Free Republic

Missouri is preparing to execute a man who wasn't able to appeal his conviction in federal court because his attorneys missed a filing deadline to do so. Mark Christeson is scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. CDT Wednesday for the killing of a woman and her two children in 1998. * Christen was 18 in 1998 when he and his cousin, Jessie Carter, were living about a half-mile from Susan Brouk. On Feb. 1, the cousins broke into Brouk's home and used shoelaces to tie up her daughter, Arian, 12, and son Kyle, 9. Christeson raped Brouk in a bedroom....

A Chinese court has sentenced five cult members for beating a woman to death at a McDonald's restaurant in Shandong province last May. Two members were given death sentences, one was given a life sentence, and two were given 10 and seven-year jail terms. The victim was allegedly killed after she refused to give her phone number to the members, who tried to recruit her. The Church of the Almighty God cult is banned in China. However, it claims to have millions of members. 'A demon' Zhang Fan and her father Zhang Lidong were given death sentences by the Yantai...

Prison officials unveiled the renovated execution chamber inside the Oklahoma State Penitentiary on Thursday and expressed confidence that the agency would be ready for the state’s next scheduled execution in November. The $71,000 reconstruction of the death chamber and adjacent witness rooms gives executioners more space in which to operate. Department of Corrections also spent about $34,000 on new medical equipment, including $12,500 for a surgical table and $6,000 for an ultrasound machine to help locate veins. New protocols require more training for the execution team and backup procedures in case a lethal injection goes awry. …

Outgoing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered federal prosecutors not to seek the death penalty against three members of a Brooklyn drug crew charged with a killing in which the victim was tortured, the Daily News has learned. . . . John, 31, is accused of killing six people, and Johnson, 30, with four. Both also are members of the Bloods gang, court papers say. Jones, 31, is accused of one killing. Their trial is to start Oct. 22.

A Blair County man to be executed for three first-degree murder convictions asked a federal judge on Monday to stay his execution by Pennsylvania while he appeals his sentences. Miguel Padilla, 34, of Gallitzin plans a federal challenge of the constitutionality of his convictions and sentence, said the brief filed by Marshall Dayan, an assistant federal public defender who specializes in death penalty appeals. He's also asking for the court to appoint an attorney to handle his final appeal and waive his filing fees. Gov. Tom Corbett on Monday signed the death certificate for Padilla. Padilla's state appeals ran out...

BRUSSELS (AP) — A Belgian official says a convicted rapist and murderer who has been imprisoned for almost three decades has been granted the right to die after doctors agreed his psychological condition was incurable.

In just four weeks, Missouri has carried out an execution, imposed a 72-hour waiting period on women seeking abortions, expanded gun rights and become the poster child for the militarization of police and racial discord. Its public school system is struggling beneath the weight of an ongoing funding crisis, and an entire local police force is under federal investigation. While the killing of unarmed black teen Michael Brown by a small-city cop and the fiery protests and heavy-handed police response that followed has drawn national attention and scorn, the incident is but a glimpse into the current social and political...

Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, two men who have sat on North Carolina's death row for three decades for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl, were set free this week after the discovery of new DNA evidence.

Pennsylvania’s chief justice wants the state Supreme Court to ban lawyers at an organization that currently handles many appeals by convicted murderers on the state's death row. Chief Justice Ronald Castille took that position in a rare single-justice opinion issued late Wednesday that resolved a number of issues surrounding a decision he wrote three years ago. In both opinions, Castille took aim at the Philadelphia-based Federal Community Defender Office, writing that the group has engaged in abusive and unethical practices that warrant removing its lawyers from all Pennsylvania cases. …

Audio obtained by Complete Colorado has raised significant new issues regarding Governor John Hickenlooper’s stance on the death penalty. In an interview with CNN earlier this year, Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper suggested that if he does not win reelection, he could use his executive powers to overhaul Colorado’s death row with clemency. In particular, the Governor suggested these remedies were conditional – if his opponent turned the death penalty, or the Dunlap case in particular, into a “political football.” In the audio, the unidentified CNN interviewer asks, “But it (the death penalty) is an issue. And, you know, some of...

Saudi authorities beheaded a Pakistani Thursday after sentencing him to death for drug trafficking, the Interior Ministry said, taking to 25 the number of executions announced this year.

A federal appeals judge issued a blistering dissent in a death-row case on Monday, declaring that an execution system that relies on drugs is doomed and the guillotine would be better. "Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful — like something any one of us might experience in our final moments," Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote. "But executions are, in fact, nothing like that. They are brutal, savage events, and nothing...

Chinese authorities executed on Friday a Japanese man who had been sentenced to death in connection with stimulant drug smuggling, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said. The identity of the man is not immediately known. Kishida told a news conference that while it is up to China to decide what kind of penalty should be imposed on criminals, "We have conveyed to the Chinese side that we have taken a heightened interest in the death penalty handed down to Japanese nationals." China informed Japan of the execution in the morning, Kishida said. A court in Dalian in northeastern China conveyed...

The state of Arizona executed double murderer Joseph Wood this week. The convicted killer was injected with a combination of lethal drugs that eventually caused his death; however, it took too long according to some observers. After being administered the drugs, Wood lingered for almost two hours before dying. Witnesses included reporter Troy Hayden who said the execution was “botched” and that Wood’s last words were similar to “a fish on shore gulping for air.” While Hayden complained that the execution was “very disturbing to watch,” U.S. Senator John McCain noted that it was “terrible” and amounted to “torture.” During...

The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday overturned death sentences for Jonathan and Reginald Carr, brothers convicted of murdering five people in one of Wichita’s most notorious crime sprees. The state’s high court in separate rulings issued Friday unanimously struck down three of each man’s four capital murder convictions in the Dec. 15, 2000, execution-style killings of four people in a snow-covered soccer field. A remaining capital murder conviction for each man was upheld by the court, but the death sentence connected to it was vacated after a 6-1 majority said the district court judge who presided over the brothers’ trial...

U.S. Sen. John McCain says the execution of an Arizona inmate that lasted two hours was torture. The Republican who represents the conservative state told Politico that he supports capital punishment for certain crimes but felt Wednesday’s execution of Joseph Rudolph Wood was a “bollocks-upped situation.” The execution has renewed debate about the death penalty. But Arizona lawmakers say the debate is not likely to have an impact on practices in the state. …

Days before an Arizona murderer gasped and snorted for more than 90 minutes and died nearly two hours after his execution began, a conservative federal appeals judge called for replacing lethal injection with firing squads, saying the public must acknowledge that executions are "brutal, savage events." "Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and beautiful — like something any one of us might experience in our final moments," U.S. 9th Circuit Court Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in a dissent...

A -- all bow -- federal judge has ruled that California's death penalty is unconstitutional because the state's "dysfunctional administration" has meted out the punishment to more than 900 murderers but imposed it on "only 13" since 1978. That's too arbitrary, wrote U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney of Santa Ana. Besides, "the slight possibility of death, almost a generation after (killer Ernest Dewayne Jones) was first sentenced, violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment." And: A "death sentence carefully and deliberately imposed by the jury has been quietly transformed into one no rational jury or legislature...

California's system for imposing and carrying out the death penalty is so long and drawn-out that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and so is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday. Ruling in the case of Ernest Dewayne Jones, who was condemned to death in 1995 and has yet to be executed, Judge Cormac J. Carney of the U.S. District Court for the Central California said that to take "nearly a generation" to decide on Jones' appeals was unconstitutional. As part of the ruling, Carney vacated the death penalty sentence in Jones' case. "The dysfunctional administration of California's...

<p>A federal judge in Orange County ruled Wednesday that California’s death penalty violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.</p> <p>U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney, ruled on a petition by death row inmate Ernest Dewayne Jones, who was sentenced to die nearly two decades ago.</p>