[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
July 19 MOROCCO: Moroccan court orders death penalty for jihadists who beheaded tourists3 men who killed Scandinavian women hiking in High Atlas face death sentence A Moroccan court has condemned 3 Islamic State group supporters to death for the murder of 2 Scandinavian women who were beheaded while on a hiking trip in the High Atlas mountains. The suspected ringleader, Abdessamad Ejjoud, and 2 companions received the maximum penalty for the murders in December of Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, a 24-year-old Danish tourist, and her 28-year-old Norwegian companion, Maren Ueland. The anti-terrorist court in Sale, near the Moroccan capital, Rabat, issued verdict on Thursday following an 11-week trial in a case that has shocked the north African country. The 3 admitted to killing the women and said they had been Isis supporters, although the group itself has never claimed responsibility for the murders. Ejjoud, a 25-year-old street vendor and underground imam, had confessed at a previous hearing to beheading one of the women. Younes Ouaziyad, a 27-year-old carpenter, confessed to the other murder, while Rachid Afatti, 33, had videoed the murders on his mobile phone. Prosecutors had called for the death penalty despite Morocco having a de facto freeze on executions since 1993. “We expect sentences that match the cruelty of the crime,” said Khaled El Fataoui, a lawyer speaking for the family of Jespersen, told AFP. Helle Petersen, her mother, said in a letter read out in court last week: “The most just thing would be to give these beasts the death penalty they deserve.” The prosecution labelled all 3 “bloodthirsty monsters”, pointing out that an autopsy report had found 23 injuries on Jespersen’s decapitated body and 7 on that of Ueland. The defence lawyers argued there were “mitigating circumstances on account of their precarious social conditions and psychological disequilibrium”. Coming from modest backgrounds, with a “very low” level of education, the defendants lived for the most part in poor areas of Marrakesh, a tourist hotspot. However, the court ordered the three men to pay 2m dirhams (£170,000) in compensation to Ueland’s parents. Jespersen’s lawyers accused the authorities of failing to monitor the activities of some of the suspects before the murders. But the court rejected the Jespersen family’s request for 10m dirhams in compensation from the Moroccan state for its “moral responsibility”. The prosecution has called for prison terms of between 15 years and life for the 21 other defendants on trial since 2 May. (source: The Guardian) IRANfemale execution 91st woman executed in Iran during Rouhani’s presidency A Kurdish woman named Maliheh Salehian was executed in the central prison of Mahabad. She is the 91st woman to be executed in Iran during Rouhani’s term in office since 2013. Maliheh Salehian from Miandoab was hanged on Tuesday, July 16, 2019, on charges of murder in the central prison of Mahabad. In the last 2 days, 13 people have been executed in different cities of Iran. On Wednesday, July 17, 2019, another female prisoner, Zahra Safari Moghadam, 43, was hanged in the Prison of Nowshahr, in northern Iran. Zahra Safari Moghaddam was in prison since July 2016. Less than a month ago, on June 19, a woman identified as Fatemeh Nassiri was hanged in Gohardasht (Rajaii-Shahr) Prison of Karaj. She had been imprisoned since 11 years ago in Qarchak prison. She was said to have undertaken the crime committed by her son. There are unconfirmed reports of the hanging another woman by the name of Fariba, along with Fatemeh Nassiri on June 19. Maliheh Salehian is the 91st woman to be executed during 6 years of Rouhani’s presidency. Iran is the world’s record holder in per capita executions. More than 3700 persons have so far been executed during 6 years of Rouhani’s terms in office. The Iranian regime deploys execution and the death penalty as a tool for maintaining its grab on power and for silencing a disgruntled populace the majority of whom live under the poverty line, while unemployment is rampant in the country and there is no freedom of speech. Rule 61 of the United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-Custodial Measures for Women Offenders (the Bangkok Rules) reads, “When sentencing women offenders, courts shall have the power to consider mitigating factors such as lack of criminal history and relative non-severity and nature of the criminal conduct, in the light of women’s caretaking responsibilities and typical backgrounds.” Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, has consistently emphasized the need for abolition of the death penalty in Iran. (source: ncr-iran.org) ** Man Hanged at Mahshahr Prison A man was hanged at the southern Iranian city of Mahshahr’s Central prison Wednes
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, USA
July 19 TEXAS: After defeats in 2019, a group of Texas lawmakers is teaming up to push criminal justice reformThe new Criminal Justice Reform Caucus in the Texas House will set its sights on changes in 2021. Lawmakers entered 2019 with high hopes that they could change Texas' bail procedures, death penalty laws and drug policies. But the legislative session ended this summer without major reforms in any of those issues. Trying to prevent a similar outcome in 2021, a bipartisan group of House representatives has banded together to form an uncommon, issue-based caucus in the Texas Capitol: one targeting criminal justice reform. “I’m sad to say that for all our other successes, the 86th Legislature was a failure for criminal justice reform,” said state Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, in a statement given to The Texas Tribune on Thursday. “Misinformation and a lack of issue-specific guidance on the floor stopped a lot of commonsense, crucially needed bills.” Moody and state Rep. Jeff Leach, a Plano Republican who chairs the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee, will initially lead the House Criminal Justice Reform Caucus, which has 10 other House members — 5 Democrats and 5 Republicans — signed up. The goal is to help educate colleagues on criminal justice issues and work together to advance reform proposals, Moody said. In some ways, the 2019 legislative session was marked by bipartisan progress on issues that have vexed the Legislature for years, most notably school finance. But time and again, key proposals to change the criminal justice system fell flat. A bipartisan push to reform bail practices, which have been ruled unconstitutional in several counties, slowly moved through the House with backing from Gov. Greg Abbott before dying quickly in the Senate. House lawmakers messily scrambled back and forth on a measure to limit arrests for nonjailable offenses, like traffic violations or theft under $100, before it finally fell apart. Proposals to restrict or require reporting on law enforcement’s ability to seize property without a criminal conviction failed, were partially resuscitated and then later killed again in the House. And a House bill to lessen criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of marijuana arrived at the Senate’s doorstep with a death notice already pinned to it. For Moody, who announced Thursday he'd seek reelection to the Texas House after weighing a run for the open El Paso district attorney seat, the biggest failures this year pertained to death penalty bills. The most notable was one that would have created a pretrial process for determining if a capital murder defendant is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution. Texas’ top criminal court has been slammed twice by the U.S. Supreme Court in the last 2 years for how it determines intellectual disability in death penalty cases, and state judges have begged for the Legislature to step in for years. “[These are] reforms that have been essentially dictated by the U.S. Supreme Court, and we failed to act again for 20 years running now on intellectual disability, and that should just be unacceptable,” he told the Tribune. “What was a session that could have seen monumental reform in criminal justice saw very little.” Leach has also been a rare Republican voice advocating for death penalty reforms. He said in the statement that Republicans and Democrats can find common ground on criminal justice priorities. “I am confident that, working together, we can make the Texas system a shining beacon of smart, effective criminal justice that leads the nation,” he said. Although notable House bills often died after impasses with the lawmakers in the Senate, Moody said he hopes the caucus will help combat misinformation that disrupts reform efforts. “All those positive structural things will create fewer roadblocks to success and will create a better line of communication to the Senate,” he said. Other members of the newly minted caucus weren’t as keen on marking the session as a failure. State Rep. James White, R-Hillister, chair of the House Corrections Committee, marked as achievements legislation to improve care for women in prison, tackle the backlog of rape kits and end the widely reviled Driver Responsibility Program. But he said the caucus will allow for lawmakers to take a broad approach and look at the criminal justice system as a whole, noting that several of the members are chairs of relevant committees dealing with public health, the judiciary and the state’s prison system. State Rep. Senfronia Thompson, a Houston Democrat who leads the chamber’s Public Health Committee, said that lawmakers have recognized that Texas has over-criminalized our society. “I’m happy that we’re going to be able to come together and have some consensus on some issues that have plagued us for a long time,” she said.
