Aug. 21
ENGLAND:
The journey to the gallows
1597: James I, son of Mary, Queen of Scots, writes Daemonologie, instructing
his followers that they must denounce and prosecute any supporters or
practitioners of witchcraft.
1603: King James I, who was intensely interested in Protestant theology,
focusing much of his curiosity on the theology of witchcraft, takes to the
throne.
1604: A law was enacted imposing the death penalty in cases where it was proven
that harm had been caused through the use of magic.
Early 1612: Every justice of the peace (JP) in Lancashire was ordered to
compile a list of those who refused to attend the English Church and to take
communion.
March 21, 1612: Alizon Device encountered John Law, a pedlar from Halifax, and
asked him for some pins.
He refused, and a few minutes later, Law stumbled and fell in pain, perhaps
from a stroke, but he managed to get to a nearby inn.
Initially Law made no accusations against Alizon, but when Abraham Law took her
to visit his father a few days after the incident, she reportedly confessed to
bewitching him and asked for his forgiveness.
March 30, 1612: JP for Pendle Roger Nowell summoned Alizon Device, her mother
Elizabeth, and her brother James to Read Hall.
Alizon confessed that she had sold her soul to the devil, and that she had told
him to lame John Law after he had called her a thief.
Elizabeth admitted that her mother, Demdike, had a mark on her body, something
that many would have regarded as having been left by the devil. Alizon also
accused Anne Whittle (Chattox) of murdering four men by witchcraft, and of
killing her father, John Device, who had died in 1601.
April 2, 1612: Demdike, Chattox, and Chattox's daughter Anne Redferne, were
summoned to appear before Nowell.
Both Demdike and Chattox were blind and in their 80s, and both provided Nowell
with damaging confessions.
Nowell committed Demdike, Chattox, Anne Redferne and Alizon Device to Lancaster
Gaol, to be tried for causing harm by witchcraft at the next assizes.
April 6, 1612: Meeting at Malkin Tower, the home of the Demdikes, organised by
Elizabeth Device.
Friends and others sympathetic to the family attended, and word reached Roger
Nowell, who decided to investigate.
April 27 1612: An inquiry was held before Nowell and another magistrate,
Nicholas Bannister, to determine the purpose of the meeting at Malkin Tower,
who had attended, and what had happened there.
As a result, 8 more people were accused of witchcraft and committed for trial.
These were Elizabeth Device, James Device, Alice Nutter, Katherine Hewitt, John
Bulcock, Jane Bulcock, Alice Gray and Jennet Preston.
Preston lived in Gisburn, then in Yorkshire, and was sent for trial at York
Assizes; the others were sent to Lancaster.
July 27, 1612: Jennet Preston was charged with the murder by witchcraft of a
local landowner, Thomas Lister of Westby Hall, to which she pleaded not guilty.
But she was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging.
July 29, 1612: Jennet Preston was executed at the Knavesmire, the present site
of York Racecourse.
August 18 - 19, 1612: Lancaster Assizes; 9 of the accused - Alizon Device,
Elizabeth Device, James Device, Anne Whittle, Anne Redferne, Alice Nutter,
Katherine Hewitt, John Bulcock and Jane Bulcock - were found guilty of
witchcraft, following the trial and after the evidence of nine-year-old Jennet
Device. Elizabeth Southerns died while awaiting trial. Alice Grey was found not
guilty.
August 20, 1612: The accused were hanged at Gallows Hill in Lancaster.
(source: Lancaster Guardian)
CHINA:
Woman Saved from Suicide to Face Firing Squad for Murder
Sheng Fi was rescued while trying to throw herself off a 100ft
building.Friends, family and rescue workers rushed on to an apartment block's
roof to rescue a Chinese woman who was about to throw herself off - only to
discover she faces a firing squad for murder.
Sheng Fi decided to end her life by throwing herself off a nine-storey building
in Zhanjiang, a city in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong.
Rescue workers were called after Sheng was spotted standing on the ledge of the
100ft-high building.
The woman's daughter tried to talk her down and rescuers grabbed her legs and
dragged her to safety.
They found that her suicide bid was in remorse for her killing her
four-year-old nephew.
The woman had reportedly choked the boy and thrown his body from the same roof
after a row with the child's mother - her sister-in-law.
The woman will now face a firing squad having killed her 4-year-old
nephew.Sheng confessed to the murder and will face the death penalty as a
result.
"She admits she'd thrown the boy's body off the same roof. She will still die
now, but by a firing squad for murder," a police spokesman said.
China executes about 1,000 people a year, making it the world's leading country
for capital punishment, according to Amnesty International.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) ranked China ninth in a global list of
countries by suicide rate, with 22.23 suicides per 100,000 people.
(source: IB Times)
INDIA:
Former judges call for commutation of death penalty----13 men face death
penalty even though the Supreme Court says they were erroneously sentenced
Over 6 weeks after a Maharashtra court ruled that Ankush Maruti Shinde was
wrongly sentenced to death, as he was a juvenile when the crime was committed,
he is still stuck in the death row ward of a Nagpur jail. In fact, the Supreme
Court itself had ruled that the judgment was rendered per incuriam - in
ignorance - by the apex court in an earlier judgment.
In jails across the country, 12 other men still have the threat of the gallows
hanging over their heads though the Supreme Court declared that they were also
erroneously sentenced to death. Two others have already been executed.
14 former judges - of the Supreme Court and various High Courts ??? have now
appealed to the President asking that these death sentences be commuted to life
imprisonment.
"I am distressed to note that 13 persons in 7 different cases, who were
erroneously sentenced to death as per the Supreme Court's own admission, are
currently facing imminent threat of execution," says the letter, which was
signed by the former Supreme Court judge, P.B. Sawant, as well as judges of
various High Courts, including five former Chief Justices: A.P. Shah, B.A.
Khan, Bilal Nazki, P.K. Misra and S.N. Bhargava.
In 1980, in the case of Bachan Singh vs State of Punjab, a Constitution Bench
of the Supreme Court laid down guidelines on how to determine whether the death
sentence was to be awarded or not. It noted that "the court must have regard to
every relevant circumstance relating to the crime as well as the criminal,"
emphasising that "in addition to the circumstances of the offence, due regard
must be paid to the circumstances of the offender, also."
However, in 1996, in the case of Ravji @ Ramachandra vs State of Rajasthan, the
court held that "it is the nature and gravity of the crime but not the criminal
which are germane for consideration." Since this was contrary to the binding
dictum in the Bachan Singh case, it was rendered per incuriam, and thus had no
precedential value, and should not have been cited in subsequent judgments
imposing the death penalty.
The Supreme Court made an extraordinary admission of its own error in 2009 in
the Santosh Kumar Bariyar vs State of Maharashtra case. "We are not oblivious
that the Ravji case has been followed in at least 6 decisions of this court in
which death punishment has been awarded in last 9 years, but, in our opinion,
it was rendered per incuriam," and went on to list the errant decisions that
have left the lives of 12 men at stake. "It does not appear that this court has
considered any mitigating circumstance or a circumstance relating to criminal
at the sentencing phase in most of these cases," said the apex court.
In their letter to the President, the retired judges said the court's
acceptance of its own mistakes had come too late. "In what is possibly the
gravest known miscarriage of justice in the history of crime and punishment in
independent India, two such wrongly sentenced prisoners, Ravji Rao and Surja
Ram, have already been executed on 4.5.1996 and 7.4.1997 respectively, pursuant
to these flawed judgments. The Supreme Court's admission of error has come too
late for them," said the letter.
The retired judges have made it clear that their appeal has nothing to do with
the larger debate on the death penalty itself. Instead, they have raised
concerns about the fair and just administration of the penalty. "Executions of
persons wrongly sentenced to death will severely undermine the credibility of
the criminal justice system and the authority of the state to carry out such
punishments in future," says the letter. "This matter goes to the very heart of
our Constitution and the system of democratic government because it involves
the taking of lives by the state on the basis of judgments admitted to be
erroneous by the Supreme Court."
Noting that none of the cases involves crimes against the state, the retired
judges pointed out that if the sentences were commuted, the prisoners would
still spend the rest of their lives behind bars, thus protecting social
interests and upholding the rule of law.
(source: The Hindu)
GAMBIA:
Gambia's president vows to execute death row inmates starting next month
Gambia's president says he has vowed to start executing by mid-September all of
the country's inmates who had been sentenced to the death penalty as part of
efforts to curb the rising crime rate.
President Yahya Jammeh did not say how many would be executed, but said the
death sentences must be carried out as people continue to commit heinous
crimes. He spoke Sunday during his annual televised meeting with Muslim elders.
The number of people sentenced to death since 1997 could be about 30, but
official numbers are not available.
Gambia's former minister Omar Jallow told The Associated Press Tuesday that the
death penalty had only been carried out once before the sentence was abolished
in the early 90s. He said Jammeh's regime reinstated the death penalty in 1995,
but no executions have been carried out since.
(source: Associated Press)
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