Free Republic

At least eight women and one man are reported to have been sentenced to death by stoning in Iran. The group, convicted of adultery and sex offences, could be executed at any time, lawyers defending them say. The lawyers have called on the head of Iran's judiciary to prevent the sentences from being carried out. The last officially reported stoning in Iran last year drew strong criticism from human rights groups and the European Union. The eight women sentenced, whose ages range from 27 to 43, had convictions including prostitution, incest and adultery, Reuters news agency reported. The man, a...

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...

Pennsylvania death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal has asked a federal appeals court to reconsider the decision that denied him a new trial in the 1981 slaying of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. ***snip*** Abu-Jamal, 54, has been on death row since his 1982 conviction in the killing of Faulkner, who was shot to death near 13th and Locust Streets early in the morning of Dec. 9, 1981

Few if any murders carry the horrifying cachet of the Manson murders in 1969. The deaths of seven people on two nights at the end of a tumultuous decade combined all of the political and cultural baggage of the era — drugs, counterculture, celebrity, cults, and pure evil in the form of the perpetrators, especially Charles Manson himself. Combining mass murder and serial murder, the Manson Family has played on the imaginations of Americans for almost 40 years, while its members routinely apply for parole and get rejected. Now one of them faces death, although much different in nature than...

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday the death penalty cannot be imposed for child rape, its first decision in more than 30 years on whether a crime other than murder can be punished by execution.

In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court ruled that Capital Punishment for convicted child rapists was unconstitutional under the 8th Amendment tenant of Cruel and Unusual Punishment. Just Kennedy wrote the opinion for the majority stating that the use of Capital Punishment was: “not proportional for the rape of a child.” My question to Justice Kennedy is then, what IS proportional punishment for the rape of an innocent child? A slap on the wrist? A short prison stay followed by your name in a database full of other like minded perverts? What is taken from these children can never be...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Wednesday that child rapists cannot be executed, concluding capital punishment is reserved for murderers. Patrick Kennedy, 43, was on Louisiana's death row for raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. The ruling stemmed from the case of Patrick Kennedy, who has been on Louisiana's death row since 2003, when he was sentenced to be executed for raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that "evolving standards of decency" in the United States forbid capital punishment for any crime other than murder. Execution of Patrick Kennedy, the justices ruled, would...

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.

The Bush administration's "extraordinary" effort to comply with an international court order granting new hearings for 51 Mexican nationals on death row has been stymied by federal laws, U.S. State Department lawyers said Friday. "The issue of capital punishment arouses deep feelings," said State Department legal adviser John B. Bellinger III, according to transcripts filed with the court. "But this is not about the death penalty." Bellinger told the International Court of Justice -- the principal judicial organ of the United Nations -- that while the administration understands its obligation to abide by the court's rulings, current U.S. law does...

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine announced this afternoon that he will commute the death sentence of convicted triple murderer Percy Levar Walton because he does not believe Walton meets the Supreme Court criteria of mental competence required for an execution to proceed. Walton, now 29, was scheduled to become the 100th convict executed in Virginia since the federal reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, a capital punishment tally topped only by the justice system in Texas. He was sentenced to death after he admitted killing an elderly couple and another man in their homes over a 10-day period in 1996....

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,...

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...

Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad asks prosecutors in a letter for help to put an end to his legal appeals from death row. Muhammad says in the letter released Tuesday that he is waiving all rights to appeal his 2003 conviction and death sentence for the sniper killings in 2002 that terrorized the Washington, D.C., region. Muhammad says he has tried without success to stop efforts by his defense lawyers,

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....

RICHMOND, April 1 -- Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine announced Tuesday that he is halting all executions until the Supreme Court decides whether lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear the appeals of seven Mexican-born prisoners condemned to die in Texas, including two who had committed murders in Houston in the 1990s. The action followed a high court ruling last week in which the justices rebuffed President Bush for directing the state of Texas to abide by a world court ruling and rehear the case of another Mexican on death row.

WASHINGTON - President Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered a Texas court to reopen the case of a Mexican on death row for rape and murder, the Supreme Court said Tuesday. In a case that mixes presidential power, international relations and the death penalty, the court sided with Texas 6-3. Bush was in the unusual position of siding with death row prisoner Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican citizen whom police prevented from consulting with Mexican diplomats, as provided by international treaty. An international court ruled in 2004 that the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row...

WASHINGTON — President Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered a Texas court to grant a new hearing to a Mexican on death row for rape and murder, the Supreme Court said Tuesday. In a case that mixes presidential power, international relations and the death penalty, the court sided with Texas 6-3. Bush was in the unusual position of siding with death row prisoner Jose Ernesto Medellin, a Mexican citizen whom police prevented from consulting with Mexican diplomats, as provided by international treaty. An international court ruled in 2004 that the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death...

DALLAS (AP) -- A man who was on death row for nearly 20 years until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned his verdict because of racial discrimination has pleaded guilty to the 1985 slaying for which he was originally sentenced to die. Thomas Miller-El accepted a deal with prosecutors Wednesday that spares the 56-year-old from heading to death row for a second time but virtually assures he will never leave prison. A judge sentenced Miller-El to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to capital murder and aggravated robbery in the killing of a hotel clerk. He waived his right to...

A Fairfax County jury yesterday convicted {Salvadoran} Alfredo R. Prieto of two counts of capital murder in the slaying of a young couple near Reston in December 1988, and the jury will decide whether he should be executed....Prieto is on death row in California for the 1990 rape and shooting of a 15-year-old girl....is also charged in Arlington County with the rape and shooting of a woman in 1988...In addition, Prieto is a "strong suspect" in the fatal shooting of a man in Prince William County in 1989, Prince William Commonwealth's Attorney Paul B. Ebert said...authorities think Prieto killed five...

HOUSTON, (AP) -- A convicted killer sent to death row for killing a sheriff's deputy apparently committed suicide in his cell, prison officials said Tuesday. The body of Jesus Flores, 25, was found by a corrections officer about 4 a.m. Tuesday. Flores was pronounced dead about an hour later, said Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. "He had lacerations on his throat and forehead," she said. Flores apparently tried to use his own blood to scribble a message on the wall, but it was illegible, Lyons said. Flores was convicted of capital murder for the...

Garth Stapley, one of The Modesto Bee's lead reporters on the Scott and Laci Peterson case, shares the story behind the story in a column Sunday. He describes staking out jurors in a parking garage and debunking a defense theory that Laci was captured by Satanists.

<p>A state district judge Monday ordered officials in an East Texas county to preserve a 1-inch-long piece of hair that was key evidence almost two decades ago in a capital murder case.</p> <p>An anti-death penalty group wants to know whether Claude Jones was wrongly executed in December 2000. Jones was the last of a record 40 inmates executed in Texas that year and the last of 152 inmates put to death during George W. Bush's time as governor.</p>

The wife of executed killer Michael Richard filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday accusing Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller of causing the inmate's Sept. 25 lethal injection. Marsha Richard of Houston claims Keller had no authority to prevent what would have been a successful appeal to stay her husband's execution. The lawsuit says Keller violated Michael Richard's due process rights when she ordered the court clerk's office to close promptly at 5 p.m. on Sept. 25 before his lawyers could file an appeal. Houston attorney David Dow had asked for more time after having computer problems. The...

Attorneys for a suburban Dallas man condemned for killing his parents hoped a U.S. Supreme Court review of lethal injection procedures in Kentucky could keep him from the Texas death chamber Thursday evening. Attorneys for Carlton Turner Jr. scrambled to file appeals in the courts to tie his case to one filed by two condemned inmates in Kentucky who argue the three-drug process used in lethal injection is unconstitutionally cruel. The U.S. Supreme Court this week agreed to look at the procedure, which also is used in Texas. "The inmate will be forced into a chemical straitjacket, unable to express...

Death sentence appeal rejected The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from a 28-year-old Honduran man who is scheduled to be executed next week for the 2001 robbery and fatal shooting of a south Arlington clothing store manager. Heliberto Chi was sentenced to die Oct. 3 by lethal injection for robbing and killing Armand Paliotta, 56, at the K&G Men's Superstore in southwest Arlington. The nation's highest court rejected claims by Chi’s court-appointed attorney, Wes Ball, that Chi was not allowed to contact his country's consular as prescribed by the Vienna Convention on Consular Rights. That 1963 treaty was meant...

An illegal immigrant who's been deported five times will be facing the death penalty for a Phoenix murder. Demetro Acosta-Uribe is accused of shooting Ivan Santos to death earlier this year. According to police reports the Santos's body was found in May, 2007 in the front yard of a west Phoenix home. The victim had been shot to death after he was bound and his head covered in plastic wrap. Two other men were also found on the property, restrained in the same manner. Neither had been shot, but one of the victims would have suffocated had a neighbor not...

CINCINNATI (AP) -- A death row inmate convicted of setting a fire that killed five children must be released or retried because his constitutional rights were violated when his confession was used at trial, a federal appeals court panel ruled Tuesday. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges ruled 2-1 that William Garner didn't understand his right to silence when he told police he would waive his Miranda rights against self-incrimination. He gave a taped statement to police, saying he set fire to a Cincinnati apartment with six children inside to destroy evidence of his burglary, according to court...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A drifter set to die this week for killing an Amarillo woman is the first of five convicted killers scheduled for lethal injection this month in the nation's busiest capital punishment state. Tony Roach, 30, from Greenville, S.C., faces execution Wednesday for strangling 37-year-old Ronnie Dawn Hewitt after breaking in her apartment nine years ago. His punishment would bring to 24 the number of executions in Texas this year, equaling the total for all of last year. Four men were executed last month, including two last week. A third set to die last week, Kenneth Foster, received...

Earnest Lee Hargon Stabbed to Death PARCHMAN, Miss. (AP) Earnest Lee Hargon, on death row since December 2005 for murdering a Vaughan couple and their young son, was stabbed to death Tuesday night by a fellow inmate at the state prison in Parchman. Sunflower County Coroner Douglas Card says the 46-year-old Hargon was stabbed 30 times. The incident, which occurred at the prison's maximum security unit, is under investigation. Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps says Hargon died at the prison hospital after being stabbed about 8:53 p.m. Epps says Hargon was cleaning a tier at Unit 32 when inmate Jessie Wilson...

Japan executes three murderers in 60s Friday, August 24, 2007 - TOKYO, AFP Japan on Thursday hanged three convicted murderers in their 60s as the country stepped up the pace of executions, officials and activists said. A justice ministry spokeswoman said the prison system hanged three criminals but declined to provide any further details, in line with standard procedure in Japan. Amnesty International and media reports said the three were convicted murderers aged between 60 and 69. Japan is the only major industrialized nation other than the United States to practice the death penalty. Despite enjoying one of the world's...

Chicago (AP) -- A former death row inmate who came to symbolize a broken criminal justice system was sentenced Tuesday to 30 years in prison for trading in guns and drugs. Aaron Patterson, 43, gained international fame when he was one of four men pardoned by then-Gov. George Ryan, who also reduced to life in prison the death sentences of every inmate on Illinois' death row. But in 2005 he was convicted on the new charges, and federal prosecutors claim he coordinated gang activities while he was in prison. Patterson entered the courtroom Tuesday yelling and cursing at his attorneys...

 Sleepless On Death RowAugust 2, 2007 Last week two career criminals on parole invaded a Cheshire Connecticut home and murdered three of its four occupants...after sexually pleasing themselves with the victims. The local news kept repeating that politicians, community leaders and average citizens wanted to know “Why?”.   How could anybody do something so “Unfathomable” to such nice people?  The answer lies with the supplicants. Give me a good reason not to be a murderer...especially if you live in a liberal State? Look at a sampling of murder...Connecticut style. Wikipedia sums it up the best, “Connecticut has executed one person since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed...

TITUSVILLE, Fla. — Death row inmate Mark Dean Schwab is a "scientific mystery" who should be spared execution so he can be further studied to prevent other pedophiles from raping and killing children, his attorney said in a motion for clemency. Schwab, 38, was sentenced to death for the 1991 kidnapping, rape and murder 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez of Cocoa. Schwab, who had recently been released from prison for raping another child, targeted Junny after seeing his picture in a newspaper. "As long as he's alive he is available for psychological research, examinations and evaluations, which could in the future prevent...

71 Child Offenders Are on Death Row, According to Rights Group In a troubling report on the execution of minors in Iran, Amnesty International said yesterday that at least 71 child offenders are on death row and more than 24 have been executed since 1990, more than in any other country. Defendants younger than 18 are being hanged after swift decisions and hurried procedures, said the report, "Iran: The Last Executioner of Children." Of the 24 child offenders reported executed, 11 were still younger than 18 at the time of their deaths. The 41-page report lists names and details of...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Condemned prisoner Patrick Knight was executed Tuesday evening for the deaths of an Amarillo-area couple without delivering on a promise to tell a joke in his final statement. Patrick Knight has been soliciting jokes in the mail and on a Web site, sometimes receiving as many as 20 a day, saying his humor was intended to raise the spirits of other inmates. He said he received as many as 1,300 proposals. But when the moment came, Knight thanked God for his friends and asked for help for innocent men on death row. He named several he said...

LIVINGSTON — Condemned inmate Patrick Knight is ready to die, and die laughing. Knight, 39, convicted of the fatal shooting of his neighbors almost 16 years ago outside Amarillo, has been considering dozens of jokes he's been receiving in recent weeks since drawing attention for his desire to tell a joke as part of his final statement from the Texas death chamber gurney. He's scheduled for lethal injection tonight in Huntsville. "Death is my punishment, I've accepted that," he said last week from death row. "I'm not afraid of dying." But with Texas the nation's leader in capital punishment, he...

Condemned inmate Patrick Knight is ready to die, and die laughing. Knight, 39, convicted of the fatal shooting of his neighbors almost 16 years ago outside Amarillo, has been considering dozens of jokes he's been receiving in recent weeks since drawing attention for his desire to tell a joke as part of his final statement from the Texas death chamber gurney. He's scheduled for lethal injection Tuesday evening in Huntsville.

SAN FRANCISCO — With the latest death at San Quentin State Prison, suicide has supplanted execution as the second leading cause of death on California's death row. The leading reason for inmate deaths is natural causes. Tony Lee Reynolds' death Sunday was the 14th suicide — one more than the number of condemned inmates executed in California since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1978. There are now 666 inmates on death row, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Executions have been halted for 16 months by a federal judge who ordered prison officials to revise lethal...

A death row Republican The condemned man says he supports public executions By Dan Williamson / May 3, 2007 Christopher J. Newton murdered his cellmate because he kept surrendering during chess games. The convicted murderer who’s next on Ohio’s execution list didn’t sound particularly remorseful about killing his cellmate in cold blood, but he said this week he deserves to die. Christopher J. Newton was surprisingly candid in his conversation Monday with Dayton Daily News reporter Laura Bischoff, who interviewed Newton on behalf of the Ohio Legislative Correspondents Association. In addition to explaining why he murdered his cellmate at the...

5-year term for investigator in forgery case - "I believe that the death penalty is illegal...It is barbaric and an atrocity...Any acts I committed are out of a firm belief against the state killing these people." Mark Martin, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau Tuesday, May 1, 2007 (05-01) 04:00 PDT Sacramento -- A former criminal defense investigator accused of forging statements from jurors, witnesses and others in death penalty cases pleaded guilty to four charges Monday and accepted a five-year prison sentence. Kathleen Culhane, 40, said outside a Sacramento courtroom that she filed incorrect documents on behalf of five condemned inmates because...

A private investigator who worked to get condemned inmates off death row pleaded guilty Monday to forging documents to support their appeals. Kathleen Culhane, 40, admitted that she forged documents to try to stop the executions of four condemned inmates since 2002, including Michael Morales, who was sentenced to death for the 1981 rape and murder of a Central Valley teenager. The plea agreement by the San Francisco-based investigator was entered in Sacramento County Superior Court and settles a case that the state attorney general called the largest fraud ever against the state's criminal justice system. "This case is not...

(April 26, 2007)--A man whose criminal record dated back to a bicycle theft at age nine was put to death Thursday evening in Huntsville. Ryan Dickson, 30, was sentenced to die for the murder of 61-year-old Amarillo grocery clerk Carmelo Surace in 1994. Also killed the attempted beer theft was Surace's 60-year-old wife, Marie. Dickson was the 13th Texas inmate put to death this year in the nation's busiest capital punishment state. Dickson's lawyer, Ronald Spriggs, launched "a last-minute effort" court effort to block the execution, but the appeals failed. He contended Dickson might have been mentally retarded and ineligible...

Four Of State's Eight Death Row Inmates Continue Hunger Strike Associated Press April 26 2007, 2:20 PM EDT Four of the state's eight death row inmates remained on a hunger strike Thursday to protest conditions at Northern Correctional Institution in Somers. One of the original five participants in the hunger strike, which started April 16, has started accepting meals again, Department of Correction spokesman Brian Garnett said. He would not identify the five prisoners, but said medical professionals are monitoring the four who are still refusing to accept meals. The inmates said in a statement released April 16 through an...

A MAN who spent 25 years on Texas death row was executed by lethal injection today for a 1980 murder but only after prison officials had to carry him to the death chamber. Joseph Nichols, 45, was the second person in as many days and the eighth person put to death this year in Texas. The state leads the nation with 387 executions since 1982, when it reinstated the death penalty six years after the US Supreme Court lifted a capital punishment ban. He refused to walk to the death chamber but did not put up a fight, a prison...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A paroled car and truck thief was executed Tuesday evening for a robbery and shooting that left two men dead a quarter-century ago outside Houston. When asked by the warden if he had anything to say, Donald Miller shook his head once. At 6:16 p.m., six minutes after the lethal dose began, he was pronounced dead.

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a condemned Texas woman set to die for the slaying of a three-month-old child she was baby-sitting. The court rejected the appeal yesterday of 50-year-old Cathy Lynn Henderson, who faces execution April 18th for the 1994 beating death of Brandon Baugh. The baby's body was found stuffed in a wine cooler carton and buried in a field in Bell County, about 50 miles north of Henderson's Austin-area home. The discovery came nearly three weeks after the child was first reported missing.

Should the U.S. save millions in tax dollars by having a shorter time period for prisoners on Death Row, like Iraq? Yes No

Nov. 16, 2006, 12:10AM Court: Bush overstepped in capital cases Judges say he had no authority to order hearings for 46 Mexicans By MARO ROBBINS San Antonio Express-news Texas' top criminal court rebuffed President Bush on Wednesday, ruling that he overstepped his bounds last year when he told state courts to give new hearings to more than a dozen death row inmates from Mexico. The unanimous opinion from the all-Republican Court of Criminal Appeals was the first decision in dozens of cases pending across the nation that rely heavily on the president's unusual intervention on behalf of 46 condemned Mexican...