Death penalty - Page 5

Voters in California will face a tidal wave of ballot measures in the November general election, on issues from the death penalty and condoms to marijuana and plastic bags.

A man attacked and beheaded a four-year-old girl in Taiwan as she and her mother headed to a metro station in Taipei.

North Carolina prosecutors have announced they plan to seek the death penalty for an alleged Islamic State sympathizer accused of killing his neighbor.

In an impassioned appeal Sunday, Pope Francis called for an “international consensus” for the abolition of capital punishment, arguing that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” has absolute value and includes both the innocent and the guilty. After his weekly

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump pledged Dec. 10 that he would seek the death penalty for cop-killers.

Court watchers say that the John Roberts-led U.S. Supreme Court may at last take a case that directly pertains to whether or not the death penalty is a Constitutional punishment.

Many conservatives viewed the prospect of the Pope’s visit to the United States with a mixture of hope and trepidation: hope, because the Pope’s visit would force heavy media coverage of religious issues; trepidation, because of Pope Francis’ mixed record on issues ranging from climate change to illegal immigration.

Among the several controversial points in his historic address to the U.S. Congress Thursday, Pope Francis lobbied strongly for the abolition of the death penalty, while remaining mostly silent on the issue of abortion. Pro-abortion Catholic politicians including Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden will undoubtedly capitalize on the Pope’s omission to continue snubbing Church teaching on the sanctity of life.

British aid money is simultaneously being spent on lobbying countries to overturn their death penalty laws, and to assist Pakistani forces in capturing drug smugglers, who face capital punishment if caught. Tanzania, Belarus, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and South Sudan and China

An illegal alien from Nicaragua, scheduled for execution in Huntsville, Texas, on Wednesday evening, received a stay of execution from the state’s highest criminal court.

Twelve jurors failed to agree on a death sentence for Colorado theater shooter James Holmes on Friday, prompting shocked sobs from victims, police officers and his own mother.

On August 3 the 12-person jury in the trial of Aurora theater gunman James Holmes unanimously decided he is eligible for the death penalty.

The national parliament of Chad has unanimously approved a rigorous anti-terrorism bill that reintroduces the death penalty just six months after its abolition.

On July 31, alleged Charleston gunman Dylann Roof pleaded “not guilty” to 33 federal charges, including hate crime and gun charges.

British foreign aid money is helping fund executions in Pakistan, a human rights group has claimed. Legal charity Reprieve, which campaigns against the death penalty, says that nearly £13 million has been used to fund anti-drugs operations in the country,

Amnesty International’s latest report on Iran states the regime executed 694 people between January 1 and July 15. This means the country averages at least three executions a day.

Jurors convicted Colorado theater shooter James Holmes on Thursday in the chilling 2012 attack on defenseless moviegoers at a midnight Batman premiere, rejecting defense arguments that the former graduate student was insane and driven to murder by delusions.

Now that the Supreme Court has upheld Oklahoma’s three-drug lethal injection method, California can resume carrying out the death penalty, although mandatory administrative procedures and hearings could slow the process.

On Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States continued its gushing vomit of nonsensical opinion, issuing three rulings of varying degrees of logic and coherence.

At a Johnston, Iowa, gun range on June 20 Senator Ted Cruz said the attack on the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston shows the need for the death penalty, not gun control.

In our society, the act of dying is treated respectfully as a private affair. This is because it is an emotionally difficult process for the living and often a painful one for the dying. As all of us can or will attest, dealing with death is difficult and in my own case the loss of my brother to a terminal illness brought these issues home.

On Wednesday, Hillary Clinton made a far-reaching appeal for reform of the nation’s criminal justice system, reflecting a bipartisan shift against the law-and-order politics of the past three decades — and reversing her own shift to the right after starting her career as a crusader against capital punishment.

MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry said she worries “there is a social construction of evil” that influences how people view Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and police officers who kill people that are unarmed on Saturday. After criminal defense attorney Seema

Glenn Ford was released after serving 30 years on death row when the Caddo District Attorney asked that the man’s conviction and sentence be set-aside. The District Attorney found new evidence about the actual gunman after an investigation into another homicide. The attorney who prosecuted apologized for his part in not looking under every rock for the evidence. The man’s release was extensively covered by the media but the murder victim’s family want people to know “Glenn Ford is not an innocent victim.”

Kent William Sprouse, 42 years-of-age, was put to death at 6:33 CST on April 9, 2015 in Huntsville, Texas, for fatally shooting Ferris Police Officer Harry Marvin “Marty” Steinfeldt III. The murder occurred at a Ferris, Texas, Diamond Shamrock gas station and food mart on October 6, 2002. Sprouse is the fifth Texas death row inmate to be executed this year. There were no late-filed appeals to stop the execution.

Utah became the only state to allow firing squads for executions when Gov. Gary Herbert signed a law approving the method for use when no lethal injection drugs are available, even though he has called it “a little bit gruesome.”

In a historic statement, Pope Francis has closed the door to the death penalty, calling it “inadmissible.” In so doing, he has gone beyond any pope before him in condemning capital punishment.

The State Bar of Texas has filed a formal accusation of misconduct against John H. Jackson, the former Navarro County Assistant District Attorney who convicted Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in February 2004 for the arson murder of his three young daughters. The Bar had been investigating Jackson for months, and he is accused of obstruction of justice, making false statements and concealing evidence favorable to Willingham’s defense. Pursuant to the disciplinary petition filed by the Texas Bar, Jackson has fifty days from the date of service of the petition to respond.

The government of Saudi Arabia executed three people on Tuesday via beheadings. The total number of beheadings in the strict Muslim country totals 48 in 2015 already, more than half the total beheadings in 2014.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Utah, the only state in the past 40 years to carry out a death sentence by firing squad, is poised to bring back the Old West-style executions if the state cannot track down drugs used in lethal injections.

A federal judge formally accused of racism by the NAACP and other left-wing groups has been completely exonerated after a yearlong investigation conducted by the Judicial Council of the Washington D.C. Circuit.

A Saudi Arabian man has been sentenced to death for apostasy after filming himself ripping up a copy of the Koran and hitting it with his shoe. The timing is embarrassing, as the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the

Newly elected Gov. Tom Wolf imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in the state on Friday, calling the current system of capital punishment “error prone, expensive and anything but infallible.”

It’s not surprising that the legal defense team of Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev would play up his youth and “vulnerability” to save him from the death penalty, but it’s downright amazing to watch the media swoon over him.

As anti-death penalty activists protested, a Texas death row inmate was executed over the weekend, having been convicted of the brutal murder of a woman while he was on parole for the murder of three other people.

A Belgian rapist and murderer has been granted the right to be euthanized rather than spend the rest of his life in jail, as he says his incarceration is causing him “psychological suffering”. The death penalty is outlawed under European