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The state of Arkansas plans to put to death eight inmates over a span of 10 days next month, a pace of executions unequaled in recent American history and brought about by a looming expiration date for a drug used by the state for lethal injections. The eight men facing execution — four black and four white — are among 34 death row inmates in Arkansas, where capital punishment has been suspended since 2005 over legal challenges and difficulty in acquiring the drugs for lethal injections. All eight men were convicted of murders that occurred between 1989 and 1999, and...

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi lawmakers are advancing a proposal to add firing squad, electrocution and gas chamber as execution methods in case a court blocks the use of lethal injection drugs. House Bill 638 is a response to lawsuits filed by "liberal, left-wing radicals," said House Judiciary B Committee Chairman Andy Gipson, a Republican. The bill passed the House amid opposition Wednesday, and it moves to the Senate for more debate. Lethal injection is Mississippi's only execution method. The state faces lawsuits claiming the drugs it plans to use would violate constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. Mississippi...

Terri Been’s voice shook as she read a long text message from her niece. “I had a nightmare about my dad last night,” Paige Rowan told her aunt in the text. Rowan described a dream in which she watched helplessly as the execution needle pierced her father’s skin. She woke up screaming, panicking and feeling hopeless, she told Been.

For nearly a week now, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has refused to answer a simple yes or no question: whether she favors the Department of Justice’s decision to seek the death penalty for Dylann Roof, who is accused of killing nine people last year at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Philippines' president-elect Rodrigo Duterte vowed Sunday to reintroduce capital punishment and give security forces "shoot-to-kill" orders in a devastating war on crime. In his first press conference since winning the May 9 elections in a landslide, the tough-talking mayor of southern Davao city warned his campaign threats to kill were not rhetoric. "What I will do is urge Congress to restore (the) death penalty by hanging," Duterte, 71, told a press conference in Davao. He also said he would give security forces "shoot-to-kill" orders against organised criminals or those who violently resisted arrest. "If you resist, show violent resistance, my...

Human rights campaigners warn action is needed to stop use of unlicensed drugs or other legally unsatisfactory methodsHuman rights groups have welcomed news that pharmaceutical firm Pfizer is to block the sale of its drugs in the US to perform executions, but warned that legally dubious alternatives could take their place. All companies licensed by the US government to manufacture drugs for state executions have now blocked their use in lethal injections. Pfizer’s withdrawal follows a campaign targeting pharmaceutical companies and their shareholders. The company said: “Pfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we...

Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed into law a major overhaul of Florida’s death penalty on Monday in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring the previous system unconstitutional. The new law requires at least 10 out of 12 jurors recommend execution for it to be carried out. Florida previously required that a majority of jurors recommend the death sentence. The law was found unconstitutional in January because jurors served an advisory role while judges had the final say in death penalty cases. “It is my solemn duty to uphold the laws of Florida and my foremost concern is always...

Utah senators on Wednesday voted to abolish the death penalty, advancing what had been considered a longshot proposal in the conservative state. The measure marks a stunning turn in Utah, where a year ago lawmakers voted to reinstate the use of the firing squad as a backup execution method. Lawmakers argued last year that if the state has a shortage of lethal injection drugs, it must still find a way to kill death row inmates. Sen. Steve Urquhart, a Republican, is leading the push this year to repeal capital punishment, citing conservative themes of imperfect governments and capital punishment as...

CONTRACEPTION So Fr Lombardi believes, apparently, that Papa Bergoglio was right: B Paul VI did permitt nuns in the Congo to guard themselves contraceptively against the consequences of rape. If there is evidence that Montini made some utterance to this effect, then we have a right to be told where it is so that we can go and look at it. That, surely, is why the Apostolic See publishes its Acta. If people are required to respect and obey a Magisterium, then Natural Justice requires that they should have the means to acquaint themselves with their obligations. Otherwise, why decimate...

Proponents of a defeated measure to abolish Delaware's death penalty say they will continue fighting until capital punishment is outlawed. The legislation failed Thursday evening in the state House, getting only 16 of the 21 votes needed for passage. Twenty-three lawmakers voted against the bill, which cleared the Senate last year by a single vote. Supporters said they would try to resurrect the measure after a five-week break for budget committee meetings.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declared Florida's death penalty law unconstitutional. Florida requires the trial judge, not the jury to make the critical findings necessary to impose the death penalty.

Why Oklahoma became the first state to approve nitrogen gas as a lethal injection alternative In the weeks following the execution of Clayton Lockett, the Oklahoma death row inmate whose botched lethal injection triggered a statewide moratorium on executions, lawmakers there began rethinking their approach to capital punishment. Among the people they called on to help was Michael Copeland. Copeland is a criminal justice professor at East Central University, a public school with about 6,000 students in Ada, Okla. From 2010 to 2013, he was the director of the anti-fraud unit at the Oklahoma Insurance Department. Before that, he was...

A convicted killer in Texas was executed Tuesday for fatally shooting another man in a robbery that yielded just $8. No late appeals were filed for Juan Martin Garcia, who was lethally injected for the September 1998 killing and robbery of Hugo Solano in Houston. Solano, a Christian missionary from Guadalajara, Mexico, had moved his family to the city just weeks earlier so his children could be educated in the U.S.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia notes that support for the death penalty has been part of Christian and Catholic tradition in the Old and New Testaments. What’s more, it was morally accepted when the U.S. Constitution was adopted. Scalia recently told a group of students, “If the death penalty did not violate the Eighth Amendment when the Eighth Amendment was adopted, it doesn’t violate it today.” The Supreme Court has formally ruled that the death penalty is not a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. What’s more, in June, the Court in a 5-4 ruling...

TOPEKA — The Kansas Federation of College Republicans recently voted unanimously to adopt a resolution calling for repeal of the state's death penalty law, a sign that capital punishment may be on its last legs in the state. “More young conservatives like myself recognize that our broken and fallible system of capital punishment in no way matches up with our conservative values,” Dalton Glasscock, a Wichita State University student and chairman of the federation, said in a news release Thursday. "By ending the death penalty, Kansas has an opportunity to promote a culture of life and fiscal responsibility. As Republicans...

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday against three death row inmates who had sought to bar the use of an execution drug they said risked causing excruciating pain. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote the majority opinion in the 5-to-4 decision. He was joined by the court’s four more conservative justices. The drug, the sedative midazolam, played a part in three long and apparently painful executions last year. It was used in an effort to render inmates unconscious before they were injected with other, severely painful drugs. Four condemned inmates in Oklahoma challenged the use of the drug, saying it...

It is fitting, if late, that South Carolina's political leaders seem ready to evict the Confederate flag from the grounds of their state Capitol in response to the vile shooting that left nine African-Americans dead in Charleston's Emanuel AME Church last week. In a Monday news conference while flanked by Democrats and fellow Republicans, Gov. Nikki Haley noted that many in the Palmetto State see the Confederate flag as a tribute to their Southern roots but said, "Today we are here in a moment of unity in our state, without ill will, to say it's time to move the flag...

International Law and Agreements: Their Effect upon U.S. Law Michael John GarciaLegislative AttorneyFebruary 18, 2015 Summary This report provides an introduction to the roles that international law and agreements play in the United States. International law is derived from two primary sources—international agreements and customary practice. Under the U.S. legal system, international agreements can be entered into by means of a treaty or an executive agreement. The Constitution allocates primary responsibility for entering into such agreements to the executive branch, but Congress also plays an essential role. First, in order for a treaty (but not an executive agreement) to...

Two days after the shooting deaths of nine people during a Bible study at a Charleston church, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said the gunman 'absolutely' should be put to death. However, the state, though largely pro-death penalty, cannot secure one of the drugs needed for lethal injections and has not executed an inmate since 2011. Any potential execution order for Dylann Storm Roof, 21, would be years away. He is charged with nine counts of murder in Wednesday's killing spree at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. He appeared briefly before a judge on Friday and his next court appearance is...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A 67-year-old man convicted of killing four men more than three decades ago was executed Wednesday, making him the oldest of the 526 Texas prisoners put to death since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982. Lester Bower Jr. was convicted of the October 1983 fatal shootings at an airplane hangar on a ranch near Sherman, about 60 miles north of Dallas. Prosecutors say he killed the four after stealing an airplane he'd been trying to buy from one of his victims.