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AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The World Court said on Friday it will rule next week on a Mexican request that it seek a delay of the imminent U.S. executions of five of its citizens, who Mexico argues were denied consular assistance. One of the five on death row, Jose Medellin, is due to die on August 5 in Texas, prompting Mexico to make its petition last month for urgent action. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will issue its decision on July 16. The ICJ in The Hague ruled in 2004 that the United States had violated international law by failing...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - A man convicted of murdering his adoptive parents was put to death by lethal injection in Texas on Thursday, the second prisoner executed in the state since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted an unofficial death penalty moratorium in April. Carlton Turner's was the first of three executions scheduled for July in Texas -- the country's busiest death penalty state. Texas has 14 more executions slated for this year. Turner, 29, was convicted of fatally shooting his adoptive parents -- Carlton Sr., 43, and Tonya, 40 -- in their Irving, Texas, home in August 1998. Turner, 19...

I read a story on the New York Post website the other day that first broke my heart and then filled me with rage. The story was about the funeral of a three year old boy named Kyle Smith who was beaten, tortured and killed by his guardians. What was done to this poor child was so horrible that I cannot even bring myself to describe it. Every time I read one of these stories, I have the same reaction. Not only do I want the perpetrators of these atrocities to die, I want them to die slowly and painfully....

July 4, 2008 The Manifold Dangers of a Liberal Supreme Court Christopher AdamoAs far back as Sun Tzu, military strategists have well understood the concept that victory in war does not require the destruction of one's enemy, but merely convincing that enemy that destruction is inevitable if the fight continues. Similarly, in a dictatorship, absolute control is neither necessary nor, in most cases, even possible. All that is needed for the dictator to endure is the presumption among the underlings that the leader does indeed hold a monopoly of power. It is a point that Americans ought to seriously...

Capital Punishment: A year and a half after its lethal injection debacle, Florida's recent execution of a child killer and rapist went smoothly. But emotionalism continues to impede justice.Mark Dean Schwab was a monster. He looked like a perfectly normal, even handsome young man. But a month after being released from prison in 1991 for raping a 13-year-old boy in 1987, Schwab befriended, then kidnapped, raped and murdered 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez Jr. As Schwab was being executed Tuesday evening, Junny's relatives and their supporters outside the death chamber wore T-shirts emblazoned with a smiling photo of Schwab's young victim. When...

When our rulers on the Supreme Court invalidated the State of Louisiana's death penalty for child rapists — in the case appropriately titled Kennedy v. Louisiana, decided June 25 — Justice Kennedy and the Court's liberal bloc insisted that the Eighth Amendment does not mean what it meant when it was adopted. Rather, the question of what is "cruel and unusual" punishment is answered by "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Such gobbledygook is the mark of Left-liberal hauteur. In an arrested-development society, getting older is not necessarily maturing, and chronological maturation is...

Governor says the court overlooked precedent in banning death penalty for those convicted of raping childrenGovernor Bobby Jindal says the U.S. Supreme Court made a factual error when it banned the death penalty as a sentence for those convicted of raping children. The court claimed there was no federal precedence in providing that type of sentence, but Jindal says the death penalty is authorized for child rape under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The Governor is asking Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell and Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick to consider petitioning the court for a rehearing. The 5-4...

Dead Men Walking Why Kennedy v. Louisiana could spell the beginning of the end of the death penalty. by Erin Sheley THERE IS MUCH TO find loathsome about Justice Kennedy's opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Louisiana statute allowing capital punishment for child rapists is unconstitutional. Most morally disgusting is the Court's conclusory recognition of "an incongruity between the crime of child rape and the harshness of the death penalty," which in this case would have been imposed on a man whose assault on his eight-year-old stepdaughter tore her internal organs away from...

When the Supreme Court ruled last week that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, the majority noted that a child rapist could face the ultimate penalty in only six states — not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government either. This inventory of jurisdictions was a central part of the court’s analysis, the foundation for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s conclusion in his majority opinion that capital punishment for child rape was contrary to the “evolving standards of decency” by which the court judges...

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...

WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court ruled last week that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, the majority noted that a child rapist could face the ultimate penalty in only six states — not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government either. This inventory of jurisdictions was a central part of the court’s analysis, the foundation for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s conclusion in his majority opinion that capital punishment for child rape was contrary to the “evolving standards of decency” by which the...

Mark Schwab was executed Tuesday evening by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison. Schwab was convicted of raping and killing 11-year-old Junny Rios Martinez of Brevard County in 1991.Tuesday morning, Schwab visited with his mother and aunt and ate his final meal of fried eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, buttered toast and chocolate milk. A representative of the prison said Schwab was polite and followed directions and visited with his religious adviser until 30 minutes before his 6 p.m. execution.The Supreme Court denied Schwab's last appeal early Tuesday evening.This was the first execution since the case of Angel Diaz...

The Supreme Court, in a decision that attempts to honor the sanctity of life and to reserve the death penalty for situations where a murder has occurred, has just given one who rapes a child and the child both a free pass on life. The rapist gets to spend the rest of their life in prison supported by tax payers, escaping the hangman's noose, while the child gets to spend the rest of their life supported by themselves and trying to avoid tying the noose to end their suffering . The Court got it wrong completely for the following reasons...

The state Supreme Court upheld the death sentence today for Ramon Salcido, who murdered his wife, two daughters, three other relatives and his supervisor at a Sonoma County winery during a three-hour rampage in 1989. The justices unanimously rejected defense challenges to Salcido's arrest and transfer from his native Mexico to the United States, his seven murder convictions and his death sentence. Salcido can appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, and has another case pending before the state's high court raising separate issues. Salcido, now 47, used a gun and knife to murder his wife, Angela Richards Salcido,...

THE LAW OF INTENDED CONSEQUENCESThe Constitution Of The United States. Article III, Section 3. Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted. The Congress shall have...

Conservatives were, rightly, thrilled by the recent Supreme Court decision that affirmed our constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Not so fast. Of the four important decisions the court has rendered in this term, three of them have gone the wrong way. Let's first take a brief look at each of these four cases. Then let us examine Justice Anthony Kennedy's thinking in these cases. Kennedy was either the deciding "swing vote" or the determining factor in each one. The only case correctly decided was (1) District of Columbia v. Heller. Justice Scalia wrote the Heller decision, which holds...

Most people would agree with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's assertion that the death penalty for child rape is not "proportional." Given that the court has not banned the death penalty — not yet — is proportionality relevant? The Constitution does ban "cruel and unusual" punishment, and that was the provision where Justice Kennedy and his four colleagues found justification Wednesday for overturning the Louisiana law allowing the death penalty in child-rape cases. But the death penalty itself is not "cruel and unusual" — again, not yet — and the Constitution says nothing about proportionality. Indeed, in the framers'...

She says home is cold and silent after husband, 2 sons slain in S.F.Danielle Bologna can't go back home. Just a week ago, her two-story house on a quiet street in San Francisco's Excelsior district was a bustling place, crammed with sports gear and trophies and team portraits, where she and her husband of 21 years were raising their four children.But in just seconds on Sunday, her family was torn apart: Her husband, Tony, 48, and the couple's sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, were shot and killed as they drove home from a family barbecue in Fairfield.What is left...

In the United States today we no longer enjoy the rule of law but instead the rule of lawyers — robed lawyers with the exalted title "justice" — but still unelected lawyers enacting their own policy preferences. Before their commonsense decision in the Second Amendment case, a different complement of justices (Justice Anthony Kennedy siding with the liberals) demonstrated what a flimsy hold the words of the Constitution have on our jurisprudence. In fact, when you consider that the court is pretty well divided between four liberals and four conservatives with Justice Kennedy swinging from one side to another as...

"On the death penalty, Mr. Obama wrote in his memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” (Crown, 2007), that the penalty “does little to deter crime.” But he added that society has the right to express outrage at heinous crimes. During his 2004 Senate campaign, he publicly supported the death penalty, even as he called the justice system flawed and urged a moratorium on executions." "Mr. Obama is an introspective candidate, and perhaps the best analyst of his own political style. “I serve as a blank screen,” he wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” “on which people of vastly different political stripes...

June 26, 2008, 6:00 a.m. Evolving Nonsense By the Editors In his opinion Wednesday for a five-justice majority in Kennedy v. Louisiana, Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments� forbids imposition of the death penalty for the rape of a child. Or, rather, he ruled that the Court’s modern rewriting of the Eighth Amendment as a license for the Court to impose its “independent judgment� of “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society� yields that result. If any further evidence were needed that the Supreme Court’s...

The Supreme Court's barring of the death penalty for child rapists in Kennedy v. Louisiana underscores the hazards in the court's abandonment of moral absolutes in favor of "evolving standards of decency" and the court's unbridled arrogance in substituting its subjective judgment for the legislatively enacted will of the people. In Kennedy, the court reversed the decision of the Louisiana Supreme Court to uphold the capital punishment of a convicted child rapist, holding that the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment clause prohibits executing such offenders "where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the...

Virginia's 100th execution in modern times was carried out last night as Robert Stacy Yarbrough died by injection for the 1997 slaying of a country store owner. Yarbrough, 30, was pronounced dead at the Greensville Correctional Center at 9:28 p.m. Asked if he had any last words, he said, "Tell my kids I love them. Let's get it over with. Make people happy," according to a prison spokesman. He was sentenced to die for the May 8, 1997, capital murder of Cyril H. Hamby, 77. Hamby was tied up and nearly decapitated with a knife during a robbery of the...

Jurors today convicted Juan Manuel Alvarez of 11 counts of first-degree murder for the deadly Metrolink crash he caused three years ago when he parked his vehicle on railroad tracks. The jury also found the 29-year-old Compton laborer guilty of arson and a special circumstance allegation that makes him eligible for the death penalty. Jurors will now hear testimony to determine whether Alvarez should be put to death for his crimes. Alvarez sat without showing emotion as the guilty verdicts were announced in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. The jury of nine women and three men took less than two...

Here's What Obama Said:Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says he disagrees with a Supreme Court decision striking down the death penalty for child rapists, telling reporters Wednesday that states should be able to execute people for “heinous” crimes. “I think that the rape of small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime,” the Illinois senator said. “And if a state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that does not violate our Constitution.” See the video!

Crime And Punishment: By 5 to 4, the Supreme Court has ruled capital punishment for child rapists unconstitutional. An Obama presidency will only expand the cruel and unusual majority that decides so many cases.Reasonable people can disagree as to whether the sexual assault of children, along with other despicable non-homicidal crimes — torture, say, or treason — warrant the death penalty. What is unreasonable is to dictate that the people, through their elected representatives, may not decide for themselves which of those horrific crimes deserve payment of the ultimate price. In Wednesday's Patrick Kennedy v. Louisiana ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy,...

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) — Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says he disagrees with a Supreme Court decision striking down the death penalty for child rapists, telling reporters Wednesday that states should be able to execute people for “heinous” crimes.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that executing a Louisiana child rapist would be unconstitutional, concluding capital punishment is reserved for murderers. The ruling was a 5-4 decision.

South Carolina on Friday electrocuted a man for murdering his ex-girlfriend's parents in 1994, the second execution in the state since a Supreme Court ruling lifted a de facto national moratorium, a state official said. James Earl Reed, 49, was convicted in 1996 of shooting Joseph and Barbara Lafayette multiple times, including execution-style shots in the heads, after they refused to tell him where their daughter was. He had dismissed his attorney during his trial and tried to defend himself in court. "The execution of James Earl Reed was carried out at 11:27 p.m.," state prison spokesman Josh Gelinas said....

McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann today on a conference call noted that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, said he didn't want to make Osama bin Laden a martyr. "The last I checked, a martyr is someone who dies for a cause or someone who is killed for a cause," Scheunemann said. "It seems that Senator Obama is ruling out capital punishment."

THE HAGUE - Mexico asked the World Court on Thursday to take urgent steps to stop imminent U.S. executions of five Mexicans on death row who were denied their rights to consular assistance. One of the five, Jose Medellin, is due to die on August 5 in Texas, which is poised to set execution dates for the others. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague ruled in 2004 that the United States had violated international law by failing to inform 51 Mexicans now on death row of their right to consular assistance and said the cases should be...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - Convicted killer Karl Eugene Chamberlain was put to death by lethal injection in Texas on Wednesday, becoming the first prisoner executed in the state since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted an unofficial moratorium on the death penalty in April.

Ohio Must Eliminate Two Drugs Used in Lethal Injection 6/10/2008 15:05:39 ELYRIA, Ohio (AP) -- A judge in northern Ohio has ruled that Ohio must stop using two of the three drugs administered in lethal injections. Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge says those drugs can cause a condemned inmate to suffer pain. Burge says the state must drop the combination of drugs and focus instead on a single anesthetic. Today's ruling comes in the case of two murder defendants who say the state's execution method doesn't provide the quick and painless death required by Ohio law. Two anesthesiologists...

It was two years ago yesterday that 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, a 1996 Kalani High School graduate, declared publicly that he would not deploy to Iraq with his Stryker brigade combat team. Today, Watada is still in the Army working at a desk job at Fort Lewis, Wash., while his case is tied up in federal court. Ken Kagan, Watada's attorney, told the Star-Bulletin that federal judge Benjamin Settle in Tacoma will probably take up the matter early this fall. In November, Settle ruled that no court-martial will be held for Watada pending the outcome of his claim that it...

Elderly foreign tourists are tapping Mexican pet shops for a drug used by veterinarians to put cats and dogs to sleep that has become the sedative of choice for euthanasia campaigners. Tourists from as far as Australia have travelled to Mexico to buy liquid pentobarbital, which causes a painless death in humans in less than an hour, right-to-die advocates say. Clutching photos of the bottled drug to overcome a lack of Spanish, they have maps sketched by euthanasia activists to locate back-street pet shops and veterinary supply stores near the US border. There they can buy a bottle for $35...

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) - Mexico has appealed to the U.N.'s highest court to seek a stay of execution for Mexican citizens on death row in the United States. It argues that U.S. authorities have failed to comply with an earlier ruling ordering a review of their trials. The 2004 ruling said the prisoners' rights were violated since they were denied contact with the Mexican consulate before being tried. The International Court of Justice said Mexico on Thursday asked the court for an "interpretation" of its 2004 judgment to clarify that the U.S. government must actually see the cases are reviewed....

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) -- Mexico appealed to the U.N.'s highest court Thursday to block the executions of Mexicans in the United States, arguing U.S. officials have failed to comply with a judgment ordering a review of their trials. The International Court of Justice said Mexico asked the court for an "interpretation" of an earlier ruling to clarify its meaning when it asked the U.S. to "review and reconsider" the cases of the condemned prisoners. Until that can be done, Mexico said the United States "must take any and all steps necessary" to ensure that none of its citizens is executed,...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (AP) -- On leave from the violence he had survived in the war in Iraq, a young Marine was so wary of crime on the streets of his own home town that he carried only $8 to avoid becoming a robbery target. Despite his caution, Lance Cpl. Robert Crutchfield, 21, was shot point-blank in the neck during a robbery at a bus stop. Feeding and breathing tubes kept him alive 41/2 months, until he died of an infection on May 18. Two men have been charged in the attack, and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason said Friday the...

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...

OKLAHOMA CITY - A call from death row inmate Terry Lyn Short interrupted a meeting in the office of his attorney, James Rowan. Short wanted a promise that, after he is put to death next month, he won't end up in a pauper's grave in the cemetery that contains the bodies of many of those hanged, electrocuted and lethally injected at the 100-year-old Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Rowan told his 47-year-old client not to be concerned about that. "It's not going to cost you anything, so don't worry about it. That's the least of your worries," he said. What worries Rowan...

('Dead Man Walking' inspiration Prejean shares mission) Personally witnessing the execution of her pen pal, a Louisiana death row inmate, lit a fire in Helen Prejean -- a fire she wanted to spark in others Sunday during her commencement speech to Edgewood College graduates at the Alliant Energy Center. "I want to talk to you about catching on fire. I want to talk to you about passion -- that you might lead a life of passion," Prejean told the class of 2008. When she began writing to Patrick Sonnier, who was executed in 1984 for the murders of two teenagers,...

"ORLANDO, Fla. -- A central Florida man has been sentenced to death for murdering his ex-girlfriend by setting her on fire. Orange County Circuit Judge Lisa Munyon followed a jury's recommendation when she sentenced 21-year-old Dane Abdool on Monday. The jury convicted Abdool of first-degree murder in December for the 2006 death of 17-year-old Amelia Sookdeo of Winter Garden."

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (AP) - Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says the euthanized Kentucky Derby horse Eight Belles probably died more humanely than death row prisoners do. Stevens drew a round of applause for his comments Friday night in Chattanooga at the 68th conference of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The comments were reported in the Chattanooga Times Free Press. According to the newspaper, in brief remarks Stevens told the audience he checked into the procedure used to kill Eight Belles and was surprised to learn it is against the law in Kentucky to kill animals using one...

McLean, Va. (AP) -- Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad has changed his mind again and now wants to go forward with a federal appeal of his conviction and death sentence, according to his lawyers. In a handwritten letter from death row made public this week, Muhammad told the Virginia attorney general that he wanted to suspend all appeals on his 2003 death sentence and that appeals filed on his behalf were not authorized. But Muhammad's lawyer, James Connell, wrote a letter Thursday to a U.S. District judge saying Muhammad now wants to go forward with his appeal. "Mr. Muhammad expressly...

Once again, a Philadelphia police officer has been shot and killed by a criminal who should have been in prison instead of free to commit more mayhem and destruction. Over the last two years, I've written more than a dozen columns about the murders committed by repeat offenders already convicted of a violent felony (sometimes murder) who spent little or no time in prison. These columns always ask why those in the criminal system - judges, police, lawyers, probation officers, parole boards, prison officials and elected politicians - aren't held responsible for permitting such people to roam free. Unfortunately, nothing...

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...

Washington - The US state of Georgia is set to execute William Earl Lynd on Tuesday, the first use of the death penalty in the United States in more than seven months. The execution comes after the Supreme Court last month upheld the right of states to use lethal injections, which opponents argued were unconstitutional and amounted to "cruel and unusual punishment."

A man who was adopted as a child and spent the past year researching his ancestry discovered that his biological father is on Ohio's death row for killing a corrections officer and two others in the state's worst prison riot. Sean Baker, 41, met his father, George Skatzes, 62, for the first time in March at the Mansfield Correctional Institution, where Skatzes is being held while he appeals his death sentence. Baker, a truck driver who lives in Henderson, Ky., said he was initially disturbed to learn that his father is a convicted murderer but now believes in his innocence....

I am pro-life and pro-death penalty and I am perfectly comfortable with that. I am against aborting an unborn baby except in the most rarest of circumstances. I believe that if left to Mother Nature, every fetus will become a normal human being. I find the practice of sucking out the brains of babies pulled almost all the way out feet first is an abomination and is morally reprehensable and indefenseable. I believe that too many times, abortion proponents, like Planned Parenthood, encourage abortions in order to bolster the argument that women want abortions. I am for capital punishment, the...

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has signaled its support for the death penalty, several states are rushing to schedule executions. It's as if the court's approval of lethal injection has suddenly made it a health cure. What ails the nation's flawed system of capital punishment won't be remedied, though, by tinkering with "the machinery of death," to use Justice Harry A. Blackmun's words. States would be far wiser to continue their de facto moratorium on executions that held while the court considered this latest case. That would provide more time to examine and expose the many problems with capital...