[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
April 18 AFGHANISTAN: 2 sentenced to death for 2018 killing of Afghan journalist Abdul Manan Arghand The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the Afghan government to deliver justice through a fair and transparent process after 2 suspects were sentenced to death for the killing of Kabul News journalist Abdul Manan Arghand. The verdict was announced on April 16 by the Afghan attorney general's office, following the court's decision on April 6, according to local independent broadcaster TOLO News and Jamshid Rasooli, a spokesperson for the attorney general's office, who spoke to CPJ. The names of the 2 suspects have not been released, and the trial was not open to the public, according to Rasooli. "We applaud the government's efforts to end impunity in the murder of journalists in Afghanistan, which is one of the deadliest places in the world to be a journalist," said Robert Mahoney, CPJ's deputy executive director. "But justice delivered in darkness is not justice, especially when the state decides upon capital punishment. We urge the Afghan authorities to try suspects in open court in accordance with international human rights standards." The primary court's decision will be reviewed by a secondary court and by the Afghan supreme court, Rasooli told CPJ. Arghand, a reporter with the privately owned Kabul News television channel, was shot and killed by 2 unknown gunmen on April 25, 2018, while he was driving to work, according to CPJ reporting. He had previously received anonymous death threats and the Interior Ministry said the Taliban had marked Arghand as a target for assassination, CPJ reported. The 2 men who were sentenced to death were associated with the Taliban, Rasooli said. A court also convicted 3 men for killing Ahmad Shah, a reporter with the BBC's Afghan service who was killed in 2018, the BBC reported in January; one man was handed a death sentence, and the other 2 were sentenced to 30 years and 6 years in prison. The motive for Shah's killing remains unclear, according to the BBC and CPJ. CPJ is continuing to investigate the case. Afghanistan was the deadliest country for journalists last year and ranked 6th on CPJ's Impunity Index, which highlights states with the worst records of prosecuting the killers of journalists. (source: cpj.org) THAILAND: Couple may face death penalty for 'sea home' off Thai coast An American bitcoin investor could face the death penalty after Thailand's navy accused him of violating the country's sovereignty by building a "seastead" home off the coast, which he insisted was simply in pursuit of a vision of freedom. Chad Elwartowski and his Thai girlfriend, Supranee Thepdet, known as Bitcoin Girl Thailand, are facing charges of threatening the kingdom's independence after the authorities found their ocean-based home about 12 nautical miles from shore. But Elwartowski told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that their home was 13 nautical miles out, which he said is just outside Thailand's territorial waters. An official complaint was filed at a Phuket police station, Police Colonel Nikorn Somsuk confirmed yesterday. Col Nikorn told AFP: "The navy and its team... found a concrete tank floating on the sea but there was no one on it. So they filed a charge, citing Criminal Code Article 119." If the couple are officially charged and found guilty, the maximum sentence Elwartowski and Supranee could face is the death penalty. Col Nikorn said the navy would have to meet provincial officials "to consider what to do next". The Royal Thai Navy said on Facebook the couple "did not seek permission from Thailand" before constructing their home. Putting a call out to other interested investors also shows "they do not care about Thailand as a sovereign state". But Elwartowski, who worked as a software engineer for the US military in Afghanistan, Germany and South Korea, told AFP that he and Supranee just wanted to live somewhere free. "I like the idea of being able to vote with your home. If you don't like how your community is being run, you just float to a new one," he said. The bitcoin-rich couple are part of Ocean Builders, a community of entrepreneurs who aim to build permanent homes in waters outside of government territory. They had recently called for 20 interested investors for new seasteads to be built around their maiden platform, which is "just outside of Thailand's territorial waters", said Elwartowski. On April 10, he put out a call for people to invest in an Initial Seastead Offering (ISeaO), which would have launched last Monday. The ISeaO is now postponed, and Elwartowski said he and Supranee, whose English name is Nadia, just want to live together in peace. "We didn't do anything on the seastead that was not legal on land but the feeling of being free is just amazing." Some advocates of seasteading believe in creating "competing
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., GA., FLA., ARIZ., CALIF., WASH.
April 18 TEXASimpending execution Death Watch: King Set to Die for James Byrd LynchingLast-minute appeal seeks new trial as King maintains his innocence Only 2 of 2019's 5 (so far) scheduled executions have taken place; the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Mark Robertson a stay on April 8 – 3 days before his execution date – "pending further order." Robertson's last appeal alleges his trial counsel purposely excluded black jurors for fear they wouldn't be sympathetic to the white defendant. And John King, sentenced to die for the infamous murder of James Byrd Jr. in 1998, now hopes to be the next inmate spared – if only temporarily – by the courts. Byrd's modern-day lynching led to Texas' James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act, signed into law in 2001 by Gov. Rick Perry, which controversially (at the time) included not only race but "sexual preference" in its protected classes. And in 2009, Barack Obama signed the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. King's friend Lawrence Brewer was executed in 2011; the 3rd man convicted of Byrd's murder, Shawn Berry, will reportedly be eligible for parole in 2038. With his execution set for Wednesday, April 24, King's counsel filed appeals on April 10 at the CCA and at state district court in Jasper, where the crime took place, which reaffirm his longstanding claim that he got out of Berry's truck before Byrd was notoriously dragged behind it to his death. King says he told his original counsel he wanted to present this claim at trial and attempted to replace them when they refused and eventually conceded his guilt; his appeal cites the U.S. Supreme Court's 2018 ruling (in McCoy v. Louisiana) that defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to insist counsel maintain innocence at trial, as well as a similar ruling by the CCA, and asks for a completely new trial. On March 20, King also filed a petition for clemency with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which also insists he was not present for Byrd's murder and cites Brewer's reported statement that he had been pressured to frame King rather than Berry because of King's criminal record and affiliation with white-supremacist prison gangs. (Brewer did not testify at King's trial.) If no stay is granted, King will be the 3rd Texas execution this year, and the 561st inmate killed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. (source: Austin Chronicle) PENNSYLVANIA: Mumia Abu-Jamal gets new hearing in 1981 police death A former Black Panther and death row activist convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer decades ago will get a new appeals hearing after the city prosecutor on Wednesday dropped his opposition to it. Mumia Abu-Jamal, 64, is serving a life sentence after spending decades on death row in the 1981 slaying of Officer Daniel Faulkner, who had pulled his brother over in an overnight traffic stop. Abu-Jamal, who was shot during the encounter, was largely tried in absentia at his 1982 capital murder trial, after being removed over his repeated objections and efforts to serve as his own lawyer. A former radio journalist, Abu-Jamal's prison writings made him a popular cause among death penalty opponents worldwide -- and a foe of police unions and the slain officer's widow. The attention to his case quieted after his death sentence was set aside over flawed jury instructions in 2011, and his appeals appeared exhausted. However, in December, Philadelphia Common Pleas Judge Leon Tucker granted Abu-Jamal a new chance to argue his initial appeal after the U.S. Supreme Court said a former Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice had improperly heard a murder case he had overseen as Philadelphia district attorney. The justice, Ronald Castille, had done the same in Abu-Jamal's case. District Attorney Larry Krasner initially fought Tucker's order, fearing it could affect a large number of cases. On Wednesday, he dropped his challenge, citing a revised ruling from Tucker that narrows the scope of his order. Krasner agreed that Castille should not have worn "2 hats" in the case, a fact made more egregious, he suggested, by the discovery of a 1990 note Castille sent Gov. Robert Casey about "police killers," urging him to issue death warrants to "send a clear and dramatic message to all police killers that the death penalty actually means something." "Although the issue is technical," said Krasner, a longtime civil rights lawyer, "it is also an important cautionary tale on the systemic problems that flow from a judge's failing to recuse where there is an appearance of bias." Castille told The Associated Press last year that Abu-Jamal's lawyers never asked him to step down from the appeal. He served as district attorney after Abu-Jamal's murder trial. He said his colleagues on the Supreme Court "knew I'd signed off on the appeal (filings), but I had nothing to do with the trial."
