[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide
Sept. 21 GREAT BRITAIN: An A-Z guide to the history of executionsFor centuries, capital punishment was part of everyday life, as shown by this alphabetical guide to a very British way of death. Writing for BBC History Revealed, historian Gavin Mortimer explores… A … is for ASPHYXIATION Hanging was the preferred method of execution in England from early Anglo- Saxon times, but it was neither efficient nor painless. Deaths were drawn out, with the condemned hanging until they suffocated. Over time, the method evolved, and in 1783 ‘new drop’ gallows were first used at London’s Newgate Prison, whereby the condemned – often many at a time – fell through a trapdoor. Around a century later came the ‘long drop’, where the prisoner’s height and weight were used to determine the length and rate of drop, to ensure a swift death from a broken neck rather than asphyxiation. B … is for BODY SNATCHERS A lucrative profession for criminals in 17th- and 18th-century Britain was body snatching. Freshly interred corpses would be dug up from cemeteries and sold, in most cases, to medical schools for anatomical study. Oddly, the snatching itself was not illegal, but dissecting a body was. That changed with the Anatomy Act of 1832, prompted by the trial of William Burke and his execution in 1829. He and his partner, William Hare, progressed from removing corpses to committing murder in their attempt to ensure a supply to sell to Edinburgh physician Robert Knox. Burke was hanged in front of 25,000 people. His corpse, fittingly, was dissected. C … is for CODE By the 19th century, some 222 crimes were defined as capital offences, including murder, robbery and impersonating a Chelsea pensioner. Even maiming a cow or being out at night with a blackened face was punishable by death, with the age, sex and mental health of the offender being deemed an irrelevance. So harsh was the penal code that it became known as the ‘Bloody Code’, and it wasn’t until 1861 that Parliament passed a bill de-capitalising minor crimes. After then, only four offences carried the death penalty: murder, arson in a royal dockyard, high treason and piracy with violence. D… is for DORCHESTER The English town takes an unexpectedly prominent part in the history of executions. It was there that Elizabeth Martha Brown became the last woman publicly executed in Dorset when she met her end in 1856. Her husband John had struck out at her and she retaliated by burying an axe in his head. Brown was hanged on 9 August in front of a few thousand onlookers. In the crowd was the 16-year-old Thomas Hardy, who drew on the experience when writing his classic novel, Tess of the d’Urbervilles. He later recalled: “I saw they had put a cloth over the face [and] how, as the cloth got wet, her features came through it. That was extraordinary.” Brown’s remains are believed to be among those of 50 executed prisoners found under the former Dorchester Prison, and which may be reinterred in Poundbury Cemetery. E… is for EXECUTIONER The pioneer of the ‘long drop’ in the 1870s was William Marwood, an executioner who was far more humane than his predecessor. The notorious William Calcraft had executed more than 450 people over the course of 45 years in the job and was reputed to enjoy seeing them suffer, sometimes prolonging their death throes to excite the crowd. The most prolific British executioner of the 20th century was Albert Pierrepoint, whose father and uncle were also hangmen. As many as 600 were despatched by him, including hundreds convicted of war crimes. He considered his work as “sacred” and the “supreme mercy”. F… is for FINAL WORDS Facing imminent death affected the condemned in different. ways. Some confessed their sins and asked for forgiveness; others maintained their innocence. James MacLaine, the ‘gentleman highwayman’, murmured only “Oh, Jesus” as he stood on the gallows in 1750. Others may have been eager for the end to be as swift as possible, such as the famous Elizabethan explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, who urged the executioner wielding the axe to “Strike, man, strike!”. As for the highwayman Isaac Atkinson, hanged in 1640, he addressed the crowd: “Gentlemen, there’s nothing like a merry life, and a short one.” G … is for GIBBETING While a gibbet can refer to the actual scaffold used for an execution, gibbeting was the grisly act of publicly displaying. the dead in human-shaped cages to serve as a warning. Even more gruesomely, prisoners could be encased alive in an iron gibbet and suspended from a beam to die of starvation and/or exposure. Gibbeting, also known as ‘hanging in chains’, was around since medieval times, but reached a peak in the mid-18th century. It was a fate that befell the pirate Captain William Kidd, whose body was displayed over the !ames at Tilbury Point in 1701 to make sailors think twice about turning to piracy. H … is for HEART THROB A native of
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TENN., ARK., MO., WYO., IDAHO, CALIF., ORE.
Sept. 21 TENNESSEE: Tennessee AG Challenges Decision to Drop Abdur’Rahman Death Sentence A Nashville judge approved an order last month vacating the sentence months before execution In August, Nashville Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins approved a proposed order vacating the death sentence of Nashville death row prisoner Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman and replacing it with a life sentence. The order was proposed by Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk, who cited racial discrimination in jury selection and other prosecutorial misconduct during the 1987 trial, and looked to spare Abdur’Rahman the death penalty months before his scheduled execution. Funk’s proposed order came after Watkins decided that Abdur’Rahman was entitled to a new hearing in the case. But now, Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery says he will challenge that order, calling it “unlawful” and “unprecedented.” In his statement, Slatery does not specifically address the racial discrimination in jury selection or prosecutorial misconduct on the part of then-Assistant District Attorney John Zimmermann. The statement: The order exchanged the death sentence of Tennessee inmate Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman for life in prison, thus essentially granting clemency through a court and a district attorney that both lack the authority to do so. James L. Jones Jr., as he was known at the time of his crimes, was convicted of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder and armed robbery in 1986. The same jury that found him guilty of murder sentenced him to death. Over the last 30 years Mr. Abdur’Rahman has repeatedly raised the same issues Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk relied on in the trial court, all of which were thoroughly litigated and rejected in the state courts and on federal review through the United States Supreme Court. That leaves no option for reopening Abdur’Rahman’s case for post-conviction proceedings or otherwise amending the sentence. The Office of the Attorney General has the obligation to defend the rule of law and to ensure that the process is fair and transparent, especially when it relates to criminal matters that affect the rights of innocent victims, the accused, and the public. "The public has put a special trust in this Office to help preserve the integrity of the criminal justice system," said General Slatery. "This order uproots decades of established legal procedure and lacks any legal justification which is why we are appealing." In response to Slatery’s announcement, Funk tells the Scene, “I stand by my position.” Abdur’Rahman’s attorney Bradley MacLean tells the Scene he will respond to the AG’s announcement. We will update this story when he does. Update: See MacLean's statement below. Today the Tennessee Attorney General filed a Notice of Appeal seeking to challenge the Agreed Order approved by the Davidson County Criminal Court that converted Mr. Abdur’Rahman’s death sentence to a life sentence. The Davidson County District Attorney General and Mr. Abdur’Rahman entered into an arms-length consent decree converting Mr. Abdur’Rahman’s death sentence to a life sentence. This consent decree was based upon the evidentiary record demonstrating that a rogue prosecutor engaged in racially discriminatory jury selection at Mr. Abdur’Rahman’s capital trial. The Davidson County Criminal Judge Monte Watkins, after taking the matter under advisement, approved the consent decree. Judge Watkins found that the parties had reached an “equitable and just resolution” in order to “remedy an injustice.” The Attorney General has taken the unprecedented step of challenging the judgment and authority of the Davidson County District Attorney who is responsible for all criminal cases in Davidson County. The State of Tennessee is bound by the consent decree, and the Attorney General lacks standing to challenge it. The Tennessee Constitution gives the District Attorney the exclusive authority to handle criminal cases within his district. Today’s action by the Attorney General is an unlawful attempt to usurp the power of the District Attorney. By attempting to undermine the authority and the prosecutorial discretion of the District Attorney, the Attorney General is turning a blind eye to the gross injustices in Mr. Abdur’Rahman’s case and is attempting to sanction the kind of racial bias and egregious prosecutorial misconduct that occurred in the case. The Attorney General is not seeking to uphold our most cherished constitutional principles. Instead, the Attorney General is taking a stand for racism and a prosecutor’s violation of his constitutional and ethical duties. We will vigorously defend the lawful judgment of the Criminal Court. (source: nashvillescene.com) ARKANSASfemale to face death penalty Rebecca O’Donnell appears in court for hearing in Collins murder case A woman accused of capital murder in the
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., N.C., S.C., GA., ALA., OHIO
Sept. 21 TEXAS: Once his defense, Greco’s sexuality used against him as prosecutors push for death penalty When Daniel Greco was first questioned 3 years ago for the murder of Anjanette Harris and her unborn child, Greco told investigators that he accidentally killed Harris during bondage sex when he bound her and pulled a rubber strap around her neck. His defense attorneys, hoping to get a conviction less severe than capital murder, incorporated this defense in their closing arguments to jurors on Wednesday. That argument ultimately failed, and the jury convicted Greco for capital murder. On Friday, as the trial entered the punishment phase, prosecutors hit hard on Greco’s sexuality as they steered their case toward their goal: seeing Greco get the death penalty rather than a life sentence without a chance for parole.<\P> Prosecutors welcomed 2 women who once had sex with Greco to the witness stand. They both said they believed or were told by friends “it could have been me” who Greco murdered if it were not Harris. Assistant District Attorney Lindsey Sheugit, as she questioned one of the women, presented jurors with letters between Greco and six women while he’s been locked up in the Denton County jail. In the letters, Greco wrote sexually explicit notes to each of them. “I like bad girls, like to talk dirty and be funny, so hit me up,” he wrote one, saying to another, “Thank you for the pics, they really got my juices flowing.” All of this will matter in the context of whether Greco gets to live for the rest of his life among the general populations inside the Texas prison system or live isolated on death row until he is executed. After failing to see Greco acquitted of capital murder, his defense attorneys are now locked in a struggle to prove that Greco was and remains a good person despite making a bad decision to kill Harris. Responding to the rounds of letters the state showed the jury, defense attorney Derek Adame showed the jury through his cross examination of one of the women that inmates, regardless of their convictions, write sexually in letters to former sex partners, something Adame argued is routine and in no way an indication that Greco has no remorse for what he did to Harris. Adame and fellow defense attorney Caroline Simone cross examined witnesses with questions related to how encouraging and supportive Greco is of them. Adame called in one man who lived in the cell next to Greco in the county jail. He, too, talked about how supportive Greco was of him. The waning days of this trial become personal, at times painfully, on Friday for Greco. The state not only plunged into Greco’s sexuality but called his mother, Mary Greco, to the witness stand. Prosecutors asked her questions about her son’s decades-long struggle with drug addiction and about his childhood. In his letters to his mother, Greco, who on previous convictions spent time in state prison, acknowledges how much better the Texas Department of Criminal Justice food is than at the Denton County jail, and how much easier it is to sneak contraband into prison than the county jail. In one letter, Greco wrote his mother that he was remorseful but that he didn’t want to spend life in prison. “I feel like I deserve 20 years,” he wrote, the length of the maximum sentence one can receive after a manslaughter conviction. The punishment phase of the trial will continue at 8:30 a.m. Monday in Denton County 431st District Court. (source: Denton Record-Chronicle) * Valley death row inmate granted stay of execution A Court granted a death row inmate’s request for a stay of execution, court records show. In a Sept. 17 order filed in the Southern District of Texas, U.S. District Judge Micaela Alvarez granted Juan Raul Navarro-Ramirez’s motion for a stay — adopting, in its entirety, the “Report and Recommendation,” order from Magistrate Judge Peter E. Ormsby filed in July, the record states. Navarro-Ramirez, 35, who has been sitting on death row in Livingston, Texas, for nearly 15 years, was convicted of 2 counts of murder in December 2004 and given a sentence of death in connection with a failed drug rip against rival gangmembers that left 6 men dead in January of 2003. Navarro-Ramirez, and several fellow members of the Tri-City Bombers, wearing law enforcement gear, participated in the robbery of drugs from a rival gang at a stash house in Edinburg. Ultimately, 6 men were killed, and at least 10 co-defendants arrested in connection with the incident, including Juan Arturo Villarreal Cordova, Robert Garza, Jeffrey Juarez, Reymundo Sauceda, Robert Cantu, Salvador Solis, Juan Miguel Nunez, Juan Ramirez and Jorge Espinosa Martinez. Originating from the Pharr, San Juan, and Alamo area as a breakdancing crew called the “Tri-City Poppers,” the crew began their criminal enterprise first with petty crimes, and then
