Free Republic

Some pretty nasty people in this world that should not be. http://www.myeyewitnessnews.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=92236b81-c49b-4401-9678-3692c287ca44&rss=59:mad:

DAYTON, Ohio — A mother in Dayton, Ohio, was found guilty of killing her month-old daughter by burning her in a microwave oven. The jury announced its verdict Friday in the retrial 28-year-old China Arnold. She was found guilty of aggravated murder and faces the death penalty when sentenced.

BOISE, Idaho - A longtime sex offender was sentenced to death Wednesday for the 2005 kidnapping, torture and murder of a 9-year-old northern Idaho boy after federal jurors who watched video of some of the brutality deliberated just three hours. The jurors' recommendation was binding on U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge, who thanked them, dismissed them and then sentenced Joseph Edward Duncan III. Relatives of the victim, Dylan Groene, remained somber as the jury's decision was announced. Duncan murdered Dylan's mother, older brother and his mother's fiance to kidnap him and his younger sister, who was sexually abused along with...

Attorneys for [Jeffery] Wood were in the federal courts this week seeking permission to hire mental health experts to pursue their arguments that Wood is incompetent to be executed tonight. Texas courts have turned down Wood’s appeals. Wood was convicted in the January 1996 slaying of Kriss Keeran, 31, at a Texaco in Kerrville. ...[Daniel] Reneau, Wood’s roommate, was executed in 2002 for shooting Keeran.

... Superior Court Judge William R. Froeberg then told Tran, 33, and co-defendant Noel Jesse Plata, also 33, that they should suffer the death penalty for the Nov. 9, 1995 torture slaying. Plata kept his eyes cast down during the 30-minute sentencing hearing and did not comment. Froeberg handed down those maximum sentences after he listened to prosecutor Ebrahim Baytieh read a poignant three-page letter from Dongsil Park, Linda's mother, who wrote that the emotional toll of losing her daughter in such a heinous fashion made it unbearable for her to be present. ... Linda Park was 18 when the...

Blogger Dwight SullivanIn November of 2007, the state of Louisiana petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court in the capital punishment appeal of Kennedy vs Louisiana. A description at SCOTUSblog is here. The case involves Patrick Kennedy, sentenced to death after being conviced of raping his eight-year-0ld stepdaughter. At the time of his conviction, Louisiana law allowed a death sentence for raping a child under age 12; the law has since been changed to allow that sentence when the child is under age 13. Kennedy is the only individual now facing a death sentence in any state for a non-homicide, his lawyers...

Joseph Edward Duncan III is a sadistic, detail-oriented rapist and killer who went on a GPS-guided quest to abduct and rape children before he settled on a Coeur d'Alene family, U.S. Attorney Tom Moss told a federal jury Wednesday. Duncan, who is representing himself at the sentencing hearing, told the jury that most of Moss' description of events was "fair and accurate." He also said he would testify "to clarify things." -- SNIP -- The six-woman, nine-man jury (12 jurors and three alternates) mostly kept their composure as Moss detailed the grisly crimes against Dylan and Shasta. Some jurors wrinkled...

The news from Barbara Wagner's doctor was bad, but the rejection letter from her insurance company was crushing. Barbara Wagner(Paul Carter/Register-Guard) The 64-year-old Oregon woman, whose lung cancer had been in remission, learned the disease had returned and would likely kill her. Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company refused to pay. What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50. "It was horrible," Wagner told ABCNews.com. "I got a letter in the mail that basically...

HUNTSVILLE — An illegal immigrant from Honduras who claimed his treaty rights were violated when he was arrested for a robbery-murder near Dallas was executed Thursday evening. "God forgive them, receive my spirit," Heliberto Chi said in English. In Spanish, he told a friend watching through a window that he loved him and appreciated his hard work. He appeared to be whispering a prayer in Spanish with a tear at the corner of his right eye as the lethal drugs began to take effect. One of Chi's cousins, who was among the witnesses, sobbed uncontrollably. Two sons of his victims...

God Bless Texas! The Lone Star State has done the world a favor by disposing of a piece of human garbage that raped and brutally murdered two teenage girls. What makes this even sweeter is Texas did it in defiance of the International Court of Justice (is that the one Aquaman and Wonder Woman are on?), the Mexican government (the murderer-rapist was a Mexican), the Organization of American States, and a sobbing clutch of bed-wetting, criminal loving "human rights" activists and lawyers. Here's a quote from the article for those who want a good belly laugh: David Fathi of Human...

HOUSTON — In a case that has drawn international attention, Texas executed José E. Medellín on Tuesday night in defiance of an international court ruling and despite pleas from the Bush administration for a new hearing. The execution came just before 10 p.m. Central time, shortly after the United States Supreme Court denied a last request for a reprieve. Protesters for and against the death penalty clamored in the rain outside the Huntsville Unit, about 70 miles north of Houston, where Mr. Medellín was executed by lethal injection. “I’m sorry my actions caused you pain,” he said to the witnesses...

Medellin Execute For Rape, Murder of Houston Teens Link Only

WASHINGTON -- Injecting last-minute uncertainty into a case that has garnered international attention, the U.S. Supreme Court considered a late-hour appeal by Texas death row inmate Jose Ernesto Medellin on Tuesday night, disrupting the timetable for his scheduled execution in the 1993 rape and murder of two Houston teenagers.

A man on death row in Ohio is suing the state on grounds that due to his obesity he would suffer unduly during lethal injection, the Ohio Attorney General's office said Tuesday. "He will argue that he is so overweight that he has poor veins, and his attorneys are questioning whether or not a lethal injection will be sufficient to cause death," Jim Gravelle, a spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General, told AFP. Richard Cooey, 41, was sentenced to death for the 1986 murder and rape of two female college students. His execution, delayed once before in 2003, is scheduled...

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico — Texas officials cleared the way Monday for the execution of Jose Medellin, one of 51 Mexican nationals on U.S. death row, for his role with five other members of a Houston gang in the 1993 murder and rape of two teenage girls. The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday rejected Medellin's request for a reprieve. Medellin, 33, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. CDT today. The decision violates the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, according to the International Court of Justice. President Bush ordered Texas to comply with that decision,...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A death row inmate scheduled for execution in October says he's so fat that Ohio executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the lethal injection drugs. Lawyers for Richard Cooey argue in a federal lawsuit that Cooey had poor veins when he faced execution five years ago and that the problem has been worsened by weight gain.

<p>COLUMBUS -- A death row inmate scheduled for execution in October says he's so fat that Ohio executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the lethal injection drugs.</p> <p>Lawyers for Richard Cooey argue in a federal lawsuit that Cooey had poor veins when he faced execution five years ago and that the problem has been worsened by weight gain.</p>

The Norwegian Islamic Council is still waiting for a reply from the European Fatwa Council before it decides whether or not it is in favour of the death penalty for homosexuality. "Unacceptable," says lesbian Sara Asmeh Rasmussen. Last November the Norwegian Islamic Council asked the European fatwa council what attitude it should have to homosexuals. The fatwa council, which debates questions of Muslim faith and doctrine, had its annual meeting in Paris three weeks ago, but did not discuss the subject, according to daily newspaper Dagsavisen. "It's wrong of the Islamic Council to wait for the "verdict" from the fatwa...

The United States is fast approaching a showdown over its commitment to the rule of international law as Texas prepares to carry out the scheduled Aug. 5 execution of convicted killer and rapist Jose Medellin. On July 14, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ordered the US government to "take all measures necessary" to prevent the execution of Mr. Medellin and four other Mexican nationals awaiting execution dates on death row in Texas. . . Medellin admitted involvement in the gang rape and murder of two girls. The girls, ages 14 and 16, took a shortcut home through...

President Bush on Monday approved the execution of an Army private, administration officials said. It was the first time in over a half-century that a president has affirmed a death sentence for a member of the U.S. military.

Fourteen years and numerous judicial reviews have passed since José Medellin was sentenced to die after confessing to the brutal gang rape and murder of two teenage girls in Houston. That's long enough, state officials say. It's time to carry out the sentence. But defense attorneys, and an unusual coalition of federal officials, including no less than the attorney general and secretary of state, say if his Aug. 5 execution is not stayed, so Mr. Medellin's case can be reviewed one more time at the behest of the International Court of Justice, Texas will be rushing to judgment and endangering...

The Supreme Court ended its term this year by making a mistake in one of its most controversial cases--the case in which it held unconstitutional a Louisiana law authorizing capital punishment for the rape of a child under 12 years of age.

A Kern County man sentenced to death 25 years ago for participating in the double murder of a Mojave couple will not face the death penalty after all. The state attorney general’s office confirmed Friday it will not appeal a federal judge’s decision to throw out the 1983 death sentence of Constantino Carrera. In addition, the Kern County prosecutor who originally handled the case says too much time has passed to retry the case. None of these decisions affect Carrera’s conviction for the 1982 robbery and stabbing deaths of Jack and Carol Hayes, who managed the Imperial 400 Motel in...

Southern states execute two killers HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- Texas executed a man Wednesday who was convicted of killing a woman and her child, while Mississippi put to death a man who took part in the fatal beating of another man. Derrick Sonnier shook his head "no" when asked if he had any final statements. he was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m., eight minutes after the lethal dose was administered. Sonnier was convicted of murdering Melody Flowers, 27, and her 2-year-old son, Patrick, in their Houston apartment in 1991. Flowers was raped, stabbed, strangled and beaten with a hammer until...

(CNN) — Support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama extend to death row Wednesday. According to The Jackson Clarion Ledger, a Mississippi newspaper, death row inmate Dale Leo Bishop's final words before being executed Wednesday night included an appeal to Americans to vote for the Illinois senator. "For those who oppose the death penalty and want to see it end, our best bet is to vote for Barack Obama because his supporters have been working behind the scenes to end this practice," Bishop said, according to the paper.

Handcuffed and shackled, Randal Rushing blew the awaiting media a kiss as he was led from a Wilkes-Barre apartment Thursday afternoon. Handcuffed and shackled, Randal Rushing blew the awaiting media a kiss as he was led from a Wilkes-Barre apartment Thursday afternoon. “I had fun,” the man accused of a triple homicide in Scranton said when asked whether he had killed three people. Ten hours after a grizzly discovery at his residence on South Irving Avenue — three people so badly bludgeoned that the manner of death was difficult to determine — Rushing, 25, was taken into custody just after...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The World Court said on Friday it will rule next week on a Mexican request that it seek a delay of the imminent U.S. executions of five of its citizens, who Mexico argues were denied consular assistance. One of the five on death row, Jose Medellin, is due to die on August 5 in Texas, prompting Mexico to make its petition last month for urgent action. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will issue its decision on July 16. The ICJ in The Hague ruled in 2004 that the United States had violated international law by failing...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (Reuters) - A man convicted of murdering his adoptive parents was put to death by lethal injection in Texas on Thursday, the second prisoner executed in the state since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted an unofficial death penalty moratorium in April. Carlton Turner's was the first of three executions scheduled for July in Texas -- the country's busiest death penalty state. Texas has 14 more executions slated for this year. Turner, 29, was convicted of fatally shooting his adoptive parents -- Carlton Sr., 43, and Tonya, 40 -- in their Irving, Texas, home in August 1998. Turner, 19...

I read a story on the New York Post website the other day that first broke my heart and then filled me with rage. The story was about the funeral of a three year old boy named Kyle Smith who was beaten, tortured and killed by his guardians. What was done to this poor child was so horrible that I cannot even bring myself to describe it. Every time I read one of these stories, I have the same reaction. Not only do I want the perpetrators of these atrocities to die, I want them to die slowly and painfully....

July 4, 2008 The Manifold Dangers of a Liberal Supreme Court Christopher AdamoAs far back as Sun Tzu, military strategists have well understood the concept that victory in war does not require the destruction of one's enemy, but merely convincing that enemy that destruction is inevitable if the fight continues. Similarly, in a dictatorship, absolute control is neither necessary nor, in most cases, even possible. All that is needed for the dictator to endure is the presumption among the underlings that the leader does indeed hold a monopoly of power. It is a point that Americans ought to seriously...

Capital Punishment: A year and a half after its lethal injection debacle, Florida's recent execution of a child killer and rapist went smoothly. But emotionalism continues to impede justice.Mark Dean Schwab was a monster. He looked like a perfectly normal, even handsome young man. But a month after being released from prison in 1991 for raping a 13-year-old boy in 1987, Schwab befriended, then kidnapped, raped and murdered 11-year-old Junny Rios-Martinez Jr. As Schwab was being executed Tuesday evening, Junny's relatives and their supporters outside the death chamber wore T-shirts emblazoned with a smiling photo of Schwab's young victim. When...

When our rulers on the Supreme Court invalidated the State of Louisiana's death penalty for child rapists — in the case appropriately titled Kennedy v. Louisiana, decided June 25 — Justice Kennedy and the Court's liberal bloc insisted that the Eighth Amendment does not mean what it meant when it was adopted. Rather, the question of what is "cruel and unusual" punishment is answered by "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Such gobbledygook is the mark of Left-liberal hauteur. In an arrested-development society, getting older is not necessarily maturing, and chronological maturation is...

Governor says the court overlooked precedent in banning death penalty for those convicted of raping childrenGovernor Bobby Jindal says the U.S. Supreme Court made a factual error when it banned the death penalty as a sentence for those convicted of raping children. The court claimed there was no federal precedence in providing that type of sentence, but Jindal says the death penalty is authorized for child rape under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The Governor is asking Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell and Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick to consider petitioning the court for a rehearing. The 5-4...

Dead Men Walking Why Kennedy v. Louisiana could spell the beginning of the end of the death penalty. by Erin Sheley THERE IS MUCH TO find loathsome about Justice Kennedy's opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Louisiana statute allowing capital punishment for child rapists is unconstitutional. Most morally disgusting is the Court's conclusory recognition of "an incongruity between the crime of child rape and the harshness of the death penalty," which in this case would have been imposed on a man whose assault on his eight-year-old stepdaughter tore her internal organs away from...

When the Supreme Court ruled last week that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, the majority noted that a child rapist could face the ultimate penalty in only six states — not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government either. This inventory of jurisdictions was a central part of the court’s analysis, the foundation for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s conclusion in his majority opinion that capital punishment for child rape was contrary to the “evolving standards of decency” by which the court judges...

While China introduced lethal injections in the late 90’s as a method for carrying out the death penalty, my friends and students tell me that most offenders are put to death by a shot to the back of the head from an assault rifle. I have also been told that the families of the offenders are often compelled by the government to purchase the bullet that is used in the gun. While various reasons for this have been put forward by my friends, it is likely that these families must pay for the bullets in order to demonstrate that they...

WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court ruled last week that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, the majority noted that a child rapist could face the ultimate penalty in only six states — not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government either. This inventory of jurisdictions was a central part of the court’s analysis, the foundation for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s conclusion in his majority opinion that capital punishment for child rape was contrary to the “evolving standards of decency” by which the...

Mark Schwab was executed Tuesday evening by lethal injection at the Florida State Prison. Schwab was convicted of raping and killing 11-year-old Junny Rios Martinez of Brevard County in 1991.Tuesday morning, Schwab visited with his mother and aunt and ate his final meal of fried eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, buttered toast and chocolate milk. A representative of the prison said Schwab was polite and followed directions and visited with his religious adviser until 30 minutes before his 6 p.m. execution.The Supreme Court denied Schwab's last appeal early Tuesday evening.This was the first execution since the case of Angel Diaz...

The Supreme Court, in a decision that attempts to honor the sanctity of life and to reserve the death penalty for situations where a murder has occurred, has just given one who rapes a child and the child both a free pass on life. The rapist gets to spend the rest of their life in prison supported by tax payers, escaping the hangman's noose, while the child gets to spend the rest of their life supported by themselves and trying to avoid tying the noose to end their suffering . The Court got it wrong completely for the following reasons...

The state Supreme Court upheld the death sentence today for Ramon Salcido, who murdered his wife, two daughters, three other relatives and his supervisor at a Sonoma County winery during a three-hour rampage in 1989. The justices unanimously rejected defense challenges to Salcido's arrest and transfer from his native Mexico to the United States, his seven murder convictions and his death sentence. Salcido can appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, and has another case pending before the state's high court raising separate issues. Salcido, now 47, used a gun and knife to murder his wife, Angela Richards Salcido,...

THE LAW OF INTENDED CONSEQUENCESThe Constitution Of The United States. Article III, Section 3. Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted. The Congress shall have...

Conservatives were, rightly, thrilled by the recent Supreme Court decision that affirmed our constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Not so fast. Of the four important decisions the court has rendered in this term, three of them have gone the wrong way. Let's first take a brief look at each of these four cases. Then let us examine Justice Anthony Kennedy's thinking in these cases. Kennedy was either the deciding "swing vote" or the determining factor in each one. The only case correctly decided was (1) District of Columbia v. Heller. Justice Scalia wrote the Heller decision, which holds...

Most people would agree with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's assertion that the death penalty for child rape is not "proportional." Given that the court has not banned the death penalty — not yet — is proportionality relevant? The Constitution does ban "cruel and unusual" punishment, and that was the provision where Justice Kennedy and his four colleagues found justification Wednesday for overturning the Louisiana law allowing the death penalty in child-rape cases. But the death penalty itself is not "cruel and unusual" — again, not yet — and the Constitution says nothing about proportionality. Indeed, in the framers'...

She says home is cold and silent after husband, 2 sons slain in S.F.Danielle Bologna can't go back home. Just a week ago, her two-story house on a quiet street in San Francisco's Excelsior district was a bustling place, crammed with sports gear and trophies and team portraits, where she and her husband of 21 years were raising their four children.But in just seconds on Sunday, her family was torn apart: Her husband, Tony, 48, and the couple's sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, were shot and killed as they drove home from a family barbecue in Fairfield.What is left...

In the United States today we no longer enjoy the rule of law but instead the rule of lawyers — robed lawyers with the exalted title "justice" — but still unelected lawyers enacting their own policy preferences. Before their commonsense decision in the Second Amendment case, a different complement of justices (Justice Anthony Kennedy siding with the liberals) demonstrated what a flimsy hold the words of the Constitution have on our jurisprudence. In fact, when you consider that the court is pretty well divided between four liberals and four conservatives with Justice Kennedy swinging from one side to another as...

"On the death penalty, Mr. Obama wrote in his memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” (Crown, 2007), that the penalty “does little to deter crime.” But he added that society has the right to express outrage at heinous crimes. During his 2004 Senate campaign, he publicly supported the death penalty, even as he called the justice system flawed and urged a moratorium on executions." "Mr. Obama is an introspective candidate, and perhaps the best analyst of his own political style. “I serve as a blank screen,” he wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” “on which people of vastly different political stripes...

June 26, 2008, 6:00 a.m. Evolving Nonsense By the Editors In his opinion Wednesday for a five-justice majority in Kennedy v. Louisiana, Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments� forbids imposition of the death penalty for the rape of a child. Or, rather, he ruled that the Court’s modern rewriting of the Eighth Amendment as a license for the Court to impose its “independent judgment� of “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society� yields that result. If any further evidence were needed that the Supreme Court’s...

The Supreme Court's barring of the death penalty for child rapists in Kennedy v. Louisiana underscores the hazards in the court's abandonment of moral absolutes in favor of "evolving standards of decency" and the court's unbridled arrogance in substituting its subjective judgment for the legislatively enacted will of the people. In Kennedy, the court reversed the decision of the Louisiana Supreme Court to uphold the capital punishment of a convicted child rapist, holding that the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment clause prohibits executing such offenders "where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the...

Virginia's 100th execution in modern times was carried out last night as Robert Stacy Yarbrough died by injection for the 1997 slaying of a country store owner. Yarbrough, 30, was pronounced dead at the Greensville Correctional Center at 9:28 p.m. Asked if he had any last words, he said, "Tell my kids I love them. Let's get it over with. Make people happy," according to a prison spokesman. He was sentenced to die for the May 8, 1997, capital murder of Cyril H. Hamby, 77. Hamby was tied up and nearly decapitated with a knife during a robbery of the...

Jurors today convicted Juan Manuel Alvarez of 11 counts of first-degree murder for the deadly Metrolink crash he caused three years ago when he parked his vehicle on railroad tracks. The jury also found the 29-year-old Compton laborer guilty of arson and a special circumstance allegation that makes him eligible for the death penalty. Jurors will now hear testimony to determine whether Alvarez should be put to death for his crimes. Alvarez sat without showing emotion as the guilty verdicts were announced in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. The jury of nine women and three men took less than two...