[
Popular sites
(top10)
|
Partner sites
(31)
]
[
RSS/ATOM Sites
(16)
|
RSS/ATOM Feeds
(4343)
]
Web Links
RSS/ATOM Feeds (4343)
Distributing RSS/ATOM feeds which displayed here.
| Fort Hood shooting: Barack Obama would have to approve death penalty from Death Penalty News |
|
US President Barack Obama would have to personally approve the death sentence if Major Nidal Malik Hasan is convicted and sentenced to execution for the Fort Hood massacre. As a serving officer Hasan, 39, is likely to be tried in a military court in a system ultimately headed by Mr Obama in his role as commander-in-chief. No member of the US military has been put to death since the 1961 hanging of Army Private John Bennett for rape. Mr Obama has followed a nuanced line on the death penalty in the past, saying it is not an effective deterrent but should be an option in extreme cases. In his memoirs he said capital punishment "does little to deter crime" but he supports it in cases "so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment". Mr Obama and his wife Michelle are due to attend a memorial service in Fort Hood on Tuesday. The president will be constrained in what he can say. Any co ...
|
| Weighing Life in Prison for Youths Who Didn?t Kill from Death Penalty News |
|
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. ? There are just over 100 people in the world serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole for crimes they committed as juveniles in which no one was killed. All are in the United States. And 77 of them are here in Florida. On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear appeals from two such juvenile offenders: Joe Sullivan, who raped a woman when he was 13, and Terrance Graham, who committed armed burglary at 16. They claim that the Eighth Amendment?s ban on cruel and unusual punishment forbids sentencing them to die in prison for crimes other than homicide. Outside the context of the death penalty, the Supreme Court has generally allowed states to decide for themselves what punishments fit what crimes. But the court barred the execution of juvenile offenders in 2005 by a vote of 5 to 4, saying that people under 18 are immature, irresponsible, susceptible to peer pressure and often capable of change. A ruling extending that reasoning beyond capital cases ? ...
|
| Saudi executions raise questions about legal help for convicted overseas from Death Penalty News |
|
The execution of two Sri Lankans in Saudi Arabia this week has once again raised concerns that Sri Lankans working overseas do not have adequate legal representation when they get into trouble and are convicted for offences. The two Sri Lankan nationals were beheaded on Wednesday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, after being convicted for theft and murder in 2007. The crime is said to have taken place in November 2005. It is alleged that a group of 12 armed persons, including 7 Sri Lankans, had robbed and murdered a Saudi woman. Judgement was passed in June 2007, and 2 Sri Lankans, K. M. S. Bandaranaike and Haleema Nissa Cader, were sentenced to death. Muhammed Naushad Barmil, an Indian national and the husband of Haleema Nissa Cader, was also sentenced to death. Five other Sri Lankans convicted in connection with the robbery and murder were handed five-year sentences along with 500 lashes. Meanwhile, it has emerged that the defendants had no legal representation during the trial and that ...
|
| Nine people executed after China riots from Death Penalty News |
|
(CNN) -- Nine people have been executed in connection with ethnic riots last July that killed about 200 people in western China's Xinjiang region, the state-run China News Service reported Monday. The executions occurred "recently," said the service, which added no more information about the executions. Long-simmering resentment between Uyghurs and Han Chinese flared after a June melee at a toy factory in Guangdong province, leading to the July 5 riots, according to Xinhua. A massive brawl broke out between the ethnic groups at the factory, resulting in the deaths of two Uyghurs, Xinhua said. In a rare public display of dissatisfaction, thousands of Uyghurs -- many of whom feel they are treated as second-class citizens by the majority Han Chinese -- took to the streets in Xinjiang province, chanting and screaming. The Uyghurs are mostly Muslims in Xinjiang province. Some Islamists refer to the region as East Turkistan. Source: CNN.com, Nov. 9, 2009 It's not about what they did. ...
|
| China executes nine over Xinjiang unrest from Death Penalty News |
|
China has executed 9 people over deadly ethnic unrest in its far-western Xinjiang region, regional authorities said Monday, the 1st executions since the violence in July. "The first group of 9 people who were sentenced to death recently have already been executed in succession, with the approval of the Supreme Court," Hou Hanmin, spokeswoman for the Xinjiang government, told AFP. It was not clear when the executions took place. According to previous statements by the Xinjiang government, this 1st group consisted of 8 members of the mainly Muslim Uighur ethnic minority and one majority Han Chinese. China tried and convicted 21 defendants in October -- nine were sentenced to death, 3 were given the death penalty with a 2-year reprieve, a sentence usually commuted to life in jail, and the rest were given various prison terms. The violence erupted on July 5, pitting Uighurs against members of China's dominant Han group, leaving 197 dead and more than 1,600 injured, according to an of ...
|
| Supreme Court Declines to Block Execution of Washington Sniper from Death Penalty News |
|
The Supreme Court declined on Monday to block the execution of John A. Muhammad, the sniper who terrorized the region around Washington, D.C., 7 years ago. The step cleared the way for Mr. Muhammad to be put to death on Tuesday unless Gov. Timothy M. Kaine of Virginia intervenes. The courts majority did not comment in refusing to hear Mr. Muhammad's appeal, but three justices objected to the relative haste accompanying the execution. Justice John Paul Stevens complained that "under our normal practice," Mr. Muhammad's petition for the high court to take his case would have been discussed at the justices' conference scheduled for Nov. 24. But because Virginia scheduled the execution for Nov. 10, the judicial process has been rushed, Justice Stevens said in a statement joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Stevens wrote that, having reviewed the claims offered on Mr. Muhammad's behalf, he did not disagree with the majority's decision to decline review ...
|
| Texas resists family's effort to clear executed man's name from Death Penalty News |
|
Ardmore, Oklahoma (CNN) -- Cameron Todd Willingham's family here in Oklahoma never believed he set the fire that killed his three daughters. "We could not even imagine it," his cousin, Patricia Cox, recounted recently. "That was completely ludicrous to us." But 16 days after the fire, Willingham was arrested. And within a year, he was on death row. On February 17, 2004, he was strapped to a gurney in a Texas prison and given a lethal injection, proclaiming his innocence to the end. The story of how Willingham -- Todd, to his family -- went from a home on a shady street in Ardmore to the death chamber is a tale of science and skull tattoos, of last-minute hopes raised and dashed. It is a story wrapped up in allegations that the governor who let the execution go forward is now trying to derail an investigation into whether Texas put an innocent man to death. And in Ardmore, where Willingham's baby shoes still sit on a desk in the house where he grew up, the family that fought to ...
|
| "Todd Willingham was a good friend of mine here who died a horrible death for a crime he did not com from Death Penalty News |
|
Below is an excerpt from Hank Skinner's " Hell Hole News #17 " (October 15, 2009). Mr. Skinner (pictured left) discusses at length his relationship with Cameron Todd Willingham , a fellow inmate then sitting on Texas death row for the murder of his three infant daughters. Todd Willingham was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas, on February 17, 2004. For additional information on Todd Willingham's case please refer to David Grann's piece " Trial by Fire. Did Texas execute an innocent man? " published in the September 7 edition of The New Yorker. "In this issue I want to talk a bit about Todd Willingham ( pictured below with daughter ). He was a good friend of mine here who died a horrible death on 02-17-04 for a crime he did not commit. I?m sure you all have read or heard the news of the Craig Beyler report or David Grann?s New Yorker story about Todd?s innocence? Well, I?d known it since I first met Todd in late 1996. I came out on the r ...
|
| Somalia: man stoned to death for adultery; pregnant lover spared until she gives birth from Death Penalty News |
|
November 6, 2009: Islamists in southern Somalia have stoned a man to death for adultery but spared his pregnant girlfriend until she gives birth. Abas Hussein Abdirahman, 33, was killed in front of a crowd of some 300 people in the port town of Merka. An official from the al-Shabab group said the woman would be killed after she has had her baby. Islamist groups run much of southern Somalia, while the UN-backed government only control parts of the capital. This is the third time Islamists have stoned a person to death for adultery in the past year. Al-Shabab official Sheikh Suldan Aala Mohamed said Mr Abdirahman had confessed to adultery before an Islamic court. "He was screaming and blood was pouring from his head during the stoning. After seven minutes he stopped moving," an eyewitness told the BBC. The BBC's Mohammed Olad Hassan in Mogadishu says that if the woman is also killed, her baby would be given to relatives to look after. Source: BBC, 06/11/2009 It's not abou ...
|
| Virginia set to execute 'Beltway sniper' from Death Penalty News |
|
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- John Allen Muhammad (pictured), the mastermind of the 2002 sniper attacks that terrorized the suburbs of the nation's capital, is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday evening at a state prison near Jarratt, Virginia. Muhammad continued to profess his innocence during two lengthy trials -- including one featuring testimony from young accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo -- and in several years of legal appeals. He repeated his assertion that he was an innocent victim of racial bias in a letter to the federal court released last week by his attorneys. Muhammad charged that police and prosecutors "lied to the American people" about his case and withheld evidence that could clear him. The Supreme Court denied Muhammad's appeal on Monday, meaning he is likely to be executed at Greensville Correctional Center at 9 p.m.. If Muhammad enters the death chamber without acknowledging his crimes, he will be known as the leader of one of the most enigmatic mass murder teams ...
|
