[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
March 31 PAKISTAN: Man facing death penalty acquitted after 8 years The Supreme Court on Thursday acquitted a man, who was awarded death sentence by a trial and a high court in a murder case, after 8 years in prison. Abdul Baqi was convicted in the killing case of Muhammad Ali in Balochistan in 2009. The trial court on the basis of a medical report and witnesses' statements had awarded him the death sentence. Later, the Balochistan High Court upheld Baqi's death sentence. The convict had challenged high court verdict in the Supreme Court. A 3-member bench headed by Justice Asif Saeed Khan Khosa after hearing the arguments of the prosecution and the defence counsel acquitted Abdul Baqi and set aside the BHC verdict. The bench observed that there was a contradiction between the medical report and the statements of the prosecution witnesses. Justice Khosa said that in the charge-sheet it was written that an axe was recovered from the accused, but later it was added that a 'blood soaked axe' was recovered. The court observed that the prosecution has failed to prove its case and ordered to release Baqi. (source: nation.com.pk) IRAN: Mad mullah's give man death penalty for blasphemy Iran's mad mullahs have sentenced a young man to death - for "insulting the prophet" on a social media app. The Daily Mail reports that Sina Dehghan was just 19 when arrested by the country's fanatical revolutionary guard for insulting Islam on the LINE app. But human rights activists claim the confession was tricked out of Dehghan who was told he would be released if he signed. Once he signed, prosecutors allegedly reneged on the deal and in January, he was sentenced to die. "During his interrogation, Sina was told that if he signed a confession and repented, he would be pardoned and let go," a source told the Center for Human Rights in Iran. "Unfortunately, he made a childish decision and accepted the charges. Then they sentenced him to death." What exactly he did - and said - remains unknown. Dehghan even confessed on camera, believing he was about to be sprung. Fanatics told his family to keep quiet and the matter would fade away. That didn't happen. "Unfortunately, the family believed those words and stopped sharing information about his case and discouraged others from sharing it as well," the source said. Now, his lawyer has asked for a judicial review in a scramble to save the young man's life. His co-defendants, Sahar Eliasi and Mohammad Nouri were also convicted of posting anti-Islamic material on social media. Nouri was sentenced to death but his eventual fate remains unknown. Eliasi was sentenced to 7 years in prison but that was reduced to 3 on appeal. Dehghan was a draftee in the military when he was arrested in 2015. "They took him to his home and searched it while he repeatedly expressed regret and repentance," a source told CHRI. (source: torontosun.com) ___ A service courtesy of Washburn University School of Law www.washburnlaw.edu DeathPenalty mailing list DeathPenalty@lists.washlaw.edu http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/listinfo/deathpenalty Unsubscribe: http://lists.washlaw.edu/mailman/options/deathpenalty
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----NEB., NEV., USA
March 31 NEBRASKA: Former Doctor's Nebraska Death Penalty Hearing PostponedA death penalty sentencing hearing has been postponed for a former doctor convicted of killing 4 people connected to an Omaha medical school. A death penalty sentencing hearing has been postponed for a former doctor convicted of killing 4 people connected to an Omaha medical school. A judge Thursday postponed the hearing after appointing the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy to help represent Anthony Garcia. The commission often represents those convicted in death penalty cases. The hearing Thursday was to have helped a 3-judge sentencing panel determine whether mitigating factors - such as childhood abuse or impaired mental capacity - exist that might spare Garcia the death penalty. A new hearing date was not immediately set. In October, Garcia was convicted of killing the 11-year-old son and a housekeeper of Creighton University faculty member William Hunter in 2008, and killing pathology doctor Roger Brumback and his wife in 2013. Prosecutors say Garcia blamed Hunter and Brumback for his 2001 firing from Creighton's pathology residency program. (source: Associated Press) NEVADA: Ironies abound in Nevada Assembly in debate over the death penalty There are so many ironies, hypocrisies and confusions surrounding the death penalty, one scarcely knows where to begin. Start with the fact that we punish people for unlawfully killing another person by lawfully killing the perpetrator, society's ultimate do-as-I-say-not-as-I do. People cite the Bible as justification for capital punishment, with passages such as Genesis 9:6, "whosoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man." But God himself, after the 1st homicide just a few chapters earlier in Genesis, didn't kill Cain in punishment for the murder of Abel, but instead banished him. Libertarian conservatives who believe government should be small and weak oppose capital punishment because they think the state should not have the power to kill anyone. Liberals who believe in the power of government nonetheless believe that power shouldn't extend to capital punishment, not least because they think it's implemented unfairly. All of those things came up in one way or another during a hearing this week on Assembly Bill 237, which would outlaw capital punishment in Nevada. "The death penalty is costly, ineffective and intrinsically unfair," said Assemblyman James Ohrenschall, D-Las Vegas, the bill's sponsor. Co-sponsor state Sen. Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, called it a moral issue and a cost issue, because capital cases are more expensive to prosecute and defend on appeal. But then Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks recounted 2 grisly, horrific murders in his jurisdiction, innocent victims of unspeakable depravity leaving grief and horror in their wake. What punishment but death is appropriate for such evil? The Assembly Judiciary Committee heard from a mother whose son was murdered, who asked that the killer not be put to death. "We are called to forgive. We are called to be different," she said. But the committee heard from another mother whose son was killed, who did think death for the perpetrator was a proper fate. Practical considerations were also raised: Since 1977, 160 people have been sentenced to death in Nevada. But just 12 people have actually been executed, and of those, 11 voluntarily gave up their appeals and agreed to be executed. Not only that, but 88 convictions or sentences were reversed on appeal, and 50 defendants were permanently removed from death row because of those reversals. On the other hand, prosecutors in Nevada's 2 most populous counties - Clark and Washoe - say they have filed fewer death penalty notices. Steve Wolfson, Clark County's district attorney, says he considers capital punishment only in the murders of children, police officers in the line of duty, killings involving torture or those with multiple victims. "Most Nevadans want juries to have the death penalty as an option," Wolfson said. And he's right: If the death penalty were on the ballot, it would likely be affirmed with a comfortable majority. But perhaps public support - and the revulsion we feel at the depravity of death-penalty worthy cases - isn't the best argument in favor of the practice. Perhaps our emotions, our desire for some measure of justice or even revenge aren't a proper basis on which to decide who lives and who dies. "Justice is not something we get as the result of the death penalty," said defense attorney Scott Coffee. And he has a point: No matter what happens after a murder - no matter a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, or a death sentence followed by years or even decades of appeals - the wound inflicted by a murder never really heals, life never really goes on as it did.
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, GA., FLA., ALA., TENN., ARK.
March 31 TEXAS: Texas Executions May Slow Down, But Won't Stop Texas executes more people than any state, but a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this week that spared the life of a mentally disabled Texan and proposed legal reforms are forcing it to confront its fondness for capital punishment. Under the Texas law of parties each person involved in a crime can be charged and convicted for it, no matter if they were an accomplice or the perpetrator. The law came up in the capital murder trial of Erica Yvonne Sheppard, who was sentenced to death in March 1995. The jury heard evidence that Sheppard, then 19, and co-defendant James Dickerson, snuck inside Marilyn Sage Meagher's apartment in June 1993, intending to steal Meagher's car keys. Meagher refused to give up the keys and Dickerson told Sheppard to find a butcher knife. She did, and held Meagher down while Dickerson cut her 5 times, then bashed her with a 10-pound statue. Trying to get her sentence reduced to life in prison, Sheppard, now 43, argued in a federal habeas petition that her trial attorney erred by not objecting when the judge, in explaining the law of parties, incorrectly told jurors that a bank robber and getaway driver would both be guilty of robbery and each should get the same punishment. U.S. District Judge Nancy Atlas agreed in a March 29 order denying Sheppard's habeas petition that Sheppard's trial judge got it wrong. Atlas cited Earl Enmund v. Florida, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment did not permit the death penalty for Enmund because he was the getaway driver for 2 people who robbed and murdered an elderly couple, but he did not kill nor intend to kill the couple. But Atlas found Sheppard's culpability sufficient to hold her responsible for the murder, even if the trial judge misled the jury. "The evidence establishes that Sheppard was an active, not merely peripheral, participant in the robbery and murder. Therefore, the trial court's erroneous statement as to punishment on the law of parties was not relevant to Sheppard," Atlas wrote. Texas State Reps. Terry Canales, D-Edinburg, and Harold Dutton Jr., D-Houston, have introduced legislation that would change the law of parties, banning prosecutors from pursuing the death penalty for accomplices in capital felony cases who were not directly involved in the crime. A bill proposed by state Rep. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, would undo another capital punishment law that favors prosecutors. In Texas death penalty cases, a jury must answer 3 questions: Is the defendant a continuing threat to society? If the defendant was not the actual killer, did he or she intend to kill someone or anticipate death? Is there mitigating evidence in their background, character, or in the circumstances of the crime, sufficient to spare their life? To sentence a defendant to death, a jury must unanimously answer yes to the future threat and intent to kill questions and no to the mitigating evidence question. State law also says that 10 or more jurors must agree to answer the special questions in the defendant's favor to give them a life sentence. Critics say that text is misleading at best, at worst a flat-out lie, because defendants must be given a life sentence if 1 juror decides they don't deserve to be executed, but there's a catch: Judges and attorneys can't tell jurors that under state law. Lucio's SB 1065 would benefit defense attorneys because it would remove the bar against judges and attorneys telling jurors that one of them can prevent a death penalty, and nix the de facto rule that 10 or more jurors have to agree on 1 of the 2 special questions to recommend a life sentence. Lucio told the Texas Tribune he filed the bill after religious groups told him about the mandatory jury instructions. "I was shocked to learn that the instructions in place actually lie to jurors who are tasked with quite literally making a life or death decision," Lucio told the Tribune. The U.S. Supreme Court undercut Texas' willingness to execute mentally deficient prisoners this week when it blocked the execution of Bobby James Moore, a 57-year-old African-American, who has been on death row since his July 1980 sentence for fatally shooting a grocery store clerk with a shotgun during a botched robbery in April that year. Experts have testified that at age 13, Moore could not differentiate the days of the week, tell time or understand that addition is the opposite of subtraction. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals upheld Moore's death penalty, ruling that habeas cases need only consider rules it adopted in 2004 to guide lower courts in assessing intellectual disability. The Briseno factors, named for plaintiff Jose Briseno, ask seven questions, most notably: "Can the person hide facts or lie effectively in his own or others' interests?" and
