, state prosecutors suggested setting the minimum at no longer than 4 weeks between executions.
Currently, the Supreme Court can set executions as close together as a week apart. That accelerated schedule would rush lawyers who are trying to represent multiple inmates on death row, a lawyer for the inmates wrote in court papers.
Prison staff who have to take extensive steps to prepare to put an inmate to death and could cause botched executions, attorney Lindsey Vann said.
Neither argument is a good reason to wait for three months, state prosecutors responded in offering up to a 4-week delay.
“The Department of Corrections staff stands ready to accomplish their duty as required by our law with professionalism and dignity,” Senior Deputy Attorney General Melody Brown wrote in a response drafted after speaking to prison officials.
It is not immediately known when the justices will rule.
South Carolina has held executions in rapid succession before. 2 half brothers were put to death in 1 night in December 1998. Another execution followed on each of the next 2 Fridays that month, with 2 more in January 1999.
Owens, 46, has until the end of next week to decide whether he wants to die by lethal injection, electrocution or the firing squad. His lawyers said he is waiting for prison officials to submit a sworn statement this week about the purity, potency and quality of the lethal injection drug under the terms of a new state law limiting how much information about execution procedures is released, and to see if it satisfies both the state and federal courts.
South Carolina’s last execution was in 2011. Since then, the 3 drugs the state used to kill inmates expired and prison officials could not obtain any more.
To restart executions, lawmakers changed the lethal injection protocol to use only 1 drug and added the firing squad.
“Executions scheduled close in time would yield a high risk of error because it has been a significant time since the last execution, one method is antiquated, and the other two are untested,” Vann said.
The inmates’ motion includes interviews in news articles in which a variety of prison employees spoke about how difficult it is to perform executions or to work closely with condemned inmates.
The South Carolina inmates are asking for 13 weeks between executions, citing problems Oklahoma encountered when it tried to accelerate the pace of executions there, leading to problems with carrying out death sentences. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in January 2023 that holding an execution each month was burdening prison staff.
State prosecutors wrote that Oklahoma’s death penalty laws are different and can’t be compared to South Carolina’s execution procedures.
Owens was convicted of the 1997 killing of a Greenville clerk in a convenience store robbery.
The other South Carolina inmates who are out of appeals are:
— Richard Moore, 59, convicted of killing a convenience store clerk in Spartanburg in 1999.
— Brad Sigmon, 66, convicted of beating to death his estranged girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat in Greenville County in 2001.
— Marion Bowman, 44, convicted of killing an Orangeburg woman and setting her body on fire because she owed him money in 2001.
— Mikal Mahdi, 41, convicted of shooting an off-duty police officer at his home in Calhoun County and setting his body on fire in 2004.
South Carolina currently has 32 inmates on its death row.
(source: ABC News)
South Carolina Supreme Court Sets 1st Execution Date in More Than 13 Years
Upcoming Executions Lethal Injection South Carolina
On August 23, 2024, the South Carolina Department of Corrections announced that the state supreme court has set a September 20, 2024, execution date for Freddie Owens, which would be the 1st execution in South Carolina since 2011. Mr. Owens was convicted and sentenced to death in 1999 for the killing of a convenience store clerk in Greenville, South Carolina and he was later convicted in the murder of a cellmate. In a July 31struling, the South Carolina Supreme Court decided that the state’s 3 execution methods—lethal injection, firing squad, and electrocution—were valid methods of execution that are not considered “cruel, corporal, or unusual punishment.” Consequently, Mr. Owens will be forced to choose which method will be used for his execution.
The director of SCDOC will have 5 days to determine that all three methods of execution are available and must provide Mr. Owens’ attorneys with proof that the lethal injection drugs in SCDOC’s possession are stable and mixed properly. This is a requirement that comes from the state supreme court’s interpretation of a secrecy law passed in 2023. Mr. Owens will then have just a week to choose a method of execution. If he does not decide, he will be executed by the electric chair. John Blume, an attorney for Mr. Owens, told theAssociated Press that the defense team is waiting for prison officials to submit sworn statements about the purity and potency of the lethal injection drugs in their possession. Mr. Blume said that “the lack of transparency about the source of the execution drugs, how they were obtained and whether (they) can bring about as painless a death as possible is still of grave concern to the lawyers that represent persons on death row.”
In early 2023, South Carolina passed legislation shielding the identities of drug manufacturers and execution team members from the general public. In September 2023, Governor Henry McMaster announced that the state had procured pentobarbital and were “now prepared” to carry out lethal injection executions. According SCDOC officials, the department made more than 1,300 contacts in efforts to secure these drugs. In previous lethal injection executions, South Carolina used a 3-drug protocol, but with the acquisition of pentobarbital, will now have a 1-drug protocol. South Carolina, like many other states, had been unable to purchase the drugs needed to carry out lethal injection executions since their supply expired in 2013. In efforts to bring back capital punishment, in 2021, the state legislature passed legislation that authorized the firing squad as a method of execution.
Mr. Owens also has the opportunity to ask Governor McMaster for clemency and a commutation of his sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Since 1976, no South Carolina governors have granted clemency to individuals facing execution.
(source: Death Penalty Information Center)
FLORIDA—-impending execution
A Florida man set to be executed this week appeals to the US Supreme Court for a stay
A Florida man scheduled to be put to death on Thursday is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to delay his execution so that his challenge to Florida’s lethal injection procedures can be heard.
Loran Cole, 57, is slated to be executed at 6 p.m. on Thursday at the Florida State Prison after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant in July. Cole was convicted of kidnapping adult siblings camping in the Ocala National Forest in 1994, raping the sister and murdering the brother.
On Monday, Cole appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the execution, arguing that his challenge of the state’s lethal injection procedures deserves to be heard. Cole has argued the administration of Florida’s drug co*cktail will “very likely cause him needless pain and suffering” due to symptoms caused by his Parkinson’s disease.
“Cole’s Parkinson’s symptoms will make it impossible for Florida to safely and humanely carry out his execution because his involuntary body movements will affect the placement of the intravenous lines necessary to carry out an execution by lethal injection,” his attorneys argued in court filings.
Many of Florida’s death penalty procedures are exempt from public records. Botched executions in other states have brought increased scrutiny of the death penalty and the secrecy around it, as officials struggle to secure the necessary drug co*cktails and staff capable of administering them.
In their filings, Cole’s attorneys note that other death row inmates were granted similar hearings to consider how their medical conditions could affect their executions. Cole’s legal team claims that denying him a hearing violates his 14th Amendment rights to due process and equal protection.
On Aug. 23, the Florida Supreme Court denied an appeal from Cole, who has also argued his execution should be blocked because he suffered abuse at a state-run reform school where for decades boys were beaten, raped and killed.
(source: Associated Press)
Push grows to spare convicted killer once confined to troubled Dozier School
Death penalty opponents stepped up their calls for Gov. Ron DeSantis to halt Thursday’s scheduled execution of convicted killer Loran Cole, citing his months of confinement at a notorious Florida reform school in the 1980s.
Petitions bearing signatures from more than 7,000 people were dropped off Monday at the Governor’s Office in the state Capitol as part of an effort to get DeSantis to commute Cole’s death sentence to life in prison.
Cole, now 57, was sentenced to death in 1995 for the murder of John Edwards, an 18-year-old Florida State University student. He was also convicted of robbing, raping and kidnapping Edwards’ sister who, with her brother, was camping in the Ocala National Forest.
Cole’s execution would be Florida’s 1st in 10 months. DeSantis ordered 6 executions carried out in 2023, the most in the state in almost a decade. Those 6 executions also occurred during the time the governor was unsuccessfully seeking the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.
His leading rival, eventual GOP nominee Donald Trump, had during his term as president conducted the most federal executions of civilian inmates since President Grover Cleveland in 1896.
Dozier School history, central to plea
But Cole’s time at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna figures in the push to have him taken off death row. According to an appeal rejected last week by the state Supreme Court, Cole was brutalized there by guards, which he says potentially contributed to his murderous behavior.
DeSantis in June signed legislation making $20 million available to victims of abuse at Dozier and another state reform school in Okeechobee between 1940 and 1975. Cole was at Dozier as a 17-year-old in 1984, when court documents say he was raped by a guard, beaten twice weekly and had both legs broken after trying to escape.
Executions climb in ’23 because of Fla.:Executions climb across U.S. because of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, report shows
“I have to wonder what kind of advice DeSantis is getting, signing a compensation bill for Dozier survivors, then turning around and signing a death warrant for one of them,” said Abe Bonowitz, executive director and co-founder of Death Penalty Action, who has fought against capital punishment for more than 30 years in Florida and nationwide.
Bonowitz said advocates believe at least three other former Dozier School students are on Florida’s death row.
“The state of Florida is complicit in the murders they committed, and now it wants to kill some and compensate others. Incredible,” Bonowitz said.
DeSantis’ office didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment on the pitch from death penalty opponents.
Supreme Court rejects appeal
Attorneys for Cole had argued before state justices that his lawyer in 1995 failed to present the Dozier school history as possible grounds for avoiding the death penalty. But justices, in rejecting his latest claim, said Dozier has been raised and rejected in Cole’s post-conviction appeals.
“At its core, Cole’s latest argument related to his time at the Dozier school is only another variation of his claims that were raised and rejected in his first and second successive motions for post-conviction relief,” the court unanimously agreed.
Among the groups urging DeSantis to commute Cole’s death sentence to life are Bonowitz’s organization, as well as Witness to Innocence, the Catholic Mobilizing Network and Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a letter earlier this month urging DeSantis not to execute Cole.
“Never having received mental health and trauma treatment until his arrival on death row in his late 20s, Mr. Cole, at age 57, is not the same person who committed the grave crimes for which he was convicted,” Michael Sheedy, executive director of the Florida Conference, wrote in the letter to DeSantis.
(source: tallahassee.com)
Jury selection beings in the resentencing of man who killed St. Lucie County deputy
In 2016, Eriese Tisdale was sentenced to death for the 2013 murder of St. Lucie County Sgt. Gary Morales during a traffic stop. Now, due to a change in Florida law, that sentencing process has started again at the St. Lucie County Courthouse.
The resentencing is a result of recent legislation signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023, which reduced the number of jurors required to recommend the death penalty. This legal change has brought the Morales family back to court.
Before jury selection began, Tisdale addressed the judge and Morales’ family, pleading for his life.
“We are getting ready to begin a process that is very tough, it is going to be very traumatic,” Tisdale said. “I would just ask the court, the state attorney to find some kind of way. Or even the family to find some kind of way. We could just end all of this if you give me a life sentence.”
Attorneys expect jury selection to last several days.
(source: WPBF news)
Wade Wilson is 1st Florida Killer to Face Death Since DeSantis Law Change
Wade Wilson, the Florida man who could be sentenced to death on Tuesday, is the 1st convicted killer in the state to face death after Gov. Ron DeSantis’ controversial law change.
DeSantis signed a law in April 2023 reducing the requirement for jurors to recommend a death sentence from a unanimous decision to an 8-4 vote in favor. Experts argue that this change has turned capital resentencing and trials into a “quintessential game of chance” for those facing the death penalty.
Wilson, 30, killed Kristine Meton and Diane Ruiz within hours of each other in October 2019.
Wilson met Melton at a live-music bar and went home with her on October 6, 2019. The next day, he strangled her to death at her home in Cape Coral, where her body was discovered.
He took her car and was driving when he saw Ruiz walking down the street. She got into the car after he asked her for directions. Wilson strangled her then ran over her repeatedly with the car.
In June, 9 of the 12 jurors recommended the death penalty for the murder of Melton and 10 recommended death for the murder of Ruiz.
Florida allows inmates to choose whether they will be executed by electrocution or lethal injection.
Convicts on death row in Florida have the right to an appeal process, which includes direct appeals and post-conviction relief motions.
This process can be lengthy and involves thorough review by higher courts to ensure that the trial was fair and that all legal standards were met.
Wilson will learn his fate Tuesday afternoon. Prior to the sentencing hearing, Wilson will have a Spencer hearing in which he can address the judge if he chooses.
Death Penalty For Child Sex Crime Offenders
DeSantis also signed legislation in May 2023 that expands death penalty eligibility to those convicted of sex crimes against children.
At the time, he stated that the law could pose a challenge to a 2008 US Supreme Court ruling that declared capital punishment unconstitutional for child sexual battery cases. DeSantis is seeking to have the court reconsider that decision.
“This bill sets up a procedure to be able to challenge that precedent and to be able to say that in Florida we think that the worst of the worst crimes deserve the worst of the worst punishment,” DeSantis said.
In December, State Attorney William Gladson announced they are seeking the death penalty for Joseph Giampa, 36, the Florida man who was convicted of forcing a girl under the age of 12 to engage in sexual acts.
DeSantis addressed the indictment on X, writing, “[Fifth Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office] has my full support.”
Giampa was ultimately sentenced to life in prison in February.
2 Death Sentences In One Lifetime
For a 2nd time in his life, a jury decided last week that Pinkney “Chip” Carter of Jacksonville should be put to death.
In 2002, the now 70-year-old murdered his ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Reed, her 16-year-old daughter, Courtney Smith, and Reed’s new boyfriend, Glen Pafford. Carter was resentenced due to the death penalty law change, but ultimately got the same result.
Carter has another sentencing hearing set for mid-October when the judge will decide his fate.
(source: newsweek.com)
MISSOURI—-impending execution
Gov. Parson open to discussing clemency of Marcellus Williams
Missouri Governor Mike Parson is open to discussing clemency with Marcellus Williams and his lawyers as his execution date gets closer depending on how the hearing in the case goes this Wednesday, his office told First Alert 4 on Monday.
Last week, prosecutors agreed to accept an Alford plea of guilty to a charge of 1st-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of Felicia Gayle, 42, on Aug. 11, 1998. Prosecutors said the agreement took the death penalty off the table. Williams is set to be executed on Sept. 24.
Williams, his lawyers and the family of Gayle all agreed to take the death penalty off the table and for Williams to serve life in prison.
After the court accepted the agreement, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office argued that the circuit court does not have the authority to overturn his conviction or resentence him. They filed a request with the Missouri Supreme Court asking the Alford plea to be vacated and the circuit court be prohibited from taking further action in the case.
Hours later, the Missouri Supreme Court sided with Bailey, stating that St. Louis County Judge Bruce Hilton must hold a hearing first or explain why he isn’t before accepting the Alford plea. Judge Hilton bypassed that step in the procedure by accepting the consent judgment.
On Thursday, Judge Hilton said he would vacate his consent judgment from the previous day, throwing out the Alford plea that was agreed upon, and move forward with a hearing initially scheduled for Aug. 28 at 8:30 a.m. as the Missouri Supreme Court suggested.
Monday morning, a spokesperson for Parson’s office told First Alert 4 the governor isn’t leaning one way or another right now.
(source: KMOC news)
Missouri Execution of Marcellus Williams on September 24, 2024, In Question
Marcellus S. Williams is scheduled to be executed at 6 pm local time, on Tuesday, September 24, 2024, at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Corrections Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri. 55-year-old Marcellus is convicted of murdering Felicia “Lisha” Gayle on August 11, 1998, in University City, Missouri, while robbing her home. Marcellus has spent the last 23 years on Missouri’s death row.
As a child, Marcellus alleges he was physically and sexually abused by family members. He also says his family encouraged him into criminal behavior and exposed him to guns, drugs, and alcohol at a young age. Marcellus later became addicted to drugs and alcohol. His family was impoverished and dysfunctional. Marcellus had a lengthy criminal record, including 16 convictions for robbery, burglary, assault, and unlawful use of a weapon, among others. According to his family, Marcellus was a loving and supportive father to his son and step-daughter.
On August 11, 1998, Marcellus Williams took a bus to University City, Missouri, and began looking for places to burglarize. Williams noticed the home of Lisha Gayle. He knocked on the door. After receiving no answer, Williams broke in. He heard water running from the bathroom. Williams grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen and waited for Lisha to exit the bathroom.
Williams stabbed and cut Lisha 43 times. 7 of the wounds were fatal. After killing Lisha, Williams washed his hands and put on his jacket to hide the bloodstains. He also took Lisha’s purse and her husband’s laptop computer. Williams then took the bus to return home.
Williams’ girlfriend discovered the stolen items and confronted him about them. Williams confessed to her what he had done, but she did not go to the police, as Williams threatened her life, her children’s lives, and her mother’s life.
Williams was arrested on unrelated charges on August 31, 1998. During his incarceration, Williams told his cell-mate about the murder after they saw a news report about it. Williams told his cell-mate considerable details of the crime. The cell-mate then went to the police in June 1999, after his release. He provided previoulsy unreported details of the crime, prompting further police investigation. Police contacted Williams’ girlfriend, who told police what Williams had told her. Police discovered several items belonging to Lisha after they searched Williams’ vehicle. Williams was tried and convicted of Lisha’s murder.
Williams has always insisted that he is innocent of the crime. Recently, it was revealed that prosecutors described the 2 witnesses who testified against Williams as “unreliable.” Additionally, DNA tests on the murder weapon have been inconclusive and indicate that it was improperly handled and contaminated.
Williams and his attorney have been seeking to halt his execution, in part due to the new evidence. An agreement had been reached in which Williams can continue to claim innocence but will forgo a new trial and receive a new sentence of life in prison. However, this deal was halted by the Missouri Supreme Court, which claimed that the judge overseeing the agreement overstepped his authority by approving it.
Please pray for peace and healing for the family of Lisha Gayle. Please pray for strength for the family of Marcellus Williams. Please pray that if Marcellus is innocent, lacks the competency to be executed, or should not be executed for any other reason, that evidence will be revealed before the execution. Please pray that Marcellus will find peace through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
(source: theforgivenessfoundation.org)
KANSAS:
The weight of the wait 30 years after Kansas death penalty law—-Kansas has long had an ambivalent relationship with capital punishment. 3 decades after the state passed its current death penalty law, its new execution chamber remains unused. So much has changed since 1994, in fact, that the state might soon be forced to choose yet again how justice should be refashioned.
On the day after Valentine’s Day, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach went to the Capitol and made a surprising announcement to the media: Nearly 60 years after the state carried out its last execution – and almost exactly 30 years after its current death penalty law went into effect – Kansas might soon be ready to once again put a convicted murderer to death.
“It’s possible,” he told reporters, “that one of the cases could be ready as early as nine months from now.”
There were several families on hand for Kobach’s news conference, relatives of people murdered by the 9 men who now sit in Kansas prisons awaiting execution. (2 others convicted of capital murder, Kobach said, had died in prison while their appeals were ongoing. They “escaped justice,” he said.) All of the families have been waiting for years. Some of them for decades.
They are ready for the wait to end.
“My issue is this all happened to us 17 years ago to my daughter,” said Brian Sanderholm, whose daughter, Jodi Sanderholm, was killed in 2007. Justin Thurber, the man convicted of capital murder in her death, received his death sentence in 2009.
Brian Sanderholm and Jennifer Aldridge, the father and sister of Jodi Sanderholm, who was murdered in 2007, told reporters at a news conference in February at the Kansas Capitol that solace will never be theirs until Justin Thurber, the killer sentenced to die in 2009, is put to death.
“It’s just cruel and unusual punishment, the way I see what we’re going through, because it’s been 17 years,” Sanderholm said that day. “Every day when I go uptown to dinner, to eat or anything, to see anybody in the public – and I am in the public’s eye quite a bit – somebody’s talking about it. Somebody brings it up. Something happens that Jodi’s name and her issue comes up again.
“We have to live through it every day,” he told the assembled reporters. “There is no closure for us, and we need your help getting us closure. So please help us.”
Whether that closure is coming soon, though, is an open question. After Kobach’s news conference, Mark Manna – who leads the Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit – sounded skeptical that a Kansas execution might come within the year.
“I think that’s highly unlikely,” Manna said, ticking off the appellate status of several cases. But, he acknowledged, some of those cases were entering their final stages. “So it’s possible in the next handful of years there could be a client ready for execution.”
It’s not unusual that Kansas has taken so long to conduct an execution under the law passed in 1994. Capital cases nationwide often take at least a decade or more to resolve, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonpartisan outlet critical of how the penalty is applied.“More than half of all prisoners currently sentenced to death in the U.S. have been on death row for more than 18 years,” the center says on its website.
The process can take a toll on participants. Prosecutors say they warn the families of victims that capital cases take a very long time to resolve.
“For a case that starts this year, I don’t know what to tell you family members about how long this process will work,” said Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett at the press conference, “but I’m probably buying your grandchildren the misery of seeing this through.”
The history
As a state, Kansas has always had an ambivalent relationship with capital punishment. It had a death penalty law on the books from 1861 to 1907, but governors mostly refused to sign off on executions during that time. (There were several executions under military and federal law during that era, however.)
“Personally I have always been opposed to capital punishment,” Gov. Edward Hoch wrote in 1906, “and as a student of the subject have long since become convinced that it is not a deterrent of crime, but a promoter of it.”
The death penalty law was repealed the next year, then restored decades later, in 1935. But the law was used infrequently. 15 men were executed between 1944 and 1965. The last 2 — James Douglas Latham and George Ronald York – were Army deserters who in 1961 killed 7 people in 5 states, including 62-year-old Otto Ziegler of Oakley. (Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, the infamous “In Cold Blood” killers, had been executed 2 months earlier.)
“There is nothing to say but that I am going home to heaven,” York said, moments before he was hanged at Lansing.
7 years elapsed between that execution and the Supreme Court’s 1972 decision declaring the death penalty unconstitutional in all 50 states. The court restored the penalty – under limited circ*mstances – in 1976. But it took nearly 2 decades after that for Kansas to pass its new death penalty law.
It wasn’t for lack of trying. Gov. John Carlin vetoed bills in 1979, 1980, 1981 and 1985. “We must find other means of deterring murderers, punishing them and seeking retribution from them,” he wrote in 1985. “I am confident we can do that.”
There were more failed attempts during Gov. Mike Hayden’s term in the late 1980s, despite his advocacy for a bill. The process that resulted in the enactment of the 1994 law was yet another reflection of political ambivalence: Gov. Joan Finney let it go into effect without her signature.
“I am personally opposed to the death penalty,” she wrote to the Legislature on April 22, 1994, “but believe that a majority of Kansans support it as a matter of public policy.”
And then the wait began.
Why so long?
So why does the death penalty process take so long?
Prosecutors don’t necessarily jump into charging a defendant with capital murder. Kansas law allows the charges in a specific set of cases – “intentional and premeditated” murders generally, murders for hire, killings committed in connection with kidnapping or rape, and the killing of law enforcement officers all count. So do killings involving multiple victims or victims under the age of 14.
That might seem fairly straightforward. It’s not.
The kind of case that gets prosecuted for capital murder “shocks the senses,” says Kansas Deputy Attorney General Vic Braden, one of the state’s most experienced death penalty prosecutors. Those defendants include Jonathan and Reginald Carr, convicted of killing four people in Sedgwick County in 2000; and John Edward Robinson, an Olathe man convicted of killing eight women starting in the late 1980s.
Even in the face of such horrors, determining whether to prosecute a homicide as a death penalty case “is not a decision to take lightly,” Braden says. The decision to bring capital murder charges “typically … takes at least a year to get to that point, sometimes a year and a half, 2 years.”
That’s just the beginning. “When I talk to the victim’s family, if we decide to go with the death penalty, I tell them, ‘It’s going to be at least 3 years from when the crime is charged before we get to a jury trial,’” Braden says.
Part of the reason is that a death penalty trial in Kansas is really 2 trials: There’s the 1st phase – determining whether a defendant is guilty – that happens in all trials. The 2nd phase determines whether the death penalty will be applied.
That 2nd phase looks a lot different from other court proceedings. Prosecutors must make the case that the murder was done in an especially “heinous, atrocious or cruel manner.” For the defense, it’s a chance to appeal to the jurors’ sense of mercy – a focus not just on the crime and the victim, but on reasons why a defendant might deserve life in prison rather than execution.
It requires intense preparation, on both sides.
Manna, who has served in the death penalty defense unit for 25 years and as its chief for the last decade, runs down a list of things that lawyers may want to get before jurors: The defendant’s background. How he or she got to this point. Why the crime occurred. The effect an execution would have within the defendant’s circle of family and friends.
“Is there some reason that a juror may feel that a life sentence is warranted? And that can be any reason – that can be mercy.”
At this stage of the process, though, defense teams are working uphill. To serve on a capital murder case, jurors must be “death qualified” – willing to impose the death penalty if they determine it’s merited. Jurors can’t serve if they’re unwilling or opposed to capital punishment.
“Most people who would tell you that they’re willing to impose a death sentence on an individual tend to be pro-law and order prosecution. Very conservative,” says Manna. “So going into the 1st stage, the guilt stage, you’re going to be dealing with a jury that’s already kind of leaning toward the state, the prosecution. They’re not going to be as open-minded about defenses.”
Braden is less convinced that prosecutors have an advantage with death-qualified juries.“Jurors have to say that – they may lean one way or the other – but they’re willing to listen to the evidence, listen to instructions and come to a verdict of both the guilt and the penalty phase,” he says, and adds: “The ones that really are willing to do that, they’re not heavily toward the defense, the death or no death. They’re somewhere in the middle. I think it works.”
All this takes a lot more resources, on both sides, than the typical murder trial.
“It is very expensive, it is very time consuming and it takes a long time,” Manna says.
Braden will consult with a wider range of prosecutors than in most cases, and is more likely to bring in expert witnesses. Manna, meanwhile, follows guidelines from the American Bar Association, which mandate that a defense team have at least 2 attorneys, an investigator and a “mitigation specialist” to focus on the information presented in the penalty phase.
“In a regular murder case, there may only be one defense attorney, there may be a second chair,” or assistant defender, Manna says, “but in a death penalty case, there’s a whole team.”
Then come the appeals
It can take years simply to get a conviction and death sentence. The appeals usually last much longer. The first step: The Kansas Supreme Court, where all capital murder convictions are automatically reviewed.
The case of Gary Kleypas shows how that process can be a long and winding road.
Kleypas was 40 years old – and on parole for a 1977 murder in Missouri – when he was arrested in 1996 for the rape and murder of Carrie Williams, a Pittsburg State University student. The next year he became the 1st defendant convicted of capital murder under Kansas’ then-new law.
The state Supreme Court overturned Kleypas’ sentence in 2001, then overturned the state’s death penalty law entirely in 2004. That was in the case of Michael Marsh, who had been convicted in Sedgwick County of the 1st-degree murder of Marry Ane Pusch and capital murder in the death of her 19-month-old daughter, Marry Elizabeth.
The U.S. Supreme Court restored Kansas’ death penalty law in 2006, and Kleypas was resentenced to death in 2008. The Kansas Supreme Court upheld that sentence in 2016. In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal in the more recent sentencing. (Marsh was later resentenced as well, to life in prison.)
Kleypas’ defense team does not argue his innocence. “We’re not arguing my client is exempt from criminal responsibility,” one attorney said during a 2015 hearing. “He’s guilty.”
Instead, Kleypas’ original sentence was overturned on grounds that jurors who recommended he be given the death penalty had been given insufficient information on how to weigh aggravating and mitigating factors in the crime. When appealing the 2nd sentencing, his attorneys argued that jurors had been prejudiced when Larry Williams – Carrie’s father – lunged at Kleypas during a hearing.
“I have zero thought that he will be put to death,” Larry Williams told The Wichita Eagle in 2017. “I just don’t think it’s going to happen.”
Williams died 2 years later. Kleypas turns 70 next year.
Some appeals hinge on errors that might have been made at trial. Other cases take aim at the validity of the death penalty itself. In 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Kansas challenged the capital murder charges leveled at Kyle Young, accused of a 2020 double murder in Wichita. The ACLU claimed that the death-qualification process produced “white-washed and biased capital juries” that are “uniquely discriminatory” against defendants.
The ACLU “found that (the) race of victim really drives the decisions about when the death penalty is handed down and when it is not,” says Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. “The death penalty is far, far more likely if there’s a female white victim in the case.”
Young pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder charges in October, rendering the ACLU’s challenge moot. The hope, Stubbs says, is “that the evidence that we developed will be used in other cases.”
Which means more challenges are likely.
Table containing the names, birth dates and date of conviction of Kansas death penalty inmates see:https://klcjournal.com/the-weight-of-the-wait-30-years-after-kansas-death-penalty-law/
The future
In 2001, state officials led reporters on a tour of the lethal-injection chamber they had built at the Lansing Correctional Facility, which remains unused. All but one of the capital murder defendants are held at the El Dorado Correctional Facility — more than 2 hours away – to separate the staff who work with inmates on a day-to-day basis from those who might be responsible for implementing the penalty.
“An execution is something that has a certain amount of impact on all of the staff who participate,” then-Kansas Corrections Secretary Chuck Simmons told The Topeka Capital-Journal in 2001.
When Kansas’ 1994 death penalty law was passed, lethal injection – currently the only method of execution allowed under the law – was seen as a humane alternative to firing squads, hanging, the gas chamber or the electric chair. In recent years, though, that method has been challenged by critics as itself cruel and unusual. States that do carry out the death penalty have found it increasingly difficult to obtain the necessary drugs: Many pharmaceutical companies will no longer furnish the chemicals to prison systems.
That’s why Kobach in February asked the Legislature to add another form of execution to the state’s options: hypoxia. Prisoners would be deprived of oxygen until they died.
“In a way, we are lying to the people of Kansas if we say that we have the death penalty, but we actually can’t carry out an execution,” Kobach told reporters. When their 2024 regular session adjourned on May 1, however, legislators had taken no action on his request.
Even if hypoxia did become law, though, more court challenges and delays would be likely. Alabama conducted a hypoxia execution using nitrogen gas in January. Some witnesses said the condemned inmate “shook and convulsed” during the execution, making the method a poor candidate for humane death — and a target for a fresh round of lawsuits.
“I thought that given the bad P.R. that it (hypoxia) got, that it just seemed like, why now?” Manna says of Kobach’s proposal. “Why introduce this literally just weeks after this execution that was so controversial?”
Even if the Legislature were to follow Kobach’s lead, however, Gov. Laura Kelly might not.
“Governor Kelly has long supported repealing the death penalty, both as a state senator and on the campaign trail, because it is impractical, expensive and inhumane,” says spokesperson Grace Hoge. The state, she says, spends an “excessive amount of money” on death-penalty related cases, with little deterrent effect. (There were 170 reported homicides in Kansas in 1994; that number was 168 in 2022.)
In the meantime, the system grinds on. The most recent person sentenced to death in Kansas was Kyle Flack, convicted in 2016 of killing three adults and a toddler in Franklin County. (The Kansas Supreme Court rejected his appeal in January.) Those now facing capital murder charges include Michael Cherry, a Topeka man accused of killing 5-year-old Zoey Felix; and Donald Ray Jackson, a Leavenworth man accused of killing his 2 sons in 2020.
Manna continues his work, but hopes the death penalty will one day be repealed. A life sentence, he says, is always appropriate.
“I think it’s more appropriate than a death sentence. I think life sentences ensure the protection of the community at large, and I think then we avoid all the baggage that comes with, well, What if the person turns out to be innocent?” he says.
Braden, meanwhile, is headed to retirement in the coming months. He says it’s time for Kansas to update its never-used death penalty law, to be ready for the moment – coming sooner than later in his opinion – when one of the nine condemned men runs out of appeals.
“If we don’t want the death penalty, then the Legislature needs to have the courage to abolish it. But it’s on the books,” Braden says. Without the ability to carry out the one form of execution authorized under the law – lethal injection – the state remains “in a no-man’s-land, and we shouldn’t be. We should either get rid of it or fix it.”
Until then, the families of the victims wait. At that February news conference, Jennifer Aldridge – Jodi Sanderholm’s sister – made it clear that she is ready for some finality.
“The day that he was sentenced was not the end for us,” she said. “It was honestly just the beginning. We are still dealing with him, going to court with him, seeing his face, hearing his name.”
It’s not about revenge, Aldridge said, but justice.
“I don’t have hate in my heart anymore toward my sister’s killer,” she said. “I do want to witness his execution.”
(source: klcjournal.com)
ARIZONA:
Former prosecutors align with Mayes’ in death penalty dispute
Attorney General Kris Mayes has picked up some allies in her fight with Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell over who gets to seek to execute Aaron Gunches.
In a new legal filing, former Attorney General Terry Goddard joined with 2 former county attorneys, Republican Rick Romley of Maricopa County and Barbara LaWall of Pima County, to urge the Supreme Court to reject Mitchell’s bid to seek a warrant of execution. They said the history of the death penalty of the state and associated legislation makes clear why the Attorney General’s Office is in charge.
And attorney Andrew Stone, who filed the friend of the court brief, said his clients believe that Mitchell’s position is “bad public policy and unworkable.”
Hanging in the balance is the life of Aaron Gunches who pleaded guilty to 1st-degree murder and kidnapping in the 2002 death of Ted Price, his girlfriend’s ex husband.
A warrant for execution had been issued in 2022 at the request of then-Attorney General Mark Brnovich. But that warrant, which had a fixed time limit, expired before the execution was carried out.
Mayes, newly elected in 2023, declined for the moment to seek a new one.
The attorney general said she is waiting on a report by a special Death Penalty Commission named by Gov. Katie Hobbs, also newly elected. She said the process has remained plagued by questions.
“Recent executions have been embroiled in controversy,” the governor said. There were reports that prison employees had repeated problems in placing the intravenous line into the veins of the condemned men.
“The death penalty is a controversial issue to begin with,” Hobbs continued. “We just want to make sure the practices are sound and that we don’t end up with botched executions like we’ve seen recently.”
That report is not expected to be ready before the end of the year.
But Mitchell insists that she has concurrent authority to ask the high court, in the name of “the state,” to set a date for Gunches’ execution, prompting the brief by Goddard, Romley and LaWall.
Setting such a precedent, the three former elected officials are telling the justices, is a bad idea.
“The Maricopa County Attorney believes that just because her office represents the state in some proceedings, it therefore has the authority to represent the state in any proceeding it chooses,” their legal brief argues.
It starts, they say, with state laws which spell out that the attorney general is the “chief legal officer” who shall “prosecute and defend in the supreme court all proceedings in which this state is a party.”
By contrast, they say, the state’s 15 county attorneys can represent the state and “conduct all prosecutions for public offenses, but only within their respective counties.” And the trio contend this has never been understood to extend to seeking execution warrants.
There’s a more practical issue.
Consider, they said, what would happen if any prosecutor argued he or she has the authority to speak for “the state” in any prosecution.
“This would require courts to resolve internal disputes among the various prosecutors’ offices who claimed to be representing ‘the state’ before ever turning their attention to the actual issues of the state,” Stone wrote for the former prosecutors.
“Arizona courts are sufficiently busy without forcing judges to determine conflicting arguments from the same party,” the prosecutors argued. “The Maricopa County Attorney’s request would do little more than sow confusion among an otherwise well-understood and agreed-upon procedure.”
And there’s something else: Seeking a warrant of execution is more complex than simply filing a piece of paper with the Supreme Court.
“There are dozens of motions that are filed after this court grants the state’s request to set a briefing schedule for a warrant of execution,” they noted. And they pointed out that the Attorney General’s Office has been specially funded by the Legislature to handle post-conviction proceedings.
“To permit a prosecutor’s office to seek an execution warrant but not follow through with the ensuing litigation would be no different than allowing one prosecutor’s office to indict a dozen defendants in a complex fraud matter, but then force another office to handle all the subsequent work,” the brief states.
“The indictment, like a motion seeking an execution warrant is the easy part,” it continued. “Securing a conviction and navigating the attendant capital-case appellate issues are much more difficult.”
Mitchell declined to be interviewed on the filing. Instead, she filed her own legal brief saying all it does is repeat Mayes’ “unsupported and unsupportable legal conclusions” about her authority.
It starts with the stated reason for the delay: that “independent death penalty review.” Mitchell said that is irrelevant to the current case, saying there is no dispute that the legal requirements have been met to issue a warrant of execution, just as they were when Brnovich obtained the 1st warrant.
And Mitchell also says the bid to block her from proceeding ignores the constitutional and statutory rights of victims.
These include ensuring “a prompt and final conclusion of the case after the conviction and sentence.” And Mitchell has said that Karen Price, who was Ted’s sister and his daughter Brittney Kay, have asserted those rights and have asked for her help in enforcing them, something she said state law requires her to do.
Finally, Mitchell said while the attorney general may have some “supervisory authority” over county attorneys, that does not extend to her “legally supported attempt to exercise absolute control.”
The view that Mitchell is exceeding her authority extends to several current sitting county attorneys.
Coconino County Attorney William Ring said he’s not familiar with the process as his county hasn’t sought a death penalty in years. And the Democrat said he sees no need to pursue concurrent jurisdiction with the attorney general in initiating an execution warrant.
“Concurrent jurisdiction to seek an execution warrant only invites a race to the death chamber,” he said. “That would be confusing to the victim representatives and embarrassing to the state.”
Pima County Attorney Laura Conover, also a Democrat, has a more basic problem with the whole issue and the inconsistencies in Mitchell seeking to “speak for the state” on the issue, especially in contradiction with the attorney general.
“We have a Maricopa death penalty, not an Arizona death penalty, because the rest of the state can’t afford or won’t tolerate it,” she said. “The quickest and most efficient way to avoid the inconsistency is for Arizona to stop tinkering with the machinery of death, statewide.”
Several Republican county attorneys contacted by Capitol Media Services declined to comment on the issue of whether Mitchell has authority to seek a warrant of execution.
Mayes has never said she will refuse to ever seek execution warrants even after the report of the death penalty commissioner is released. But, like Conover, she has said there is an issue of whether where someone commits a crime affects a sentence.
“In particular, I’m interested in knowing whether there are disparities between counties in Arizona in terms of which receives the death penalty,” she said when the moratorium was first announced.
“It is beginning to look like the death penalty is only being sought in Maricopa County because Maricopa County can afford it,” the attorney general explained, what with the huge price tag on prosecutors and defense counsel devoting years, and sometimes decades, of their time to just a handful of cases. “We need to understand that better before we go forward.”
The statistics show that about 60 % of Arizonans live in the state’s largest county, versus close to 73 % of death row inmates sentenced from courts there.
(source: azcapitoltimes.com)
USA:
Democrats omit call to abolish the federal death penalty from their 2024 party platform
The 2024 Democratic Party platform approved by delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August omits previous platforms’ calls to abolish the federal death penalty.
In 2016, the Democratic Party became the 1st major political party in the U.S. to call for an end to capital punishment in its platform. In 2020, President Joe Biden became the 1st U.S. president to have campaigned on an openly anti-death penalty platform. That year’s Democratic platform stated the party continues “to support abolishing the death penalty.”
After Biden was elected, his administration declared a moratorium on federal executions. But some activists have argued the president has not delivered on that promise and has defended some existing death sentences.
The 2024 platform, however, makes no mention of the death penalty or the party’s position on it. The Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has opposed the death penalty in her current and previous political roles.
The group Democrats for Life of America, which seeks to elect what it calls “Whole Life Democrats” who oppose abortion and practices including capital punishment and assisted suicide, said in a statement Aug. 22 it was “very disappointed to learn that the anti-death penalty plank was removed from the Democratic Party platform.”
Hayden Laye, the group’s development coordinator, said, “We progressed past the need for the death penalty in America long ago. The great state of Michigan abolished the death penalty all the way back in 1984.”
Laye added the pro-life Democratic group urged Biden, a Catholic, “to commute the sentences of every single federal death row inmate to life in prison.”
In his 2020 encyclical “Fratelli Tutti,” Pope Francis addressed the moral problem of capital punishment by citing St. John Paul II, writing that his predecessor “stated clearly and firmly that the death penalty is inadequate from a moral standpoint and no longer necessary from that of penal justice.”
“There can be no stepping back from this position,” Pope Francis wrote. Echoing the teaching he clarified in his 2018 revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the pontiff said, “Today we state clearly that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible’ and the church is firmly committed to calling for its abolition worldwide.”
(source: Catholic Review)
DR CONGO:
Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty For 50 Defendants In DR Congo ‘Coup’ Trial
Prosecutors called on Tuesday for 50 defendants, including three Americans, on trial in the Democratic Republic of Congo over an alleged coup bid to face the death penalty.
Military prosectuor Lieutenant Colonel Innocent Radjabu urged judges to sentence to death all those on trial over the alleged attempted coup in May, barring one defendant.
Armed men attacked the home of Economy Minister Vital Kamerhe in the early hours of May 19 before moving onto the nearby Palais de la Nation that houses President Felix Tshisekedi’s offices.
The army later announced an attempted coup had been stopped by the security forces.
The alleged plot was led by Christian Malanga, a Congolese man who was a “naturalised American” and who was killed by security forces, army spokesman General Sylvain Ekenge has said.
Among those being tried in the Kinshasa military court are three Americans, including Malanga’s son Marcel Malanga.
The defendants also include a Belgian, a Briton and a Canadian who are all naturalised Congolese.
The trial began on June 7 in Ndolo military prison, where all the defendants are being held.
The charges include “attack, terrorism, illegal possession of weapons and munitions of war, attempted assassination, criminal association, murder (and) financing of terrorism”, according to a court document.
(source: barrons.com)
EGYPT:
Egypt criminal court seeks Grand Mufti’s opinion on serial killer’s preliminary death sentence
Egypt’s Criminal Court has referred the case of Karim Salim, the notorious “al-Tagamoa Serial Killer,” to the Grand Mufti for approval of the preliminary death sentence passed against him. The decision was made on Saturday under Article 2-381 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, with the final verdict set to be announced on September 12.
Salim, a 37-year-old graduate of the American University in Cairo, holds dual citizenship in Egypt and the US. Previously a teacher, he transitioned to a career in trade. In addition he had gained attention for his popular TikTok account, “Fonix,” which boasts over 600,000 followers. On this platform, he shared educational content and lessons on a variety of subjects, with a particular focus on English. He was found guilty of multiple counts of premeditated murder, sexual assault, necrophilia, and human trafficking in the murder of 3 female sex workers in the New Cairo area. The autopsy reports suggest that the 3 women were killed by the same person, as they all displayed similar signs of torture, including strangulation and flogging wounds. Additional evidence against Salim included a fingerprint found on one of the women’s clothes and laboratory tests revealing the presence of narcotics, specifically crystal methamphetamine, in their systems.
Salim’s trial, which began in June, has been marked by dramatic moments, including the withdrawal of Salim’s first lawyer. Throughout the proceedings, Salim has denied the charges and retracted confessions he made following his arrest. Despite his denials, the prosecution presented overwhelming evidence against him, including incriminating videos that depicted Salim engaging in necrophiliac acts with the victims’ bodies.
The case now advances to Egypt’s Grand Mufti, the country’s foremost religious authority, for a mandatory review of the preliminary death sentence, as stipulated by Egyptian law. While the Mufti’s opinion is not legally binding, it is a crucial procedural step before the sentence can be finalized.
(source: jurist.org)
MALAYSIA:
Federal court has authority to hear reviews filed by pardoned prisoners
The Federal Court today ruled that it has the authority to hear reviews filed by prisoners who have already been granted pardons for their death penalty sentences.
A three-member bench, led by Justice Datuk Harmindar Singh Dhaliwal, rendered a 2-1 majority decision affirming the court’s jurisdiction to hear reviews filed by 4 individuals, namely, P. Balakrishnan, G. Jiva, Thai national Phrueksa Taemchim, and Zambian national Mailesi Phiri.
Justices Harmindar Singh and Datuk Hanipah Farikullah were in the majority, while Justice Datuk Nordin Hassan dissented.
The 4 individuals were initially convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to death.
However, several state Pardons Boards later granted them clemency, commuting their death sentences to 30 years imprisonment, starting from the dates of the boards’ decisions.
Consequently, the time they served before receiving the pardon will not be considered in calculating their total term of imprisonment.
The prison authorities did not refer the cases of the 4 individuals for review under the Abolition of Mandatory Death Penalty Act 2023 and the Revision of Sentence of Death and Imprisonment for Natural Life (Temporary Jurisdiction of The Federal Court) Act 2023 because they had already been granted pardons, making them ineligible to apply for a review.
The four subsequently applied to the Federal Court seeking to vary the state Pardon Boards’ decisions.
Today, the Federal Court ruled that it has the jurisdiction to hear their applications for review, and subsequently granted their requests.
The court imposed 30 years of imprisonment effective from each individual’s date of arrest, while Balakrishnan, 47, was ordered to be given 12 strokes of the cane.
Balakrishnan will be released from prison after the caning, while Jiva will have 3 more years to serve. Phrueksa and Mailesi have another 5 years remaining on their sentences.
In his submission earlier, lawyer Datuk N.Sivananthan representing Balakrishnan and Jiva, 54, both self-employed, said if their reviews were granted, Balakrishnan and Jiva would be released 20 and 15 years earlier, respectively.
Meanwhile, Phrueksa’s lawyer K.Simon Murali, argued that his client, a 40-year-old single mother, was entitled under the law to apply for a revision of her death sentence.
Lawyer Abdul Rashid Ismail, who represented Mailesi Phiri, 47, contended that excluding her from the review process would violate her right to life under Article 5 (1) of the Federal Constitution.
Balakrishnan was granted a pardon by the Pardons Board of Kedah on March 29, 2022; Jiva and Mailesi received their pardons from the Penang Pardons Board on June 13, 2022, and December 13, 2021, respectively.
Phrueksa was pardoned by the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur Pardons Board on Sept 21, 2017.
Deputy public prosecutor Tetralina Ahmed Fauzi, however, argued that the decision of the Pardons Boards cannot be reviewed by the court.
(source: api.nst.com.my)
IRAN—-executions
1st Public Hanging in Iran in 2024 – Public hanging is an inhumane, cruel and degrading act that not only victimises the defendant but also the general public.
State media have reported the public hanging of an unnamed man for the murder of a lawyer on a street in Shahroud. This is the 1st public execution in 2024.
Iran Human Rights warns about the return of public hangings to Iranian streets and urges the international community to deal seriously with this type of execution in Iran.
IHRNGO DIrector, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: “Public hanging is an inhumane, cruel and degrading act that not only victimises the defendant but also the general public. The international community must condemn this barbaric punishment in the strongest terms. We will witness more public executions if the international community doesn’t show an appropriate response.”
According to the state-run ISNA news agency and quoting the Semnan province head of judiciary, a man was publicly hanged in Shahroud on 26 August. The unnamed man was sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) for the murder of a lawyer.
Mohammad Sadegh Akbari, the Semnan province head of judiciary said: “According to the definitive ruling by Branch 49 of the Supreme Court, the late Mahmoudreza Jafar Aghayi’s murderer was sentenced to public execution for the crime of intentional murder with a hunting weapon.”
This is the 1st public hanging to take place in Iran in 2024. 2021 was the 1st year in over a decade during which no public executions were carried out by the Islamic Republic.. This followed 2020 when only one execution was recorded, which was the lowest number since 2008, when Iran Human Rights started its systematic monitoring of executions in Iran. There is no indication that the decline in the number of public executions were the result of policy change, but rather a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. In 2022, public executions returned to the streets of Iran with 2 people publicly executed. That number rose to 7 in 2024.
UPDATE: The executed man’s identity has been established as 21-year-old Amirreza Ajam Akrami. He was on death row for around a year.
(source: iranhr.net)
Campaign of Tuesdays “No to Executions” supported by 2 members of Italian Parliament.
The 31st campaign of “No to Executions Tuesdays” was joined by a group of prisoners from the Greater Tehran Prison and 2 members of the Italian Parliament.
According to the Iranian Human Rights Society, on Tuesday, August 27, 2024, prisoners in 19 prisons announced a hunger strike for this week’s Tuesday, and the Greater Tehran Prison has also joined the group of prisons participating in the “No to Executions Tuesdays” campaign.
The 31st campaign of “Tuesdays Against Executions” has gained momentum as prisoners from Tehran’s Great Prison and prominent Italian parliamentarians unite to oppose capital punishment in Iran, highlighting human rights violations and systemic failures of the government.
A significant rise in executions, with at least 126 individuals executed in one month, demonstrates the urgent need for international awareness and support. Despite severe repression from authorities, the campaign continues to thrive as more prisoners join in solidarity against state brutality and the death penalty.
Summary of the “Tuesdays Against Executions” Campaign
The “Tuesdays Against Executions” campaign continues to gain traction, with prisoners from 19 different Iranian prisons, including Tehran’s Great Prison, declaring a hunger strike. This movement has received support from prominent Italian parliamentarians, highlighting the international awareness of the human rights violations occurring in Iran.
Key points:
Hunger Strike Announcement: On September 6, 2023, prisoners in 19 prisons announced a hunger strike as part of the ongoing campaign against executions.
Recent Executions: In August 2024 alone, at least 126 individuals were executed, raising alarms about the systematic failures of the Iranian government.
Repression of Dissent: The Iranian authorities have intensified their crackdown on dissent, punishing prisoners who participate in the campaign by denying them basic rights, such as phone calls and visits.
Solidarity Among Prisoners: Despite the oppressive environment, prisoners continue to resist and stand in solidarity against the death penalty and torture.
International Support: The campaign has garnered attention and support from global figures, including Italian lawmakers, who have publicly backed the movement.
Call to Action:
The campaign urges both domestic and international communities to support their efforts to abolish executions and torture in Iran, emphasizing the need for collective action against state brutality.
This ongoing struggle reflects the resilience of those fighting for human rights in the face of severe repression.Prisoners in 19 different Iranian prisons, including Tehran’s Great Prison, have declared a hunger strike as part of the “Tuesdays Against Executions” campaign.
The campaign has garnered international support, particularly from some Italian parliamentarians advocating against capital punishment.
At least 126 executions have been reported in Iran within just one month, underscoring the urgent human rights crisis in the country.
The Iranian government continues to systematically oppress dissenters, particularly targeting those who express opposition to executions.
Women prisoners have faced punitive measures, including the denial of phone calls and visitation rights, as well as harsh treatment like solitary confinement.
The new Iranian cabinet, viewed as a continuation of repression, has particularly concerning backgrounds that may lead to increased state violence against citizens.
Activists are calling on both domestic and international communities to support the campaign aimed at abolishing executions and torture in Iran.
How do hunger strikes impact political activism within authoritarian governments?
Hunger strikes can have significant impacts on political activism within authoritarian governments, serving as a powerful form of protest. Here are some key effects:
Raising Awareness: Hunger strikes draw public attention to specific issues, often highlighting human rights abuses, political repression, or social injustices. This can mobilize both domestic and international support.
Moral High Ground: Strikers often gain moral authority, as their willingness to suffer for their cause can resonate with the public and garner sympathy. This can lead to increased pressure on the governments.
Solidarity and Unity: Hunger strikes can unite various groups within the opposition, fostering solidarity among activists, political prisoners, and the general populace. This collective action can strengthen movements against authoritarianism.
Government Response: Authoritarian governments may respond to hunger strikes with repression, including increased surveillance, arrests, or violence against protesters. However, they may also be compelled to negotiate or make concessions to avoid negative publicity.
International Pressure: Global awareness of hunger strikes can lead to international condemnation of the regime, potentially resulting in sanctions, diplomatic pressure, or calls for intervention from foreign governments and organizations.
Psychological Impact:
The act of fasting can have a profound psychological effect on both the strikers and their supporters, reinforcing commitment to the cause and inspiring others to take action.
Media Coverage: Hunger strikes often attract media attention, which can amplify the message of the activists and bring their struggles to a wider audience, influencing public opinion and policy.
In summary, hunger strikes can be a potent tool for political activism in authoritarian contexts, capable of mobilizing support, raising awareness, and challenging oppressive governments, though they also carry significant risks for those involved.
(source: en.iranhrs.org)
68 Organisations Declare Support for “No Death Penalty Tuesdays” Abolitionist Movement in Iran
Iran Human Rights and 67 human rights organisations from four continents have signed a joint statement in support and solidarity with the “No Death Penalty Tuesdays” weekly hunger strikes in Iranian prisons. In the statement, they call for “an immediate halt on all executions with a view to abolish the death penalty in Iran and urge the international community to support the growing abolition movement in Iran.”
IHRNGO Director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: “The resilience of prisoners fighting against the death penalty in Iran has impressed and inspired the abolitionist movement worldwide. Our message to these courageous individuals is that we have heard your voices and will stand with you until this inhumane punishment is abolished.”
Zartosht Ahmadi Ragheb, Loghman Aminpour, Meisam Dahbanzadeh, Jafar Ebrahimi, Sepehr Emam Jomeh, Ahmadreza Haeri, Reza Mohammad Hossseini, Saeed Masouri, Reza Salmanzadeh and Hamzeh Savari, ten political prisoners held in Karaj’s Ghezelhesar Prison, began the weekly hunger strike on 30 January 2024 in response to weekly group executions. Inspired by a hunger strike by death row prisoners at the prison, they named their weekly hunger strikes “Black Tuesdays” which later became known as “No Death Penalty Tuesdays.” This collective movement behind bars, which is in its 31st week, has reached 17 other prisons across Iran.
According to Iran Human Rights reports, at least 396 people have been executed in Iran as of 26 August 2024.
Download the Statement — see: https://iranhr.net/media/files/Black_Tuesdays_PDF-ENG.pdf
In support and solidarity with “No Death Penalty Tuesdays” abolitionist movement in Iran
Every 6 hours, 1 person was executed in Iranian prisons in the first 20 days of August. Execution numbers have been rising every year since 2021, with at least 834 people executed in 2023, and 395 executions recorded by Iran Human Rights as of 26th August 2024. Drug-related executions remain the charges that account for more than half of the executions in Iran. Marginalised groups of society and ethnic minorities, in particular the Kurdish and Baluch, are overrepresented among those executed.
The Islamic Republic uses the death penalty as a tool of political repression and death sentences are issued after unfair trials without the minimal standards of due process.
After bearing witness to months of weekly group executions in Karaj and the execution of several political prisoners in January 2024, a group of brave political prisoners* in Ghezelhesar Prison in Karaj staged a protest which was violently suppressed. The diverse group of political prisoners from different backgrounds and beliefs thus began a weekly hunger strike on 30th January that became known as “Black Tuesdays” and “No Death Penalty Tuesdays.” They chose Tuesdays for that is the day death row inmates are typically transferred to solitary confinement in preparation for the gallows in Ghezelhesar Prison.
The weekly mass hunger strikes are now in their 31st week and the movement has spread to 17 other prisons across Iran. The participants remain resolute in their demands against the death penalty despite violent crackdowns.
We, the undersigned organisations, declare our solidarity and support for the “No Death Penalty Tuesdays” movement in Iranian prisons. We call for an immediate halt on all executions with a view to abolish the death penalty in Iran and urge the international community to support the growing abolition movement in Iran.
- The “No Death Penalty Tuesdays” hunger strikes were started by Ghezelhesar political prisoners Zartosht Ahmadi Ragheb, Loghman Aminpour, Meisam Dahbanzadeh, Jafar Ebrahimi, Sepehr Emam Jomeh, Ahmadreza Haeri, Reza Mohammad Hosseini, Saeed Masouri, Reza Salmanzadeh and Hamzeh Savari in alphabetical order.
Signatories:
Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO)
World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP)
Impact Iran
Together Against the Death Penalty (ECPM)
Defenders of Human Rights Center (Shirin Ebadi)
Harm Reduction International
World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT)
Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN)
International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute
Justice for Iran
6Rang (Iranian Lesbian and Transgender Network)
Kurdistan Human Rights Association-Geneva (KMMK-G)
International Educational Development, Inc (IED)
Abdorrahman Boroumand Center for Human Rights in Iran
Kurdistan Human Rights Network
Haal Vsh
Center for Human Rights in Iran
Balochistan Human Right group
Rasank
Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
United for Iran
Kurdpa Human Rights Organization
HANA Human Rights Organization
Siamak Pourzand Foundation
Ahwaz Human Rights Organisation
Baloch Activists Campaign
Association for the human rights of the Azerbaijani people in Iran (Ahraz)
Hengaw Organization for Human Rights
Hands off Cain
The Advocates for Human Rights, USA
ARTICLE 19
Justice Project Pakistan
European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR)
Odhikar, Bangladesh
Cornell Center on the Death Penalty, USA
PEN America
German Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (GCADP)
The Italian Federation for Human Rights (FIDU)
Death Penalty Focus, USA
The Christian Union for Progress and Human Rights, DRC
Capital Punishment Justice Project, Australia
Amnesty International (Group 205), Dallas
Human Rights Dallas
Southern Methodist University Human Rights Program, USA
Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG), South Korea
Witness to Innocence, USA
Human Rights Association (Insan Haklari Dernegi – IHD), Türkiye
Redemption Pakistan
ACAT, Ghana
French Collective Free Mumia, France
Function 8, Singapore
Lembaga Bantuan Hukum Masyarakat, Indonesia
International Committee Against Execution (ICAE)
Campaign to Free Political Prisoners in Iran (CFPPI)
United Against Gender Apartheid
Global Campaign to Stop Executions In Iran
All Human Rights for All in Iran
Defence of Human Rights in Iran (LDDHI)
Iranian Citizens’ Initiative Saar (IRBIS)
Parsi Law Collective
NIKA, Network of Iranians for Liberty and Democracy
Iranian’s Socio-Cultural Center of Quebec Simorgh
Global Network to Free Political Prisoners in Iran
Free Iran Switzerland
Solidarity with the women’s revolution of Freedom Life Frankfurt Mainz and Wiesbaden
Alliance for Freedom, Washington DC
Iranian Medical Society for Human Rights and Democracy (Berlin MED)
(source: iranhr.net)
NCRI Conference Marks the Anniversary of the 1988 Iran Massacre with Key International Speakers
On Saturday,
17, a conference was held near Paris to commemorate the anniversary of the 1988 massacre of political prisoners in Iran. The event featured Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, and Professor Rita Süssmuth, former President of the German Bundestag and former Federal Minister for Youth, Family, Women, and Health. The conference brought together several notable German and European figures, as well as representatives from Iranian communities, who spoke on the significance of the massacre and the ongoing struggle for justice and human rights in Iran.
The conference was particularly poignant as it coincided with the 36th anniversary of the massacre, during which over 30,000 political prisoners were executed in Iran, most of whom were members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI). This event remains a dark chapter in Iran’s history and a symbol of the regime’s severe repression of political dissent.
Mrs. Maryam Rajavi opened the conference by honoring Professor Rita Süssmuth for her steadfast support of the Iranian resistance and the struggle for freedom. “During the 1988 massacre,” Rajavi recalled, “Ms. Süssmuth, in her capacity as the Speaker of the Bundestag, was the most significant voice of protest in the Western world against the massacre in Iran.” She highlighted how, even at a time when many world leaders remained silent on the atrocities committed by the Iranian regime, Süssmuth used her position to condemn the actions and support the Iranian people’s fight for justice.
Rajavi also addressed the recent report by the UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman, which described the 1988 massacre as “genocide” and “a crime against humanity.” She called for an independent investigation into these crimes and urged the international community to take decisive action against the Iranian regime.
“It is now up to governments and the United Nations to prioritize the continuation of criminal investigations to issue arrest warrants and pursue prosecution against the regime’s leaders for committing ‘atrocity crimes,’ namely genocide and crimes against humanity,” Rajavi emphasized. She also criticized the regime’s continued efforts to discredit the resistance movement through false accusations and a disinformation campaign, noting that these tactics only serve to highlight the regime’s desperation and fear of being overthrown.
Professor Rita Süssmuth, in her speech, reflected on the significance of the 1988 massacre and the importance of remembering the victims. She described the massacre as a symbol of the long history of oppression in Iran and praised the resilience and strength of the Iranian Resistance, particularly the women who have been at the forefront of the struggle for freedom and democracy. “We do not give up; we stand firm,” she declared. “I have learned from the people in Ashraf [3] what perseverance is, what resistance means. We will not be discouraged. The women I see today are filled with energy and determination. We can learn courage, and we can become stronger in resistance.”
Dr. Süssmuth also condemned the policy of appeasem*nt towards the Iranian regime and its pursuit of nuclear capabilities, highlighting the need for a stronger international stance against the regime’s actions. She argued that the West had been too slow to recognize the true nature of the Iranian regime and its intentions, which has allowed the regime to continue its oppressive tactics unchecked. “In Germany, it took a long time for developments in Iran to even become a topic. We thought we had to deal with the Iranian regime cautiously to prevent them from acquiring a nuclear bomb,” she said. “This was naive because they already had crucial elements for this bomb long before, and we still thought we could prevent it.”
Prof. Christoph Degenhart, a distinguished legal scholar, emphasized the importance of confronting misinformation against the Iranian Resistance. He highlighted the removal of the PMOI from Germany’s intelligence surveillance lists as a crucial step in supporting the resistance. Degenhart stressed that the Iranian regime’s disinformation campaigns must be countered with truth and justice, underscoring the significance of ensuring the rights of the Iranian people are upheld. He also praised Professor Süssmuth for her unwavering support for the rights of the Iranian people and her dedication to justice and freedom.
Former Dutch MEP Dorien Rookmaker spoke passionately about the need for Western politicians to speak out against the Iranian regime’s atrocities. She criticized the ongoing policies of appeasem*nt and stressed that actions speak louder than words in the fight against the regime’s human rights violations. “It is clear for everybody to see who we are dealing with,” Rookmaker said, emphasizing that the regime’s actions reveal its true nature as a brutal oppressor of its own people. She expressed her admiration for the courage and perseverance of the Iranian people and their resistance, urging more international support for their cause.
Marion Böker, former President of the International Alliance of Women, also addressed the conference, speaking about the significant role of women in the Iranian Resistance. She emphasized that the oppression of women in Iran has only strengthened their resolve to fight back, citing examples from various regions where women are leading movements for change. Mrs. Böker praised Professor Süssmuth for being a strong advocate for women’s rights and for her contributions to the global struggle for equality and justice. “Women have shown that they are not only the force of change but also the builders of the future,” she noted, echoing Süssmuth’s earlier remarks about the role of women in shaping a better world.
Former German MEP Helmut Geuking highlighted the lack of decisive action among European politicians regarding the Iranian regime. He condemned the economic dealings with the regime, calling them “businesses with death,” and stressed the importance of standing firm against the regime’s human rights abuses. Mr. Geuking praised Professor Süssmuth’s dedication to human rights and democratic values, stating that her leadership serves as a beacon in the fight against tyranny. He underscored the need for European leaders to reject appeasem*nt and take a stronger stance in support of the Iranian people.
(source: ncr-iran.org)
