[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
July 31 BELARUS: Belarus Condemns Second Man To Death This Year A man was sentenced to death in Belarus for double murder on July 31, despite repeated calls by the European Union for the abolition of capital punishment in the only European country that still carries out executions. The Minsk-based Vyasna (Spring) human rights group says a court in the eastern city of Vitsebsk found the defendant, Viktar Paulau, guilty of murdering 2 elderly women in late December and sentenced him to death. The court established that Paulau beat to death the 2 retired sisters in a village near Vitsebsk and stole cash and alcoholic beverages from their house. Paulau, 50, told the court he regretted his deed and begged for his life to be spared. He is the 2nd Belarusian sentenced to death this year after 36-year-old Alyaksandr Asipovich received the death penalty in January for killing 2 girls in 2018. For years, the EU has urged Belarus to join other countries in declaring a moratorium on capital punishment. According to rights organizations, some 400 people have been sentenced to death in Belarus since it gained independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Human rights groups say Belarus carried out 1 execution in January, 1 in November, and 2 executions in May 2018. (source: Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty) *** EU warns Belarus to abolish death penalty Despite the European Union’s repeated calls for the abolition of capital punishment in the only European country that still carries out executions, a man was sentenced to death in Belarus for double murder on 31 July. The EU reiterated its opposition to the death penalty in a statement, in which it expressed its sincere sympathy to the families and friends of the victims. “Tangible steps taken by Belarus to respect universal human rights, including on the death penalty, remain key for shaping the EU’s future policy towards Belarus.”, the statement reads. (source: neweurope.eu) UNITED KINGDOM: Activists warn UK against risking death penalty for ISIL suspectsThe UK failed to assure that 2 ISIL suspects would not face execution in US, angering legal experts and rights groups. The United Kingdom's decision to share evidence with the United States about two suspected British ISIL members without seeking assurances they would not face the death penalty if extradited sets a dangerous precedent, international human rights lawyers and groups have said. A letter leaked to the media in July last year, revealed that the UK's former Home Secretary Sajid Javid told US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in consultation with the then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson, that the UK had "strong reasons for not requiring a death penalty assurance in this specific case". Maha Elgizouli, the mother of one of the two suspects, El-Shafee Elsheikh, has challenged the UK's decision to share 600 witness statements gathered about her son and the other suspected member of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) group, Alexanda Kotey, with US authorities under a mutual legal assistance (MLA) agreement. Elgizouli lodged a claim against the decision at the High Court, but two judges ruled in January it was not unlawful. She now hopes that after hearings which opened in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, judges will rule to review the decision. Internationally, we are moving away from a rule-based system to a power-based system. That effectively means is that the international law rubric isn't being adhered to.Tasnime Akunjee, criminal defence solicitor If extradited to the US without those assurances, Elsheikh and Kotey, both of whom are accused of belonging to the so-called "ISIL Beatles", could be executed or sent to Guantanamo Bay where detainees have been held for years without trial. "To proceed without the provision of an enforceable written assurance as to the death penalty, torture and fair trial guarantees would set a very dangerous precedent," Toby Cadman, an international human rights lawyer and barrister, told Al Jazeera. "It would send a message that we are prepared to disregard human rights concerns for political expediency," added Cadman, who specialises in war crimes, extradition and human rights law. Legal exception Elsheikh and Kotey were allegedly responsible for killing several people, including journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and British aid workers Alan Henning and David Haines. What should Europe do with families of ISIL fighters? Both suspects were stripped of their British citizenship after they were captured by Syrian Kurdish forces last January. The move stirred debate over whether they should be returned to the UK for trial or face justice elsewhere. MLA requests between the UK and US are subject to rules in the Overseas Security and Justice Assistance Guidance, which states that
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN., GA., FLA., ARK., CALIF., USA, US MIL.
July 31 PENNSYLVANIA: A new state grant program will help poor defendants in capital punishment cases. Why aren’t reformers satisfied? For the first time ever, Pennsylvania lawmakers have set aside state funds to represent poor criminal defendants facing the death penalty. The only problem, according to criminal justice advocates? It’s not nearly enough money. In June, tucked into a piece of budget legislation known as the fiscal code, lawmakers approved a $500,000 allocation to reimburse counties for costs of indigent criminal defense in capital cases. The money will be distributed through a grant program administered by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency. Drew Crompton, a top lawyer for Senate Republicans, said this year’s allocation is “in the spirit” of a 2018 recommendation from the Joint State Government Commission, which found in a study of Pennsylvania’s death penalty that the state didn’t provide sufficient resources for poor, or indigent, defendants. While the $500,000 grant program might not cover all costs related to indigent defense in capital cases, Crompton said, it could lead to larger investments in the future. “I don’t think we were looking to offset every dollar of capital cases,” Crompton told the Capital-Star on Monday. “We’re just going to have to see how the program works.” Under the sixth amendment of the U.S. Constitution, anyone charged with a crime is entitled to a lawyer. If a defendant is too poor to hire one, a court will assign a public defender to their case. Pennsylvania is the only state in the country that doesn’t allocate general funds for indigent defense, according to a 2011 study by the Joint State Government Commission. Those costs are borne entirely by the state’s 67 counties, which each maintain their own public defender’s office. The system “is particularly burdensome to the poorer counties, which must contend with the dual handicap of scant resources and high crime rates,” the report reads. Last year, an investigation by Keystone Crossroads found that those problems had hardly improved. In addition to wide spending disparities among counties, reporters found that the caseload for public defenders had risen, even as crime has fallen across the state. Phyllis Subin, a former public defender who now heads the Pennsylvania Coalition for Justice in Philadelphia, has long called on Pennsylvania to direct state funds to indigent defense. A $500,000 earmark for capital murder cases, she says, isn’t nearly enough to ensure fair representation for the state’s poor defendants. “It’s a small and … an unrealistic appropriation,” Subin said. “This is pretty much a drop in the bucket of what’s really needed in terms of appropriate and systemic change.” Marc Bookman, a lawyer and director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, an anti-death penalty legal aid group based in Philadelphia, put it another way. “Imagine there’s a terrible drought across Pennsylvania and the Legislature decides to address the problem by opening up a lemonade stand in Harrisburg,” Bookman said. “That’s what they’ve done here to address the state-wide problem with capital punishment.” Both advocates argue that a reimbursement program won’t encourage counties to invest more in indigent defense, since they’ll only be able to claim money they’ve already spent. Counties also can’t count on grants if demand for the funds exceeds supply. Crompton said there’s no guarantee that a county will recoup the money it spends on a capital defense case. But he thinks the grant fund “will allow counties some freedom” in crafting defense strategies. While it’s hard to say how much the average capital punishment case costs in Pennsylvania, cases in which prosecutors seek the death penalty are generally among the most expensive to litigate, according to Vic Walczak, legal director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, which opposes the death penalty. Defendants facing the death penalty need two lawyers, Walczak said: one to lead them through the trial, and another to represent them during sentencing. The cases are also subject to multiple rounds of costly appeals. What’s more, prosecutors and defense attorneys often enlist multiple expert witnesses to testify in court. Walczak said public defenders have to consider the cost of these witnesses as they build their cases. For that reason, he’d prefer a program that offsets defense costs throughout the duration of a case, as opposed to one that offers reimbursements after the fact. In Northampton County, taxpayers have spent $80,000 litigating charges against Dekota Baptiste, an indigent defendant who was convicted of 1st-degree murder in May, the Morning Call reported Monday. Prosecutors seeking the death penalty have paid more than $25,000 for expert witnesses, including a psychiatrist and a forensic pathologist. The county public
