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A Georgia man should not be executed because he is intellectually disabled and feels remorse for killing his former girlfriend three decades ago, his lawyers wrote in seeking clemency for him. Willie James Pye, 59, is scheduled to be put to death Wednesday using the sedative pentobarbital in what would be the state’s first execution in more than four years. Pye was convicted of murder and other crimes in the November 1993 killing of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough. A clemency hearing is set for Tuesday. In Georgia, those hearings are conducted in secret, with the result announced afterward. “Had defense counsel...

Idaho is moving forward with legislation that would allow the execution of child rapists. The Idaho Capital Sun reports that the legislation, introduced by Republican lawmakers, will target those who have committed the most serious offenses against children as well as repeat offenders. The bill passed the Idaho House by a 57-11 vote. The legislation states: This legislation amends Idaho Codes 18-1508 and 19-2515 to allow a sentence of capital punishment for a person convicted of lewd conduct with a minor, if said minor is under the age of twelve (12) and there are aggravating circumstances. Upon conviction, a jury...

The people familiar with the matter have described the eight former Indian Navy officers as those with "unblemished" tenures of up to two decades. The men had served in important positions including as instructors in the Navy.The war, which commenced with the Hamas attacks of October 7, is far from over and there is much suffering yet to come The close bond between Sita, Urmila, Mandavi, and Shrutakirti proves that women are not enemies—a convenient narrative cultivated through centuries Qatar on Thursday left India 'shocked' when a court announced death sentences for eight former Indian Navy personnel. The men were...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed changes to his state's criminal justice laws on Thursday, including making child rapists eligible for the death penalty and reducing the number of jurors required to dole out capital punishment. Citing the case of Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz, who was spared execution last year after the jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict on capital punishment, DeSantis said that only the vast majority or a supermajority of a jury should be required to issue a death sentence. "One juror should not be able to veto that," DeSantis said at the Miami Police Benevolent Association....

South Carolina’s highest court will hear arguments Thursday on whether a newly organized firing squad or the old electric chair are legal ways to execute inmates in the state, which has been unable to obtain drugs for lethal injections. A lower court judge ruled in September that South Carolina lawmakers “ignored advances in scientific research and evolving standards of humanity and decency” when they passed a law effectively forcing condemned prisoners to choose between electrocution or the firing squad. The state appealed and the South Carolina Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday over whether the 2,000-volt electric chair or the...

The coalition negotiations: Ben Gvir will ask to include in the agreements a death penalty law for terrorists Moran Azoulai, November 14, 2022 The chairman of Otzma Yehudit Itamar Ben Gvir is expected today (Monday) to request the death penalty law for terrorists as a clause in the coalition agreements. The law has been on and off the agenda from time to time due to elements that took part in the coalition and opposed it. Now, in the emerging right-wing government, there seems to be a clear majority for the law. However, it is not clear how motivated the Likud...

The three jurors who voted against the death penalty for Parkland killer Nikolas Cruz did so based on “mitigating circumstances” from Cruz’s life. They made the wrong call, but their rationale is superior to the reason many will agree with the sentence: a blanket opposition to the death penalty. Public support for capital punishment has slid over the last 30 years, remaining a majority opinion but barely so. Those who oppose death as a punishment often have kind, even noble intentions. Yet their well-meaning beliefs do not translate into justice or the common good. The death penalty is consistent with...

We never seem to get enough information in the hours and days immediately following a horrific crime, but after a few days or weeks have gone by, usually after the story has faded from the front page, the necessary backstory finally comes out. First, an “All Points Bulletin” on May 12 alerted the state of Texas that Gonzalo Lopez, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence, had just escaped from custody during a transfer, by breaking out of his transportation cage and stabbing the driver of the prison bus. He remained on the run for three weeks, using up precious...

Kentucky would make the death penalty off-limits for some defendants diagnosed with severe mental illnesses under a bill that won final legislative approval Friday. The Republican-led Senate voted 25-9 to send the measure to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, capping a long effort led by death penalty opponents to restrict the use of capital punishment. Another proposal that crossed the finish line after languishing for years would require future constables and deputy constables to obtain training and law enforcement certification before wielding police powers. The bill won final Senate passage 23-11 and goes to Beshear's desk. With four days left in...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — ​​South Carolina has given the greenlight to firing-squad executions, a method codified into state law last year after a decade-long pause in carrying out death sentences because of the state’s inability to procure lethal injection drugs... ...Lawmakers set about tweaking state law to get around the lethal injection drug situation. Legislation that went into effect in May made the electric chair the state’s primary means of execution while giving inmates the option of choosing death by firing squad or lethal injection, if those methods are available....

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — ​​South Carolina has given the greenlight to firing-squad executions, a method codified into state law l ast year after a decade-long pause in carrying out death sentences because of the state’s inability to procure lethal injection drugs. The state Corrections Department said Friday that renovations have been completed on the death chamber in Columbia and that the agency had notified Attorney General Alan Wilson that it was able to carry out a firing-squad execution. Lawmakers set about tweaking state law to get around the lethal injection drug situation. Legislation that went into effect in May made...

Japan hanged three death-row inmates on Tuesday, its first executions in two years, amid growing criticism by human rights groups of the country's use of the death penalty. One of the three, Yasutaka Fujishiro, was convicted of killing seven people and setting fire to their house in 2004, while the other two, Tomoaki Takanezawa and Mitsunori Onogawa, were convicted in the 2003 killings of two pinball parlor employees. Executions are carried out in high secrecy in Japan, where prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are hanged. Two death-row inmates recently filed a lawsuit against the...

Bowing to intense political pressure, Oklahoma's Kevin Stitt, the Republican governor of one of the nation's reddest states, commuted on Thursday the death sentence of convicted murderer Julius Jones. Stitt's commutation of Jones, who was convicted for a first-degree carjacking murder in one of the most reliably pro-death penalty states, is but the latest troubling data pointing toward the possible ultimate abolition of the death penalty in America. In 2020, former President Donald Trump directed then-Attorney General William Barr to resume federal executions after a 17-year hiatus. From July 2020 through January 2021, the Trump-led Department of Justice oversaw 13...

Catholics Support Death PenaltyDisagree with popeNearly two-thirds of Americans favor capital punishment, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll of over 5,000 adults. While White Protestants top the list of those favoring it, 58% of Catholics likewise approve of it.Dennis Prager: "Your whole being cries out for some justice and fairness in this world."The only groups found opposing the death penalty are atheists and agnostics. The 14% of American Catholics who strongly oppose the death penalty share their convictions with two of the last three popes.Jeremy Irons: "The death penalty targets the economically disadvantaged, those who can't afford good...

Not a surprise. Kirsten Clarke, Biden’s nominee to head civil rights at the DOJ, has a history of black nationalism, and sympathy for racism and antisemitism. Kristen Clarke, Joe Biden’s nominee for assistant attorney general of the United States, once promoted racist pseudoscientific quackery, arguing that the human brain was structured in a way that makes Black people superior to white people, and that “human mental processes” in the brain have chemicals that imbue one race with “superior physical and mental abilities” and “spiritual abilities.” And then there’s the antisemitism. Wellesley Professor Tony Martin spoke at Harvard at the invitation...

Virginia will ban capital punishment. An act praised by USA Today and other Leftwing media - because "journalists" believe anti-capital punishment propaganda that claims the death penalty is cruel and, of course, racist. So too does Biden's choice for Attorney General, who were it not for Sen. McConnell, would be on the Supreme Court today where his Leftwing orthodoxy would severely damage American society, in general, and the criminal justice system in particular. When questioned about capital punishment during his confirmation hearing, Merrick Garland, Leftist ideologue that he is, said, "I am very concerned about the large number of exonerations...

Washington D.C., Jan 25, 2021 / 12:55 pm MT (CNA).- The Supreme Court on Monday ruled favorably toward a Catholic death row inmate requesting the presence of a priest at his execution. In a set of orders released on Monday morning, the court vacated a ruling of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court against Ruben Gutierrez, a Catholic death row inmate in Texas challenging the state’s prohibition of chaplains at executions. In addition to vacating the Fifth Circuit Court ruling, the Supreme Court also sent Gutierrez’s case back to lower courts for reconsideration, in light of findings by a district court...

Dec. 11 (UPI) -- The U.S. government on Friday plans to execute a man convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter nearly two decades ago. Alfred Bourgeois, 55, is set to receive lethal injection at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. He's awaiting a Supreme Court decision on his request for a stay. His attorneys said Bourgeois' execution would be unconstitutional because he is intellectually disabled and can't understand his punishment. They submitted evidence of IQ test scores of 70 and 75, as well as assessments by experts. The Eighth Amendment bans executing people with such impairments as cruel and...

The state of Ohio is placing an unofficial moratorium on capital punishment. In an interview Tuesday, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said he’s banning capital punishment until lawmakers find a more practical alternative to lethal injection. There are currently 136 inmates on death row in the state of Ohio. Twice in the past month, opponents of the death penalty have called on Ohio lawmakers to end the practice altogether.

After nearly two decades without any federal executions, the Justice Department reversed course this summer by carrying out three death sentences in four days. Now the department is planning a similarly busy schedule of executions during the Trump administration’s final days, before a president who staunchly backs capital punishment is succeeded by one who opposes it. *** A Justice Department official disputed that reasoning, asserting that Attorney General William P. Barr had been routinely scheduling executions, as the law dictated he should do, since concluding an Obama administration-era review of the federal death penalty last year. “It’s his job to...