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A man who raped and strangled a 10-year-old Kansas girl in 1999 was executed this week, becoming the fifth federal inmate put to death this year. Keith Nelson received a lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, after a higher court tossed out a previous ruling that the government was required to obtain a prescription for phentobarbital, the drug used to kill him. Questions about whether the drug caused pain prior to death had been a focus of appeals for Nelson, 45. He was the second inmate to be executed this week after the Trump administration resumed...

Michael Dukakis, the former Democratic Massachusetts governor who lost his 1988 White House bid to then-Vice President George H. W. Bush, is warning Joe Biden not to take polls showing him with a double-digit lead over President Trump too seriously. A recent Fox News poll has Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, leading Trump 50-38 nationally as concerns grow over the coronavirus pandemic, racism and unemployment. He also leads Trump by 8.8 percentage points in an average of the latest national polls compiled by Real Clear Politics. By comparison, in late July 1988, a Newsweek/Gallup poll showed Dukakis with a 55-38...

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that states can effectively eliminate the insanity defense for criminal defendants who suffer from mental illness. The 6-3 ruling holds that a Kansas law preventing the exoneration of defendants who claim a diminished mental state is not unconstitutional. In an unusual alignment for the bench, Justice Elena Kagan, considered among the more liberal justices, wrote the majority opinion and was joined by her five conservative colleagues. Three liberal justices — Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg — dissented. "Defining the precise relationship between criminal culpability and mental illness involves examining the workings...

Question: There was a recent New York Times Magazine article about conman Paul Skalnik and how his false testimonies sent dozens to jail and 4 people to death row. In Florida, where death sentencing was/is popular, there have been 29 death-row inmates exonerated by the time of the article's publication. There was also a study that estimated 1 in 25, 4.1 percent, of inmates sentenced to death are innocent. Even if the state kills one innocent person, isn’t that too much? As Christians who talk about killing innocent babies, how can we then go and support capital punishment when there...

He killed his grandmother. And he did so brutally, dumping her in the water before she was even dead, if the coroner is correct that her cause of death was drowning. He killed two others -- all evil acts. And then once in prison, he managed to kill a fellow inmate. So, I get why the governor of Tennessee refused to grant Nick Sutton clemency when the time came for his execution and final appeals. But no one was asking for the man to be released. Instead, people -- including prison staff and the sister of the inmate he killed...

he Trump administration has prepared draft legislation to expedite capital cases against mass shooters, it announced Monday. Marc Short, Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, told reporters to expect the legislation as part of a larger gun control proposal from the White House, Fox News reports. The total legislative package is expected after Congress returns from its August recess on September 9th. The announcement comes after a mass shooting in Odessa, Texas, in which a gunman killed five and injured 22 people. On Sunday, President Donald Trump called the shooter "another very sick person," and said that shootings were...

Speaking from the White House Monday morning with Vice President Mike Pence by his side, President Donald Trump addressed the nation and responded to two mass shootings that took place over the weekend. Dozens of people were killed and severely wounded in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas. "These barbaric slaughters are an assault upon our communities, an attack on our nation and a crime against all humanity. We are outraged by this monstrous evil, the cruelty, the malice, bloodshed and the terror. Our hearts are shattered for every family whose parents, children, husbands and wives were ripped from...

President Trump called Monday for reforms at the intersection of mental health and gun laws -- including so-called "red flag laws" to take guns from those deemed a public risk -- in the wake of back-to-back mass shootings over the weekend that left at least 29 people dead. “Our nation is overcome with shock, horror and sorrow,” Trump said, in solemn remarks from the White House. “We are outraged and sickened by this monstrous evil.” In unequivocal terms, the president also condemned white supremacy, responding to reports that the shooter in El Paso wrote a racist manifesto. "In one voice,...

Daniel Lee Lewis was involved in his first murder when he was 17 years old. It was July 24, 1990. Enraged by a teenage party prank, he beat Joseph Wavra unconscious. Then Lewis ran to get a knife and helped Wayra’s murderer hide the crime. This was only the beginning of Lewis’ seven-year crime spree that included burglary, bombings, public shootouts, and murder. The crime that landed him on death row happened on January 11, 1996. He and his partner, Chevie Kehoe, kidnapped a Tilly, Arkansas gun dealer with his wife and stepdaughter. Lewis had burglarized William Mueller’s home a...

In 2018 25 persons were put to death by the United States. They ranged from 31 years old to 83 and all were convicted by courts, and those convictions affirmed by further courts, that found them guilty of heinous, horrid, disgusting crimes against their fellow man. Despite that, I believe that their deaths were wrong. The death penalty in the United States is seldom used. 25 states have either abolished it entirely or declared a moratorium on its use. Almost a dozen other states have not executed a person in years. Yet it still remains on the books and is more than...

MANILA, Philippines - Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte said he would “really kill” child molesting priests, in his latest broadside against the Catholic Church. Speaking on Sunday at a campaign rally in Cagayan de Oro City, Duterte said it would be “a better world” if all molesting priests were “killed tonight.” Duterte has been at odds with the country’s Catholic Church since before he took office in 2016. Church leaders have condemned his bloody crackdown on the drug trade which has left thousands of people dead in extrajudicial killings, as well as his efforts to reintroduce the death penalty. Duterte has...

Louis Coleman III (32) of Providence, RI abducted Jassy Correia (23) in Boston, Mass., and several days later was stopped in Delaware, with the victim's body in the trunk of the car he was driving. Now the great states of Mass., RI, and Delaware have all previously abolished the Death Penalty. But... the Federal Govt. has not, and Mr. Coleman, could very well receive a Federal Death Penalty, as he should.

A Texas death-row inmate who was executed Thursday for killing his estranged wife's family nearly 30 years ago, uttered cryptic final words before he died. "That'll be five dollars," Billie Wayne Coble, 70, of Waco, reportedly said. He told the five witnesses in attendance to "take care," according to reports. His son, Gordon Coble, pounded on the execution chamber windows and shouted "no" as his father was executed, the Houston Chronicle reported. Another son Dalton joined his brother, the report said. Officers stepped in and say the witnesses continued to resist. They were eventually moved to a courtyard and the...

The Supreme Court sent a case concerning a death row inmate, who claims he can no longer remember his crimes because of several strokes he had while in prison, back down to the lower courts to take a second look. The court had already stayed the inmate Vernon Madison's execution last January. In a 5-3 vote, Chief Justice John Roberts sided Wednesday with the liberals on the court in favor of Madison. Only eight justices had heard the case because Justice Brett Kavanaugh had not been confirmed by the time the case was argued.

On death row in Malawi, Byson Kaula was nearly executed three times - but on each occasion the hangman stopped work before hanging all the prisoners on his list. So he survived… until the country stopped executing people altogether.

25 Surprising Things About Alcatraz Only The Guards Knew Alcatraz holds a very special place in the minds of the US public. It has a certain image that has been carefully fostered by Hollywood films and more recently, by tourists’ visits to the site. It has a popular-culture reputation as an island prison designed to hold the most infamous and notorious of the nation's criminals. In the mind's eye, thugs and hooligans sit behind stone walls and plot various schemes for escape. And while all of this is accurate to a certain degree, there is so much more to...

Since the start of the Trump administration, the calls to reform America’s outdated prison and sentencing policies have grown into a massive chorus that transcends partisanship, race, and class. Thanks to President Trump’s leadership and willingness to work with elected officials across the political spectrum, we are closer than ever to passing new policies that will equip inmates with the skills necessary to enter the workforce while also ensuring our communities remain safe. This can be the most significant legislation for minorities since the 1964 civil rights bill Federal prison reform comes right out of Sen. Kennedy’s playbook Of course,...

A California man arrested after several police officers were injured in an explosion at a July march reportedly told authorities he gave the incendiary device to a teen and told him to throw it. Giovanni Gaines, 23, was arrested last week for his alleged involvement in the blast, which injured 10 Oakland police officers during a July 23 march honoring Nia Wilson, Lt. James Beere said Thursday, according to the SF Gate. Wilson had been fatally stabbed at a BART station a day earlier in what initially appeared to be a racially motivated attack, though, it later emerged the suspect had...

Many sense that the hierarchy’s rejection of capital punishment and their complacency about clergy sexual abuse are not unconnected. What I want to say on the matter falls under three headings: separation; vengeance; and protection. All of these serve to distinguish justice, which the Church should uphold, from mere “regulatory compliance,” which seems the main thing on offer right now from our bishops.

Who could have predicted back in 1928 that Al Smith's successor as governor of New York would be explaining his advancement of legislation by his "solidarity" with the pope?  Back then, poor Governor Smith was defeated in his run for president in part by anti-Catholic fears that he represented a "Romish Peril," not least by way of a transatlantic tunnel between Washington and the Vatican.  A vote for Al Smith would put America under the dictatorship of the pope. So when Governor Andrew Cuomo, literally on the same day Pope Francis declared that the death penalty is "inadmissible" in all cases, introduced...