[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
Sept. 17 JAPAN: Death-row inmate jailed for killing 4 people in 2002 dies of illness A death-row inmate convicted of killing 4 people in 2002 has died of illness at a Tokyo detention center, the Justice Ministry said Sunday. Tetsuo Odajima, 74, was pronounced dead at 10:30 p.m. Saturday after losing consciousness. He had suffered esophageal cancer and been treated at the detention facility, the ministry said. Odajima and an accomplice strangled the wife and daughter of Takaichi Mabuchi, who at the time was president of Mabuchi Motors, after breaking into their home in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, in August 2002. After stealing hundreds of thousands of yen in cash and jewelry items, Odajima set fire to the house. Odajima and Katsumi Morita also killed a 71-year-old dentist in Meguro Ward, Tokyo, in September 2002, and the wife of a discount ticket shop operator in Abiko, Chiba Prefecture, in November of that year in murder-robbery cases. According to the ministry, Odajima was diagnosed with esophageal cancer around January this year. As he refused medical treatment, he had been receiving nutritional support and administered pain relief medication. The Chiba District Court handed down the death penalty to Odajima in March 2007. Although he once appealed to a high court, he dropped the motion in November that year and the ruling was finalized. The district court also sentenced Morita to death in December 2006, and the decision was upheld by the Tokyo High Court in March 2008. K (source: japantimes.co.jp) VIETNAM: Death row inmates arrested after a week on the run in VietnamSuspicion is hanging over the prison guards who allowed them to escape. Vietnamese police have arrested 2 death row convicts who escaped from a Hanoi prison a week ago. Nguyen Van Tinh, 28, was arrested in Hoa Binh Province which neighbors the capital in the early hours of Sunday. His accomplice Le Van Tho, 37, was arrested 8 hours earlier while taking a taxi in Hai Duong Province, around an hour's drive from Hanoi. Tinh was sentenced to death in April for heroin trafficking. Tho received the death penalty in May for drug trafficking, murder and fraud. Both have appealed their sentences. They shared a cell in Thanh Oai District on the outskirts of Hanoi which they broke out of on the night of September 10 during heavy downpours. An investigation found they managed to unlock their cuffs, make a hole in the wall of their cell and climb out of the prison using rope. They took a motorbike from a relative in Hanoi and fled the city, and were first spotted in Ha Long 3 nights later. Vietnam's top prosecutors have ordered an investigation into the role the prison guards played in the breakout. (source: vnexpress.net) IRANexecution Man Hanged on Murder Charges, Authorities Silent A prisoner by the name of Abuzar Ghadami was reportedly hanged at Shiraz's Adel Abad Prison on murder charges. According to the human rights news agency, HRANA, the execution was carried out on the morning of Monday September 11. Iranian official sources, including the Judiciary and state-run media, have not announced Abuzar Ghadami's execution. (source: Iran Human Rights) IRAQ: Iraqi Prime Minister: German Teen Runaway Could Face Death Penalty Iraq's prime minister says the teenage German girl found in Mosul last month who ran away from home after communicating with Islamic State group extremists online is still being held in a Baghdad prison. Speaking to The Associated Press in an exclusive interview Saturday, Haider Al-Abadi says Iraq's judiciary will decide if the teen will face the death penalty. "You know teenagers under certain laws, they are accountable for their actions especially if the act is a criminal activity when it amounts to killing innocent people," he said. 16-year-old Linda W. ran away last summer from her hometown of Pulsnitz in eastern Germany. She was found in the basement of a home in Mosul's Old City by Iraqi forces who are driving IS militants from the city. (source: Associated Press) EGYPT: Criminal court set to sentence Libyan Da'ish members to death penalty Cairo Criminal Court referred the papers of 7 defendants in the "Da'ish Libya" case, Saturday, to Grand Mufti Shawky Allam, before sentencing them to the death penalty. The court set the final verdict date as October November 25 for the 20 defendants. A referral to the mufti is required in the Egyptian court system ahead of death sentences, even though the mufti's opinion is advisory not binding. Prosecution referred the defendants to trial court last year for forming a terrorist cell affiliated to the "Islamic State (IS)" faction in Libya, alleging that a number of the defendants were involved in the beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians. The defendants face accusations of "violence and vandalism, resisting authorities and
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news---S.C., FLA., LA., OHIO, NEB., IDAHO, CALIF.
Sept. 17 SOUTH CAROLINA: Years awaiting execution: 4 men with ties to T Region on death row The date was July 14, 2004. A Mercury Sable station wagon was stolen from a Lawrenceville, Virginia, auto auction business. The next night, on July 15, Mikal Deen Mahdi was caught on camera robbing an Exxon gas station in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he fatally shot the store clerk, 29-year-old Christopher Jason Boggs. Then on the morning of July 18, Mahdi carjacked a Ford Expedition from a driver in Columbia. He then drove to Calhoun County, where he killed Orangeburg Department of Public Safety Capt. James Myers that night. Mahdi set Myers' body on fire inside a shed where the fugitive had been hiding. Mahdi fled in Myers' white police-issued Dodge Ram. An intensive law enforcement manhunt led to Mahdi's capture in Satellite Beach, Florida, on July 21. Mahdi pleaded guilty to the murder of Myers in December 2006 trial. After his plea, his grandmother, Nancy Thomas Burwell, said, "His mother left him when he was only 3 years old. I tried to help him as much as I could. If he'd had someone to love and guide him as I tried to do, things might have turned out differently. It's just hard to believe he did all those things. "I'm not disputing it. It's just hard to believe," she said. Mahdi, now 34, is on death row for killing Myers and Boggs. He pleaded guilty to Boggs' murder in 2011. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by Mahdi earlier this year that his lawyer didn't do enough to present evidence of his troubled childhood. "A motion to alter or amend is presently pending in Circuit Court in Calhoun County," S.C. Attorney General's Office spokesman Robert Kittle said. "He is also currently in federal habeas in the District Court. The federal action is not stayed and filings are continuing." Mahdi has been a challenging inmate, according to SCDOC records. He has made 2 escape attempts, the most recent in October 2014. He has also been cited for a number of disciplinary infractions including assault and battery of a jail employee, possession of a weapon and possession of escape tools. Mahdi is 1 of 4 men with ties to The T Region who are currently on death row. 2 of the incidents occurred in Orangeburg County and 1 in Calhoun County. A 3rd occurred in Dorchester County but involved a man from Branchville. Bamberg County currently has no one on death row, according to the S.C. Department of Corrections. Status of executions Executions and new death sentences have been declining in recent years in South Carolina and the U.S. 20 inmates in f5 states were executed in 2016, the lowest number since 1991, when 14 people were put to death. The decline has been partially due to the uncertainty of the process, but also because of the high costs associated with it. South Carolina has not executed anyone since May 6, 2011, when Jeffrey Brian Motts was put to death by lethal injection. Motts was sentenced to death for killing his cellmate at a state prison in Greenville County in 2005. He was already serving a life sentence for killing 2 elderly people during a Spartanburg County robbery in 1995. The state's supply of lethal injection drugs expired shortly after Motts' execution. The state has been unable to obtain alternative drugs because pharmaceutical companies that compounded them in the past have received a great deal of outside pressure to end the practice. Since then, the state has had no way of executing any of the inmates on death row unless they choose to die by electrocution. As a result, execution dates are not scheduled for any of the current death row inmates in South Carolina. Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, who recently served on a five-member subcommittee of the Senate Corrections and Penology Committee to discuss the issue, says the matter has remained unresolved. "We will wait for more direction from the department (DOC)," said Hutto, noting the committee will reconvene in the coming legislative session to discuss the issue. "It is not clear there is a magic law out there that will make everything work." Hutto said possible solutions could include going back to electrocution as the only approved method, doing away with the death penalty totally and going to life-without-parole sentences, or having the state contract with a private company to compound lethal drugs. "But that (the state compounding its own drugs) would be cost prohibitive and run into the same problems major pharmaceutical companies have in that they don't want the liability ... in the event the drugs malfunction and don't work," the senator said. Currently, there are 36 individuals on death row in South Carolina, according to the state Department of Corrections. Other death row inmates from the region, who are housed at Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville, are listed in chronological order according to the
