Free Republic

RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi court of cassation upheld a ruling to behead and crucify a 22-year-old man convicted of raping five children and leaving one of them to die in the desert, newspapers reported on Tuesday. International rights groups have accused the kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, of applying draconian justice, beheading murderers, rapists and drug traffickers in public.

/begin my excerpts Picketing N. Korean Defector Bumping Face-to-Face into N. Korean Ambassador Ma Young-ae, N. Korean defector and artist, now residing in U.S. and heading (Christian) N. Korean Refugee Mission, was picketing with Choi Eun-chol, the (mission's) administrative manager, in front of N. Korea's Mission at U.N.. They were urging the International Criminal Court to indict Kim Jong-il, when they met face-to-face with (N. Korean) Ambassador (to U.N.) Shin Sun-ho. When she confronted him, he and his assistant gave her a brief look and headed for U.N. Headquarter. She followed them, with a new sign board saying, "Kim Jong-il,...

The mastermind of the sniper attacks that terrorized Washington-area residents in October 2002 will die by lethal injection next month, a Virginia corrections official said Tuesday. The state will give convicted killer John Allen Muhammad a lethal injection because he declined to choose between that and electrocution. "So under the Code of Virginia it defaults to lethal injection," said state Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor. A prisoner has until 15 days before the execution to decide on which method, according to Virginia law.

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - The mastermind of the 2002 Washington, DC-area sniper attacks will die by lethal injection next month, Virginia officials said Tuesday. John Allen Muhammad declined to choose between lethal injection and electrocution, so under state law the method defaults to lethal injection, Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a string of shootings. The three-week killing spree in October 2002 left 10 dead in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - Ohio was on track this year to execute a record number of inmates. One botched execution and several lawsuits later, the death penalty is temporarily on hold there. The latest challenge: The state can't find medical professionals willing to advise it on the best way to put condemned inmates to death because of ethical and professional rules. The rules—which generally prohibit doctors, nurses and others from involvement in capital punishment—are deterring those professionals from speaking publicly or privately about alternatives to the state's lethal injection process, Attorney General Richard Cordray said in a court filing. "A...

Exile groups report the deaths of four Tibetans linked to last year's riots. Chinese authorities have carried out their first executions of Tibetans in connection with the deadly riots that swept Lhasa last year, according to exile groups. As the first reported judicial killings in the region for six years, the news has prompted overseas protests and concerns that proper legal procedures were not followed. The Chinese state media have yet to confirm the executions. However, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, based in Dharamsala in northern India, said it had reports that they took place early on...

Lawrence Reynolds had been scheduled to be executed on Thursday Two more executions have been delayed in the US state of Ohio, three weeks after an attempt to put another man to death by lethal injection failed. On 15 September, the execution of Romell Broom was abandoned after Ohio officials failed to find a vein. Judges halted Thursday's execution in the state of Lawrence Reynolds, 43. The state governor then delayed next month's execution of Darryl Durr, until a judge hears arguments over problems with the injection process. The execution of Broom - convicted of rape and murder - is...

A federal appeals court Monday halted the execution of an inmate three weeks after problems with a lethal-injection attempt. A panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati ruled 2-1 to grant the request of 43-year-old Lawrence Reynolds Jr., who had been sentenced to die for strangling his 67-year-old neighbor during a 1994 robbery. On Sept. 15, Gov. Ted Strickland stopped the lethal injection of Romell Broom after state executioners struggled for two hours to find a usable vein. Mr. Broom's execution is on hold while his attorneys prepare for a Nov. 30 federal-court hearing. They argue...

"AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry on Thursday defended his removal of three commissioners looking into whether the state used bad science to execute an innocent man, suggesting too much was being made of his move. On Wednesday, Perry decided to replace three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, including its chairman, just two days before it conducted a hearing to examine the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. The new chairman canceled the meeting."

Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said Monday he can't think of any reason he would stop the execution of Washington, D.C.-area sniper John Allen Muhammad. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 killing spree that left 10 dead in the nation's capital, Virginia and Maryland. "I know of nothing in this case now that would suggest that there is any credible claim of innocence or that there was anything procedurally wrong with the prosecution," Kaine said on his monthly call-in radio show on WTOP. Kaine said he would review Muhammad's petition for clemency when he...

Suspected drug hitmen burst into a Mexican radio station and shot dead a journalist in front of his colleagues in the latest brazen attack on the media, authorities and a Mexican newspaper said on Thursday. Gunmen shot Norberto Miranda, 44, several times in the rural town of Nuevo Casas Grandes in Chihuahua state near the U.S. border on Wednesday night. "His body was found full of bullets in the radio's offices," said a spokesman for the Chihuahua attorney general's office. The newspaper El Diario said Miranda, who was well-known locally, had recently reported on growing drug violence in the remote...

Can a vein save a convicted killer? It the case of Romell Broom—it might. Broom was sentenced to death for raping and murdering 14-year-old Tryna Middleton on Sept. 21, 1984. Broom isn't supposed to be alive to witness the 25th anniversary of Middleton's death—but he is. Last Tuesday, the execution team at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility spent several hours trying unsuccessfully to find a viable vein for a lethal injection. Now, Ohio is faced with the difficult task of determining whether it can try to execute Broom a second time, after it botched the first attempt.

It must have been a grim scene on Tuesday night inside of Ohio’s state prison at Lucasville. Romell Broom lay strapped to a gurney with a team of medical technicians and correction officials hovering about him. But rather than receiving emergency medical treatment, Romell was waiting to die. Back in 1984, Broom had been convicted of abducting a fourteen-year-old child as she walked home from a football game in Cleveland, raping her and killing her. No credible opposition to the evidence presented against him was forthcoming, and the court determined that Romell should no longer be sharing above ground real...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A Virginia circuit court judge has set a Nov. 10 execution date for John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the 2002 sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C., area.

LUCASVILLE, Ohio — Gov. Ted Strickland ordered a weeklong reprieve for a condemned inmate on Tuesday after the Ohio execution team had problems finding usable veins for the lethal injection process. Executioners were unable for more than two hours to find veins that would accept fluid from an IV without collapsing for 53-year-old Romell Broom, who was sentenced to die for the rape and slaying of a 14-year-old Tryna Middleton in 1984.

Seven lawyers in Tabriz and Mashhad who had been representing young Iranians detained in post-presidential election protests have been killed by the Iranian authorities in recent days, according to sources in Iran. Their deaths have deterred other lawyers from taking detainees' cases, they added. The sources spoke to The Jerusalem Post by telephone, and requested that their identities remain undisclosed for their own security. In Tabriz, Iran's fourth-largest city, the bodies of five lawyers were returned to their families earlier this week, the sources said. The five had been representing some of the hundreds of Iranians detained in the northwestern...

TEHRAN — Iran hanged 24 convicted drug traffickers in a prison last week in one of the country's biggest mass executions, the Etemad newspaper reported on Wednesday. "On Thursday, 24 international drug traffickers were hanged in a prison in Karaj," deputy Tehran prosecutor Mahmoud Salarkia was quoted as saying. "Their execution was approved by the supreme court." The report did not identify any of those sent to the gallows in Karaj, a town west of Tehran. The latest hangings bring to at least 219 the number of people executed in the Islamic republic so far this year, according to an...

A Christian woman accused of distributing the Bible, a book banned in communist North Korea, was publicly executed last month for the crime, South Korean activists said today. The 33-year-old mother of three, Ri Hyon Ok, also was accused of spying for South Korea and the United States, and of organizing dissidents, a rights group said in Seoul, citing documents obtained from the North. The Investigative Commission on Crime Against Humanity report included a copy of Ri's government-issued photo ID and said her husband, children and parents were sent to a political prison the day after her June 16 execution....

Later Christmas Eve, Keene and accomplice DeMarcus Smith approached 18-year-old Danita Gullette at a pay phone, took her jacket and shoes and fatally shot the woman, prosecutors said. Gullette was the mother of a 2-year-old girl.

In a shocking and unprecedented interview, directly exposing the inhumanity of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's religious regime in Iran, a serving member of the paramilitary Basiji militia has told this reporter of his role in suppressing opposition street protests in recent weeks. He has also detailed aspects of his earlier service in the force, including his enforced participation in the rape of young Iranian girls prior to their execution. The interview took place by telephone, and on condition of anonymity. It was arranged by a reliable source whose identity can also not be revealed. Founded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in...

NEW DELHI (AP) — India's top court has refused to replace hanging with lethal injection as the country's sole method of execution, saying there is no evidence it is less painful than other ways. Monday's ruling rejected a petition by rights activist Ashok Kumar Walia, who said hanging was a "cruel and painful" method of execution and should be replaced by lethal injection, which is used in more than 30 U.S. states as a primary method of execution. "How do you know that hanging causes pain? And how do you know that injecting the condemned prisoner with a lethal drug...

A best-selling author and critic of Islam says he can't understand why U.S. President Barack Obama and the United Nations are not expressing more outrage over the execution-style murder of three Christian missionaries in Yemen, apparently by al Qaeda. According to a spokesman from the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, nine foreign nationals -- four German adults, three small German children, a British man, and a South Korean woman -- were abducted on June 12 after they ventured outside the city of Saada without their required police escorts. Days later the bodies of German nurses Rita Stumpp and Anita Gruenwald, and...

A man who fatally stabbed a convenience store clerk during a robbery 23 years ago apologized repeatedly to her relatives and to his mother before he was executed Tuesday. "I know I hurt you very bad," Michael Lynn Riley said to his victim's relatives, including her two daughters and husband. "I want you to know I'm sorry." Brandy Oaks said she accepted Riley's apology and was pleased to hear it. She was 4 when her mother, Wynona Harris, was killed. "This is a difficult day and there are no winners on either side," Oaks said. "Her spirit will live on...

McALESTER — Proclaiming his innocence and saying he would see his victim in heaven, a man convicted of battering his girlfriend's 8-year-old son and stuffing the dead body in an abandoned freezer was executed Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.--snip--Gilson became the second person to be executed this year in Oklahoma. Gilson was convicted of first-degree murder in 1998. The boy's remains were found in an abandoned freezer outside a mobile home in rural Cleveland County. An autopsy showed two fractures to the boy's skull, a tooth missing from his right jaw and fractures to his collarbone, shoulder blades, ribs,...

Thirty years ago this week, philanthropist Habib Elghanian became the first Jew executed by Iran’s radical Islamic regime after he was falsely charged and convicted of spying for Israel. His death by firing squad on May 9, 1979, sent shockwaves through Iran’s tight-knit Jewish community, which once lived in relative peace under the Shah. It prompted scores of Iran’s nearly 80,000 Jews to immediately sell off or abandon their assets and flee the country. At least 13 Jews have been executed in Iran since Elghanian. This week, as local Iranian Jews commemorate Elghanian’s death, The Journal spoke with family members,...

COLUMBIA, S.C. — An Alabama man convicted of killing a police officer has been executed in South Carolina, after cutting himself with a razor Friday. Thomas Treshawn Ivey was put to death by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. Friday in the state's death chamber in Columbia. The 34-year-old made no final statement. Prison officials said Ivey removed a blade from a disposable razor earlier and suffered non-life-threatening wounds when he cut himself on the neck. They strapped him to a chair, until he was strapped down for the lethal injection.

(05-08) 15:31 PDT Columbia, S.C. (AP) -- An Alabama man convicted of killing a police officer has been executed in South Carolina.Thomas Treshawn Ivey was put to death by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. Friday in the state's death chamber in Columbia. The 34-year-old made no final statement. Ivey had been awaiting execution since 1995, when he was convicted of killing Tommy Harrison. Prosecutors said Ivey shot the 38-year-old Orangeburg police sergeant in 1993 after trying to pass a bad check.

NINE people, including a 30-year-old woman, have been hanged in Iran, state media reported yesterday. The state-run daily newspaper Iran said four of the nine including the woman were convicted of murder in separate cases and were hanged on Wednesday. The woman was found guilty of killing her husband with a hammer, it said.

Iran has hanged a young woman who was convicted of murder when she was a minor, her lawyer said Saturday, drawing condemnation from international human rights groups who have sought to end capital punishment for juvenile offenders. Authorities executed the 23-year-old woman Friday in northern Iran without informing her lawyer or allowing the family to be present, said the lawyer, Mohammad Mostafaei. She was 17 at the time the crime was committed, in 2003.

JACKSON, Ga. (AP) - A Georgia man convicted of murdering 1 of the followers of his white supremacist group insisted that he was not to blame for the killing shortly before he was put to death Wednesday evening.

...Really, what do you do with a captured pirate? Make him walk the plank? Is that even legal? Traditionally, English Admiralty law allowed for the summary execution of a captured pirate. Indeed, in medieval times, he could be hanged, drawn and quartered...Since last year, however, the Foreign Office has advised the Royal Navy not to detain pirates of some nationalities because, facing the death penalty at home, they could then claim asylum in Britain. The resurgence of piracy is hardly surprising when you consider the disparity between the average income of a Somali with a boat, and the vast amounts...

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

A Georgia man expressed remorse for killing his "good friend" shortly before he was executed Tuesday for the murder of a neighbor he stabbed to death after the 27-year-old woman spurned his sexual advances. Robert Newland, 65, was put to death by lethal injection at the state prison at Jackson and was pronounced dead at 7:35 p.m. Newland was the first person executed in Georgia this year. "I'm sorry this happened. I wish I could go back to that day," he said. "I have no grudges against anybody. I still don't remember what happened, but what happened happened." A few...

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...

JACKSON, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia man was executed Tuesday for stabbing a neighbor to death who had spurned his sexual advances. Robert Newland, 65, was put to death by lethal injection at the state prison at Jackson and was pronounced dead at 7:35 p.m. by authorities. He was the first person executed in Georgia this year. Newland was convicted in 1987 and sentenced to death for the slaying of Carol Sanders Beatty, a 27-year-old former state and national amateur diving champion. Authorities say Newland went to the woman's duplex on St. Simons Island in May 1986 after a drinking...

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.

WEST PALM BEACH — A federal jury this afternoon convicted two men in the 2006 murders of a family of four along Florida's Turnpike. The verdicts mean either life in prison or death for Ricardo Sanchez and Daniel Troya, both 25. The 12-member jury after four days of deliberations also convicted Danny Varela, 28, and Liana Lee Lopez, 20, on charges related to the drug ring the four ran from a luxury Briar Bay home in 2006. Jose Luis Escobedo worked as a drug connection for the group. He, his wife Yessica and their 3 and 4-year-old sons Luis Damian...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A man blamed for numerous killings and rapes has been executed in Texas for the murder of a woman who was raped, beaten and left to die on a Houston street. Fifty-one-year-old Johnny Ray Johnson was pronounced dead at 6:19 p.m. Thursday. A Harris County jury sent Johnson to death row for the 1995 murder of 41-year-old Leah Joette Smith. According to court documents, her murder was one of at least five rape-slayings in Houston and Austin that were linked to the former truck and taxi driver. He also was linked at least eight other rapes...

ARLINGTON – Police Detective Tommy Le Noir remembers the alarm that gripped this city in 1996 after two young women were found strangled in the bathtubs of their east Arlington apartment complex. "There was a lot of fear in the community and in the Police Department," Le Noir said. "The fear is that you don't want this to happen again. At that time there was some incredible panic in those apartment complexes. People moved out in masses. It was just an incredible time." Tuesday night, almost 13 years after the crimes, the state plans to execute 35-year-old Dale Devon Scheanette...

A man convicted of murdering three people during a night of robberies more than 13 years ago in Fort Worth was put to death Wednesday evening in the nation's first execution of the year. In a brief, final statement, Curtis Moore, 40, thanked a woman who administers to the spiritual needs of death row inmates. "I want to thank you for all the beautiful years of friendship and ministry," Moore told Irene Wilcox as she watched through a window a few feet (meters) from him. Moore never acknowledged a man who survived his attacks or five relatives of the three...

A 20-year-old Ghanaian has been sentenced to death in Singapore for trafficking 2.6 kilograms (5.73 pounds) of cannabis, the Straits Times reported Saturday. The High Court convicted and sentenced Chijioke Stephen Obioha on Tuesday after a 21-day trial held last year, it said. Under Singapore's tough anti-drug laws, the death penalty is mandatory for anyone caught trafficking more than 15 grams of heroin, 30 grams of cocaine or 500 grams of cannabis. The death penalty is carried out by hanging. Narcotics officers arrested Obioha in April 2007 following a surveillance operation. He had come to Singapore in 2005 to try...

He has received death threats regularly and was once asked by his pastor to change churches. For years he and his wife wouldn’t leave the house without bodyguards at their side. The pressure got to be so bad that the couple eventually stopped going out at all, unless it was absolutely necessary. But if you ask Judge George Greer about the experience, he’d tell you it was all in a day’s work. The 16-year veteran of the bench was the adjudicator tasked with hearing the highly publicized case of Terri Schiavo, the 41-year-old brain-damaged woman whose husband applied in 1998...

There are three ways to react to an organizational crisis. One way is to turn your head to ignore the situation and hope that it will fix itself (best of luck!). Another way is to run around in a panic-induced cost-cutting frenzy that could seriously impair the organization’s long-term growth potential and future state. The third and, of course, smartest method is to recognize the impending threat to both your top and bottom line, and quickly adapt the organization’s strategic outlook and business model to the new environmental conditions. So, the question to answer is this: “what are the decision...

TOPEKA, Kan. — A federal judge in Kansas has issued a stay in what would be the Army’s first execution since 1961. U.S. District Judge Richard Rogers issued the order Nov. 26 in the case of Ronald A. Gray, who was scheduled to die Dec. 10 for murders and rapes in the 1980s. Rogers has not set a date to hear Gray’s case. Attorneys for the Justice Department filed documents Tuesday asking Rogers to reconsider his stay order, saying Gray has had ample time to file an appeal. However, Gray’s attorney, Thomas Bath, had argued that he couldn’t appeal until...

Marco Allen Chapman, who killed two children by slitting their throats after raping and stabbing their mother, was put to death Friday as he requested when an executioner pumped drugs into his veins to shut down his lungs and heart. Chapman, 37, became the third person executed in Kentucky since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a national moratorium on the death penalty. With his last words, Chapman apologized to Carolyn Marksberry for the attack on her and her children — Courtney Sharon, 10, Chelbi Sharon, 7, and Cody Sharon, 6 — but he also said the murders were...

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — A former Army cook convicted of multiple rapes and murders is set to die next month in what would be the U.S. military's first execution in nearly 50 years. The military said Thursday that former North Carolina soldier Ronald A. Gray is to be executed Dec. 10 at the federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Ind. Gray was arrested in connection with four slayings and eight rapes in the Fayetteville, N.C., area between April 1986 and January 1987, while he was stationed at Fort Bragg. He was convicted of murdering two women.

The Indonesian Attorney-General's Office has confirmed that the three Bali bombers have been executed by firing squad for their involvement in the 2002 bombings which killed more than 202 people, including 88 Australians. A spokesman for the Attorney-General, Jasman Pandjaitan, said all three men have been declared dead. Earlier news emerged from inside the Bali bombers' prison on Nusakambangan Island in Central Java that the three men - Imam Samudra, 38, Amrozi, 47, and Mukhlas, 48 - were killed. All three were shot at the same time by three separate firing squads about 12:15am (local time), before a medical team...

OAKLAND — The lead detective assigned to investigate journalist Chauncey Bailey's killing ignored evidence linking Yusuf Bey IV, former leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery, to a role in the killing and interfered in two other unrelated felony cases involving Bey IV, according to an investigation by the Chauncey Bailey Project. The Bailey Project's reporting has led to a police internal affairs investigation of that detective, Sgt. Derwin Longmire, and whether his relationship with Bey IV may have compromised the case. Law enforcement officials said the investigation of the Bailey killing is in crisis. If Longmire is charged with administrative...

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.

LUCASVILLE, Ohio -- Ohio has executed a 5-foot-7, 267-pound double murderer who argued he was too fat to die humanely by lethal injection. Richard Cooey died at 10:28 a.m. Tuesday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville. There were no immediate reports of problems finding suitable veins to deliver the deadly chemicals. His attorneys had argued that his weight problem could make it difficult for prison staff to access a vein. A prisons spokeswoman said earlier that Cooey received a pre-execution exam and was cleared. Cooey was the first inmate executed in Ohio in more than a year, and...