Free Republic

In Texas, they're conducting the first state-sponsored review of a capital punishment case. Specifically, they're looking into the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted and executed for setting a house fire that killed his three children. An expert on fire science says there was "no basis" to rule the fire an arson, the Chicago Tribune reports. The state fire marshal on the case, Beyler concluded in his report, had "limited understanding" of fire science. The fire marshal "seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires and how fire injuries are created," he wrote. The marshal's findings,...

Sonia Sotomayor says the death penalty disproportionately impacts minorities. A question for her: Death sentences are meted out most often to (a) blacks, (b) whites, (c) Hispanics or (d) the guilty. A recently unearthed memo not disclosed on the questionnaire filed with the Senate Judiciary Committee shows that the empathy that the Supreme Court nominee feels is more for the predators among us than their victims. It also shows that some of the reasons this self-proclaimed "wise Latina" has for opposing capital punishment are bogus and flawed.

ALBUQUERQUE - A notorious convicted murderer and rapist is out of lockup Sunday ... Mister Saunders was 13-years-old when he tortured, murdered and then raped his neighbor in 2002. Due to his age, he could not be tried as an adult. Saunders was locked up until he turned 21—which is the maximum sentence under the juvenile code.

Harvard Islamic chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser ’96 has recently come under fire for controversial statements in which he allegedly endorsed death as a punishment for Islamic apostates. In a private e-mail to a student last week, Abdul-Basser wrote that there was “great wisdom (hikma) associated with the established and preserved position (capital punishment [for apostates]) and so, even if it makes some uncomfortable in the face of the hegemonic modern human rights discourse, one should not dismiss it out of hand.” The e-mail was forwarded over Muslim student e-mail lists and later picked up by the blogosphere, sparking debate and, in...

WALLA WALLA, Wash. (AP) -- Four people designated to administer lethal injections to death-row inmates at the Washington State Penitentiary have resigned, apparently worried that their identities could become public in court. The Seattle Times reported Thursday that the four resigned Tuesday for fear that their names would become known as a result of litigation on whether lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment..... Full article: HERE

Gov. Bill Richardson signed legislation Wednesday repealing New Mexico's death penalty, making it the second state to ban executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Richardson, a Democrat who formerly supported capital punishment, said signing the bill was the "most difficult decision" of his political life but that "the potential for ... execution of an innocent person stands as anathema to our very sensibilities as human beings." Richardson said he made the decision after going to the state penitentiary, where he saw the death chamber and visited the maximum security unit where those sentenced to...

The New Mexico Senate voted to abolish capital punishment, a measure already approved by the lower House that Governor Bill Richardson must sign before it goes into effect, the Senate said on its website. The Democratic-controlled Senate voted 24-18 to strike the death penalty from its law books. Democrat Richardson, who last month withdrew as President Barack Obama's pick to be commerce secretary, has not made clear whether he agrees with the repeal measure or plans to veto it, but lawmakers said they expect him to sign it into law. Supporters of the measure argue that replacing the death sentence...

On October 11, 1997, after a night filled with marijuana, cocaine, and drinking, Luis Salazar claims he thought he was back home in his own house, and that the person he stabbed to death was an intruder. Instead, Salazar was in the home of Martha Sanchez, 28, and her three children, one of whom Salazar also stabbed in the chest after killing their mother. Evidence shows that Salazar knew what he was doing: Evidence, however, showed the telephone wires at the home next door to where Salazar previously lived had been cut and Sanchez’s injuries indicated Salazar had tried to...

After decades of moral arguments reaching biblical proportions, after long, twisted journeys to the nation's highest court and back, the death penalty may be abandoned by several states for a reason having nothing to do with right or wrong: Money. Turns out, it is cheaper to imprison killers for life than to execute them, according to a series of recent surveys.

In an unexpected twist to the economic crisis, several US states are weighing whether to abolish the death penalty as the execution process proves too great a drain on dwindling resources. Death penalty laws remain on the books of 36 of the 50 US states, and capital punishment is supported by some two-thirds of the American public. But across the nation, states as diverse and far-flung as Montana, Kansas, New Mexico and Maryland are among those actively considering abolishing capital punishment in a bid to overcome ballooning budget shortfalls. "It is quite unusual that we've seen this blossoming of state...

1. The foetus cannot be taken seriously as a person An unborn baby in its 7th week after conception Before I knew much about the abortion debate, I was entirely uninterested in the unborn baby. When it was mentioned, I accepted uncritically that the "foetus" was just some sort of overdeveloped sperm of no value or worth. Pro-abortion rhetoric convinced me that the baby in the womb was somehow an entirely different class of human from you or me, as though the mere act of leaving the womb and inhaling oxygen conferred humanity on someone. I'm not sure I considered...

LUCASVILLE, Ohio — A death row inmate convicted of murdering two women 22 years ago was set to death Tuesday without any family members present. ~snip~ The 5-foot-7, 267-pound Cooey had tried to avoid execution by arguing that his obesity would prevent humane lethal injection because viable veins in his arms are hard to find. ~snip~Cooey dined Monday evening on the special meal he ordered, including T-bone steak with A-1 sauce, onion rings, french fries, four eggs over easy, toast with butter, hash browns, a pint of rocky road ice cream, a Mountain Dew soft drink and bear claw pastries.

A Florida man convicted of shooting two young sisters in the head after raping and shooting their mother was executed Tuesday after a two-hour delay while authorities awaited final rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court.Richard "Ric Ric" Henyard, 34, was pronounced dead at 8:16 p.m. He had been condemned for the death of 7-year-old Jamilya Lewis and her 3-year-old sister, Jasmine. [Snip] Henyard and a younger accomplice carjacked Dorothy Lewis and her daughters outside a grocery store in the central Florida town of Eustis on the night of Jan. 30, 1993. Henyard, then 18, raped Lewis and then shot her...

Nobody saw it coming. The school bus had stopped on U.S. 301 in Citra to let three or four students step off. Suddenly, Jamar Williams and 20 others from North Marion high and middle schools were knocked around or thrown to the floor. A semi had struck the bus from behind. The vehicles lurched forward and erupted in flames. "It just hit. It happened too fast," said Jamar, 14. "It was just so smoky it was hard to see. "I just remembered from television, stay calm in these situations and don't panic," he said. "That's how people get killed." Despite...

EDINBURG, TEXAS -- Adelmina Rios has waited 19 long years for her brother's killer to be put to death. Now, after a trial, appeals and an international incident that threatened to delay the process for years, Hector Torres Garcia may be one step closer to execution. Torres, 47, injured Rios and fatally shot her brother in 1989 during a convenience store robbery north of Edinburg. An Hidalgo County jury imposed the death penalty on Torres a year later. But Mexico has challenged his sentence and that of more than 50 fellow Mexican nationals currently on death row in the United...

President Bush on Monday approved the execution of an Army private, administration officials said. It was the first time in over a half-century that a president has affirmed a death sentence for a member of the U.S. military.

Of all the millions of photos of George Bush, that displayed here is the one Politico.com chose to accompany its story, Bush Approves Soldier's Execution, of President Bush's authorization of the execution of a soldier convicted of four murders and eight rapes in North Carolina. Was this a photo taken of Pres. Bush as he announced his decision? Apparently not. The story indicates that the president did not announce his decision in person, but did so via a statement from White House Press Secretary Dana Perino. Does Politico have evidence that the president made his decision in anger? If so,...

Handcuffed and shackled, Randal Rushing blew the awaiting media a kiss as he was led from a Wilkes-Barre apartment Thursday afternoon. Handcuffed and shackled, Randal Rushing blew the awaiting media a kiss as he was led from a Wilkes-Barre apartment Thursday afternoon. “I had fun,” the man accused of a triple homicide in Scranton said when asked whether he had killed three people. Ten hours after a grizzly discovery at his residence on South Irving Avenue — three people so badly bludgeoned that the manner of death was difficult to determine — Rushing, 25, was taken into custody just after...

Despite pleas from the White House and the State Department, as well as an international court order to review their cases, Texas will execute five Mexicans on death row, a spokeswoman for the governor said Thursday. The first of the executions — that of José Ernesto Medellín, 33, convicted in the 1993 rape and murder of two teenage girls here — is scheduled for Aug. 5. The decision by Gov. Rick Perry to allow the executions is the latest twist in a long-running battle between Mexico, which has no death penalty, and the United States over the fate of 51...

Here is the piece I was telling you about. It is a little tough to read because the webmaster, for reasons I still do not understand even though he explained it, occasionally omits spacing between paragraphs. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19857067&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8 I will also include the link in the first reply.

Excerpt - Acting on a claim by Mexico’s government that the U.S. government has not done enough to assure the treaty rights of Mexican nationals facing execution for murders in the U.S., the World Court on Wednesday ordered the U.S. — by a 7-5 vote — to stop five imminent executions in Texas. Leaving it up to the U.S. to choose the way to carry out the order, the international tribunal — formally, the International Court of Justice that sits in The Hague, Netherlands — told the U.S. only to “take all measures necessary to ensure” that Texas does not...

While China introduced lethal injections in the late 90’s as a method for carrying out the death penalty, my friends and students tell me that most offenders are put to death by a shot to the back of the head from an assault rifle. I have also been told that the families of the offenders are often compelled by the government to purchase the bullet that is used in the gun. While various reasons for this have been put forward by my friends, it is likely that these families must pay for the bullets in order to demonstrate that they...

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - The Corrections Department announced that James Earl Reed was executed at 11:27pm Friday. The execution comes after the South Carolina 4th Circuit Court of Appeals granted the Corrections Department permission to proceed with the execution. Just minutes before his previously scheduled 6pm execution, Reed was granted a stay of execution by US District Court Judge Henry Floyd. According to the order from the US District Court, Attorney Diana Holt wrote that the execution violated Reed's right to have an attorney at trial, his right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment and his right to...

JARRATT, Va. — Lawrence Vaughan didn't get to see his wife's funeral. But after nearly 10 years, he was able to see her killer take his last breaths. Vaughan and his family watched Tuesday as Kevin Green, 31, was executed by lethal injection for killing Patricia Vaughan in August of 1998 when he robbed the store she and her husband owned in rural Brunswick County. Green was pronounced dead at 10:05 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center. It was Virginia's first execution in nearly two years and the third in the U.S. since the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal...

Nothing like starting out the day with a good death penalty joke. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared Tuesday at a conference on alternative energy in Irvine co-hosted by the University of California, Irvine, the Milken Institute and New Majority California, a group of wealthy moderate Republicans who have donated to the governor. Schwarzenegger explained how he is trying to bring Democrats and Republicans together. "So this is why to make sure of that I proposed something entirely new, which is to have a solar-powered electric chair," Schwarzenegger said, provoking laughter. "There's something in there for both parties so everyone can be...

JACKSON, Ga. - A Georgia man who killed his live-in girlfriend was executed Tuesday, the first inmate put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injections. William Earl Lynd was pronounced dead at 7:51 p.m. EDT, Georgia Department of Corrections spokeswoman Mallie McCord told The Associated Press. It came less than an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected efforts to block it. The roughly three dozen states around the country that use lethal injection held off on carrying out any executions for more than seven months while the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality...

Who said leftists are opposed to the death penalty? It's just a question of who's being hung. . . Many Americans might wax nostalgic for the long lost America immortalized in Norman Rockwell's Saturday Evening Post cover drawings. Not Keith Olbermann. He longs for the good old days when people like Rush Limbaugh . . . could be strung up. Here's the Countdown host tonight, speaking with Air America's Rachel Maddow: KEITH OLBERMANN: Legally, we've come a very long way since the Haymarket bombing in Chicago in 1886 when we wound up hanging some anarchist writers, who were not even...

Assemblyman Paul Cook won an unexpected victory in the Assembly Public Safety Committee when his bill to relax restrictions on witness testimony during death penalty trials passed. Assembly Bill 2228 aims to change a current state law that prohibits conditional testimony from use during death penalty trials. Conditional testimony is often used when a witness’ life is in jeopardy or they are unable to attend due to health reasons. Under these circumstances, witnesses provide the court with videotaped testimony. Cook believes that using conditional testimony for capital punishment cases will afford victims, victim’s families, and eyewitnesses, an opportunity to testify...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court upheld the most common method of lethal injections executions Wednesday, clearing the way for states to resume executions that have been on hold for nearly 7 months. The justices, by a 7-2 vote, turned back a constitutional challenge to the procedures in place in Kentucky, which uses three drugs to sedate, paralyze and kill inmates. Similar methods are used by roughly three dozen states. The governor of Virginia lifted his state's moratorium on executions two hours after the high court issued its ruling. "We ... agree that petitioners have not carried their burden of showing...

     Connecticut Is For Lovers – And Murderers April 10, 2008 In a game of one-upmanship, Connecticut has decided that it is a state for both lovers and murderers.  But, please, hate crimes need not apply. Connecticut and its Democrat controlled Judiciary Committee, which “has been at the helm for 22 years and...has written all the laws governing crime and punishment” never saw a hate crime bill they didn’t love. The Democrats have seen to it that if someone even “intends to intimidate or harass a person...because of their actual or perceived race, religion, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity...

Once again the lenient legal system in Philadelphia causes the murders of innocent people. This time in another part of the country. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=19299390&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=638428&rfi=6

A child killer received a reprieve Friday from the Nebraska Supreme Court, which ruled that electrocution, the state's only means of capital punishment, is unconstitutional. "Old Sparky" was used for 60 years to execute inmates in Texas before it was decommissioned in 1964. Death penalty experts said the ruling is likely to put an end to a form of execution rarely used in the United States in recent years. Lethal injection is administered in 35 of the 36 states that execute condemned prisoners, with Nebraska the sole exception. "It is the hallmark of a civilized society that we punish cruelty...

Three Japanese prisoners executed Three death row prisoners have been executed in Japan, the authorities have announced. The justice ministry identified the men as convicted murderers Masahiko Matsubara, 63, Takashi Mochida, 65, and Keishi Nago, 37. They were hanged at separate prisons in Tokyo, Osaka and Fukuoka. Human rights groups are critical of the secrecy surrounding executions in Japan, one of the few industrialised countries to retain the death penalty. Relatives are told only after the hangings have taken place and this is just the second time the names of those executed have been publicly announced. The first was in...

SAN ANTONIO -- Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Baze v. Rees, a case that has effectively imposed a national moratorium on the death penalty since September. States are delaying executions until the high court rules. To get a sense of what's at stake as the high court considers the future of capital punishment, I spoke with Texas Solicitor General R. Ted Cruz, the state's top lawyer. Mr. Cruz is a rising star among conservative jurists. He's a protégé of former U.S. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, for whom he clerked and, by the nature of his...

COLUMBUS, Ohio: An Ohio death row inmate who had received a state record seven reprieves and faced execution this month had his murder sentence commuted to life in prison. Governor Ted Strickland based his decision Wednesday on the lack of physical evidence linking John Spirko to the 26-year-old murder and "the slim residual doubt" about Spirko's responsibility for it. Those factors make "the imposition of the death penalty inappropriate in this case," Strickland said. Strickland is a death penalty supporter, but he has said he is conscious of the numerous examples of exoneration through DNA testing around the United States....

The future of the death penalty will be in the hands of the Supreme Court tomorrow when the justices hear arguments in a closely watched case that tests the constitutionality of execution by lethal injection. The case, brought by two death-row inmates in Kentucky who are challenging the three-drug cocktail used to kill prisoners, already has led Texas — the nation's leader in executions — and other states to halt executions until the high court decides the Kentucky case. When Oklahoma first authorized lethal injection in 1977 — a year after the Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment was constitutional...

The Supreme Court will hear a case Monday that examines what is cruel and unusual punishment.When a state panel recommended in April that Tennessee abandon the three chemicals used in executions across the nation in favor of the single drug usually used in animal euthanasia, the state's corrections commissioner said no. Though the move would have simplified executions and eliminated the possibility of excruciating pain, the commissioner, George Little, said Tennessee should not be "out at the forefront" of a decision with "political ramifications." Little's decision helps illuminate one of the questions lurking behind the year's most eagerly anticipated death...

NEARLY 15 years ago, the brutal murder of three Arkansas Cub Scouts in an alleged satanic rite sickened a nation and strengthened the hand of death penalty champions across the United States. Now the same ghastly crime may be the final nail in the coffin of capital punishment in an America that is manifesting a crisis of conscience over the morality of executions. Over the next few weeks the grim saga of the so-called West Memphis Three, teenagers who were convicted of slaughtering three small boys for kicks, is expected to reach a conclusion as a new suspect is tested...

Here is the link. The vote was nothing more than a public relations stunt. They knew from the beginning what they were going to do. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=19133330&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=623508&rfi=6

The U.N. General Assembly adopted a moratorium on the death penalty yesterday, overcoming opposition from America, China, and others that argued each nation should be able to choose how to combat crime. The 104–54 vote for suspending executions is not legally binding but represents a growing global trend against a punishment that many countries say undermines human rights, is a questionable deterrent and mistakenly has killed innocent people. "There is no conclusive evidence of the death penalty's deterrence value and that any miscarriage or failure of justice in the death penalty's implementation is irreversible and irreparable," the proponents said in...

SAN FRANCISCO The California Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the death sentence for a San Bernardino man convicted of killing three children in 1996. Martin Mendoza was sentenced to death for the murders of the children, which included two of his stepchildren, and attempted murders of four other people, including two sheriff's deputies. His automatic appeal to the state Supreme Court was affirmed unanimously.

Capital Sophistry The American Bar Association began an initiative, called the Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project (DPMIP), in 2001. As part of this initiative, it conducted a three-year study of death penalty systems in eight states. They recently announced the results of this study. What are the chances that the study determined that capital punishment was unjust or flawed? If you guessed that a lawyers' organization that began a crusade for a death penalty moratorium completed a "study" that determined there should be a prohibition of the death penalty, go to the head of the class. The chairman of the...

Billy Ray Hamilton, who killed three people with a sawed-off shotgun inside Fran's Market in Fresno more than a quarter-century ago, has died in prison. We have to ask the same question asked by the parents of one of his victims: Why did Hamilton spend 27 years on death row? His prison stay lasted more than one and a half times as long as his youngest victim's entire life. His victims were Douglas White, 18, Josephine Rocha, 17, and Bryon Schletewitz, 27. We support the death penalty. At the same time, we believe those sentenced to death must have every...

Recent high-profile events have reopened the debate about the value of capital punishment in a just society... Most commentators who oppose capital punishment assert that an execution has no deterrent effect on future crimes. Recent evidence, however, suggests that the death penalty, when carried out, has an enormous deterrent effect on the number of murders. More precisely, our recent research shows that each execution carried out is correlated with about 74 fewer murders the following year. For any society concerned about human life, that type of evidence is something that should be taken very seriously. The study examined the relationship...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — Moments before a Mississippi prisoner was scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening, the Supreme Court granted him a stay of execution by a 7-to-2 vote and thus gave a nearly indisputable indication that a majority intends to block all executions until the court decides a lethal injection case from Kentucky next spring. Neither the majority nor the two dissenters, Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr., gave reasons for their positions. The stay will remain in effect until the full court reviews an appeal filed on Monday by lawyers for the inmate, Earl...

In July Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and daughters, Hayley, 17, and Michaela, 11, were sexually abused and brutally murdered by parolees Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes, who now face the death penalty. The Hawke-Petit family – including husband and father William, who survived the attack – were members of the United Methodist Church in Cheshire, CT, a liberal activist church "where parishioners take to the pulpit to discuss poverty in El Salvador and refugees living in Meriden," reports The New York Times. The church has been led by three pastors in a row who oppose capital punishment in favor of "restorative...

Poland boycotts day against capital punishment Tony Grew A European Union decision to declare today European Day Against the Death Penalty was blocked by Poland. The Polish government insisted that the day also include condemnations of abortion and euthanasia and used its veto to stop the declaration. However, the Council of Europe does not need a unanimous vote on such matters, and it has declared today European Day Against the Death Penalty. It is also World Day against Death Penalty. The present Polish government's social conservatism and the strong influence of the Roman Catholic Church in the counrty has led...

No right to a painless death penaltyPosted: October 3, 2007 1:00 a.m. Eastern When Michael Anthony Taylor kidnapped 15-year-old Ann Harrison while she was waiting for her school bus, then raped and brutally murdered her, he didn't seem to care about the pain and agony she suffered at his hand. But now that Taylor has been convicted and sentenced to capital punishment by lethal injection, he's suddenly concerned with how much pain he might feel at his deserved death. Taylor claims that Missouri's triple-chemical process of lethal injection exposes him to a risk that if he is not sufficiently unconscious...

Today is the first Monday in October -- meaning the U.S. Supreme Court is back in session. At this point, though, there's little on the docket that would drastically alter the landscape for most Americans in terms of property rights, free speech or other issues involving individual liberty and freedom. But that could change if the court agrees to hear a challenge to a case striking down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) _ A Gulf War veteran from Tennessee who murdered four children with an assault rifle has been executed. Death row inmate Daryl Holton was pronounced dead at 1:25 a.m. CDT Wednesday. He is the first Tennessee inmate put to death by electrocution since 1960. The 45-year-old Holton had confessed to shooting his three young sons and their half-sister in 1997 in the town of Shelbyville, about 50 miles south of Nashville. Holton told police he killed the children because his ex-wife had denied him from seeing them. He also said he intended to kill his ex-wife and...