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Shortly after a jury sentenced John "Jordan" Lewis to death yesterday for killing Philadelphia Police Officer Chuck Cassidy, Lewis' attorney made a prediction. "I told John at the end of the case that he's not going to be executed," said Michael Coard. "He looked at me like I was crazy." If history is any guide, Coard is probably right. Lewis became the 222d resident of Pennsylvania's death row and the seventh man sent there for killing a Philadelphia police officer. But since the death penalty was reinstated in the state in 1978, Pennsylvania has executed just three inmates, all of...

A legal team is going to New York to prevent the use of evidence provided by Germany in seeking a death penalty. Berlin wants to ensure that promises made by the US are kept if the suspects are found guilty. Germany, which does not have a death penalty, provided evidence for the trial on the condition that it could not be used to support a death sentence. Several members of the al Qaeda cell that planned and executed the attacks of September 11 were previously based in the northern German city of Hamburg.

Have you considered...One national news story recently caught my eye and reminded me of the sad state of affairs that is California’s “No Death” Death Penalty. I call it that because most of the 685 inmates on California’s Death Row will die of natural causes. Consider this. One week ago, today, John Allen Muhammad – the Washington DC sniper – was executed in Virginia. He was convicted in 2003 of killing ten people and sentenced to death in March, 2004. That’s five and a half years from conviction through the appeals process to implementation of what is an appropriate and...

<p>WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has thrown out, for the third time, a federal appeals court ruling favorable to a convicted murderer in California whose case has bounced around the courts for a quarter-century.</p> <p>The justices, in an unsigned opinion today, moved to reinstate the death penalty for Fernando Belmontes in the beating death of a 19-year-old woman in 1981.</p>

Ohio became the first state in the nation Friday to adopt a single-injection method for executing condemned inmates, a process that state officials believe will avoid violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The single large dose of anesthetic is similar to the method used by veterinarians to euthanize pets and livestock. Other states with capital punishment now use a three-drug formula that is believed to inflict pain if not properly administered. Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said that Ohio's new method was "a better alternative." "My understanding is this one drug is...

New York's Death Penalty Law Declared Unconstitutional DPIC Summary: People v. Stephen LaValle On June 24, 2004, New York's highest court held that the state's jury instructions were unconstitutional under the state constitution and that the constitutional defect in the existing statute could only be cured by passage of a new law by the legislature. The Court of Appeals vacated the death sentence of Stephen LaValle, concluding that the jurors might impose the death penalty on a defendant whom they believed did not deserve it simply because they feared that the defendant might someday be released. The court remanded the...

ilitary prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty for alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who was formally charged Thursday with 13 counts of premeditated murder, according to a senior Army officer familiar with the matter. The last execution of an active-duty serviceman took place in 1961. Despite evidence that Maj. Hasan had contact with a radical Muslim cleric, the decision to file the murder charges against him in military court, rather than in a civilian one, reflects the Army's belief that the suspect acted alone and without any assistance from foreign or domestic terror groups. Christopher Grey,...

Though the suspect in the shooting rampage at Fort Hood could face the death penalty, he will be prosecuted in a military justice system where no one has been executed in nearly a half-century. Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist alleged to have killed 13 people at the massive Army installation in Texas last week, might also benefit from protections the military provides defendants that are greater than those offered in civilian federal courts. "Our military justice system is not bloodthirsty. That's clear," said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale. Much about Hasan's case will be decided...

"The General Assembly today adopted... a moratorium on executions to be established in all States that still maintain the death penalty..." United Nations. "From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death... I feel... obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed." Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, appointed by President Nixon and author of the Roe v Wade decision. "I cannot say it more eloquently than Justice Blackmun... I must act... today I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates... I will sleep well knowing I made the right decision."...

Recent Supreme Court activity could pave the way for the death sentence given to Mumia Abu-Jamal to be carried out after 28 years.

JARRATT, Va. (AP) - Sniper John Allen Muhammad is meeting with relatives in the hours before his execution and one of his attorneys described the convicted killer as fearless. Attorney J. Wyndal Gordon said Muhammad had no regrets and would die with dignity Tuesday night in Virginia. Gordon also insisted that Muhammad was innocent. Gordon says Muhammad met with one of his sons before the execution and then reminisced with the attorney about the time he spent with his son before Muhammad went to prison.

Here is video of a Virginia Prison Spokesman giving a detailed preview of the upcoming execution of D.C. Sniper Mastermind John Allen Muhammad, who will be executed tonight at 9:00 PM ET. . . . (VIDEO)

D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad is scheduled to die by lethal injection tonight. Do you believe in the death penalty?

WASHINGTON - The man at the center of the investigation for the sniper shootings says he won't be at John Allen Muhammad's execution Tuesday night. "I don't think I will be personally interested. I have seen a lot of death and destruction and I don't think I am interested anymore," former Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose tells Channel 5. Moose was the face of law enforcement during those three terrifying weeks in October 2002. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed at 9 p.m. for the killing of Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station. Meyers is one of...

WASHINGTON - Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan will be tried in a military court-martial, and prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty, officials said yesterday. FBI and Army investigators tried to interview Hasan, who is recovering from bullet wounds in a San Antonio, Tex., Army hospital, on Sunday, but he refused and demanded a lawyer. Under the military system, Hasan's fellow Army officers - almost certainly combat veterans - will rule on whether he is guilty of the mass murder of 12 soldiers and one civilian at Fort Hood, and, if so, on his punishment. A death penalty would...

It's one of America's most haunting crime stories: four members of a Kansas family brutally murdered on Nov. 15, 1959, at their rural farmhouse. The slayings of the Clutters — chronicled in Truman Capote's book, "In Cold Blood" — have overshadowed the town of Holcomb for the past half century and the trial and execution of the culprits has brought little, if any, closure. For many townsfolk, the wounds have been slow to heal partly because of Capote's critically acclaimed, nonfiction novel that spawned a new literary genre. The book has been reviled in its birthplace by residents because of...

Joe Sullivan was sent away for life for raping an elderly woman and judged incorrigible though he was only 13 at the time of the attack. Terrance Graham, implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17, was given a life sentence by a judge who told the teenager he threw his life away. They didn't kill anyone, but they effectively were sentenced to die in prison. Life sentences with no chance of parole are rare and harsh for juveniles tried as adults and convicted of crimes less serious than killing. Just over 100 prison inmates in the United...

RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi court of cassation upheld a ruling to behead and crucify a 22-year-old man convicted of raping five children and leaving one of them to die in the desert, newspapers reported on Tuesday. The convict was arrested earlier this year after a seven-year old boy helped police in their investigation. The child left in the desert after the rape was three years old, Okaz newspaper said. ... In Saudi Arabia, crucifixion means tying the body of the convict to wooden beams to be displayed to the public after beheading.

As Israel struggled to grasp the motive for the brutal murder of six members of the Oshrenko family, including two young children, four MKs from the coalition and the opposition called Monday for the establishment of a death penalty for the murder of children under the age of 13. ... The law would be an amendment to clause 300 of the Criminal Code. The bill's sponsors emphasized that "in light of the revelations of circumstances surrounding the murder of the Oshrenkos, the bill would try to prevent a repeat of circumstances in which people murder babies and children 'just because...

Eric Rogers was 17 when he saw his parents stabbed and bludgeoned to death by his own uncle at their El Cerrito home just before dawn in January 2006. The convicted murderer, a trucker named Edward Wycoff from the Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights, is as unsympathetic as they come. He insists he deserves to be rewarded for ridding the world of two evil people, that he knew how to raise his sister's three kids better than she and her husband did, and that besides, they had the gall not to invite him over for Christmas. Arguing to a jury...

You might think Mike Hinton's anger had ebbed in the 3-1/2 decades since, as a young Harris County assistant district attorney, he was assigned to prosecute Ronald Clark O'Bryan, the father accused of poisoning his own son's Halloween candy. Or that, in the 25 years since O'Bryan was executed by the State of Texas, Hinton would prefer to let the past dissolve into receding memories. You'd be wrong, though. "I never get tired of talking about that sorry-ass son of a bitch," said Hinton, today an attorney in private practice in Houston.

KNOXVILLE - For the first time in Knox County judicial history, a judge will instruct the jury in the trial of convicted torture-slaying ringleader Lemaricus Davidson that it is more expensive to execute someone than to sentence them to spend the rest of their life in prison. At the request of defense attorney Doug Trant, Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner said this morning that he will tell jurors that a 2004 study by the state Comptroller's Office concluded that execution is a more expensive form of punishment than life without parole

The work of the Medill Innocence Project has already led to the exoneration of 11 inmates in Illinois. In 2000 Governor George Ryan cited the Medill Innocence Project of Northwestern University as one of the reasons he suspended the death penalty in the Land of Lincoln. It has yet to be fully reinstated. The Medill Innocence Project has recently set its sites on the case of Anthony McKinney, convicted of murdering a security officer in 1978. The students of the Project feel that they have successfully proved that McKinney was wrongly convicted and have also succeeded in getting a judge...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad will die by lethal injection when he is executed next month, Virginia officials said Tuesday. Muhammad declined to choose between lethal injection and electrocution, so under state law the method defaults to lethal injection, Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said. Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Nov. 10 for the October 2002 slaying of Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas gas station during a string of shootings.

Space could be tight in Virginia's death house Nov. 10, with victims' family members seeking to attend the execution of Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammad. Muhammad, 48, and Lee Boyd Malvo, 24, were convicted of crimes committed during a three-week shooting rampage in October 2002 that killed 10 and wounded three in Virginia, Washington and Maryland. They also have been linked to woundings and slayings in other states. Muhammad was sentenced to death in Virginia for the Oct. 9, 2002, slaying of Dean Harold Meyers, 53, who was shot at a Manassas-area service station where he stopped for fuel while...

When 7-year-old Somer Thompson disappeared on her way home from school in Orange Park, Florida, earlier this week, officials were hopeful that she would be found safe, and mobilized a massive search for the little girl. Alas, it was not to be, as the child’s mangled body was found on Wednesday in a Georgia garbage dump.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Even when executions are not carried out, the death penalty costs US states hundreds of millions of dollars a year, depleting budgets in the midst of economic crisis, a study released Tuesday found. "It is doubtful in today's economic climate that any legislature would introduce the death penalty if faced with the reality that each execution would cost taxpayers 25 million dollars, or that the state might spend more than 100 million dollars over several years and produce few or no executions," argued Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center and the report's author. "Surely...

Full Comment's Araminta Wordsworth brings you a regular dose of international punditry at its finest. Today: In the nanny state that is contemporary Britain, no one should be punished for committing a minor crime, such as mugging an old lady for her pension or shoplifting or driving while drunk. Sounds risible, doesn’t it? But this call comes from the people in charge of keeping criminals behind bars, the Prison Governors Association. Short sentences don’t work, says its head. Instead offenders should be given a slap on the wrist, and obliged to do community service instead of prison time.

Four local young men are under arrest in connection with the violent stabbing death of a Mont Vernon mother and the vicious attack on her daughter. Steven Spader, 18, Christopher Gribble, 19, both of Brookline, William Marks, 18 and Quinn Glover, 17, both of Amherst, will be arraigned late this morning in Milford District Court, according to the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office. Spader and Gribble are charged with first degree murder in the death of Kimberly Cates, 42, and attempted murder in the attack on her 11-year-old daughter. Marks and Glover are charged with burglary, conspiracy to commit burglary...

Lawrence Reynolds had been scheduled to be executed on Thursday Two more executions have been delayed in the US state of Ohio, three weeks after an attempt to put another man to death by lethal injection failed. On 15 September, the execution of Romell Broom was abandoned after Ohio officials failed to find a vein. Judges halted Thursday's execution in the state of Lawrence Reynolds, 43. The state governor then delayed next month's execution of Darryl Durr, until a judge hears arguments over problems with the injection process. The execution of Broom - convicted of rape and murder - is...

Beltway Sniper Shootings FR THREAD ARCHIVES This thread is for everyone, be sure to bookmark it. If you create a new thread, feel free to post a link to it here as well. It will be updated as often as possible. Maryland Area Prayer Thread: Pray for Metro area Freepers and Families If anyone has time today and is so inclined, you can listen to the Prince George County or Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Dispatches on the internet at http://www.sconfire.com/livedispatch.htm. The links are on the right side about halfway down. I will try to be tuning in through out...

Court sets execution date for Washington, DC sniper mastermind A Virginia judge has ruled that the mastermind behind the 2002 sniper attacks in Washington, DC that left 10 people dead will be executed on November 10. John Allen Muhammad is expected to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and ask Governor Timothy M. Kaine for clemency. Muhammad was sentenced to death for the slaying of Dean Meyers, one of 10 people shot to death during a 2002 rampage that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area. uhammad and teenage accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo killed six people in Alabama and Louisiana before moving...

SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris will not seek the death penalty for an alleged gang member accused of murdering a father and two of his sons last year, a prosecutor said today. The announcement in San Francisco Superior Court means that Edwin Ramos will at most serve life in prison without parole if convicted of the June 22, 2008, slayings of Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, Matthew, 16. The decision is in keeping with Harris' campaign promise never to seek the death penalty. There had been speculation, however, that with Harris running for...

In a withering critique, a nationally known fire scientist has told a state commission on forensics that Texas fire investigators had no basis to rule a deadly house fire was an arson -- a finding that led to the murder conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.

In a case that's been widely ignored by the mainstream media, justice prevailed today as Letalvis Cobbins was found guilty of the vast majority of charges, including that of first-degree murder. Cobbins was one of a group of thugs who carjacked, then raped, tortured and murdered two Knoxville residents. For more on the story, see the Knoxville News-Sentinel. http://digg.com/d311xYc

In Texas, they're conducting the first state-sponsored review of a capital punishment case. Specifically, they're looking into the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted and executed for setting a house fire that killed his three children. An expert on fire science says there was "no basis" to rule the fire an arson, the Chicago Tribune reports. The state fire marshal on the case, Beyler concluded in his report, had "limited understanding" of fire science. The fire marshal "seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires and how fire injuries are created," he wrote. The marshal's findings,...

EDINBURGH, Scotland — Scotland freed the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber on compassionate grounds Thursday, allowing him to die at home in Libya despite American protests that mercy should not be shown to the man responsible for the deaths of 270 people. Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said Abdel Baset al-Megrahi's condition had deteriorated from prostate cancer. Al-Megrahi had only served some eight years of a life sentence, but MacAskill said he was bound by Scottish values to release him.

The state of Texas' top criminal court judge testified today that she allowed the doors of her court slammed shut in the face of a killer facing execution that evening, because, in her words, 'last minute appeals are meritless,' 1200 WOAI's Michael Board reports. "They have often in the past been voluminous and meritless," Sharon Keller, the Presiding Judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, made her comments in her disciplinary hearing involving a high profile execution in September of 2007. Keller is facing civil misconduct charges for ordering that her office be closed at 5 PM on the...

Newly seated Justice Sonia Sotomayor has cast her first recorded vote on the Supreme Court, joining a dissent by three liberal justices to stop a pending execution in Ohio. The full court turned down the last-minute appeal from lawyers for Jason Getsy late Monday evening by a 5-4 vote. Getsy, 33 and a convicted hit man, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 8 a.m. Pacific time today.

If we thought the last topic was contentious, and it was, then I’m not sure how to class these items. Merely mentioning them will raise blood pressure to dangerous levels in some. Because of this, I will be as careful as I can in discuss Goldberg’s ideas, making clear where mine are different, in as dry a language as I can manage. All emphases are in the original. Race Exists And everybody knows it. Goldberg says in this essay (read it!), “not a single black student of mine fails to find risible the claim that there is no such thing...

KHARTOUM, Sudan -- An appeals court commuted the death sentences for four men convicted of killing an American diplomat and his Sudanese driver after the driver's family decided to pardon the murderers, a news agency reported Thursday. Sudanese law stipulates that if a victim's family chooses to pardon the murderer, the person cannot be sentenced to death and the prison term cannot exceed 10 years. The case will be referred back to the initial court for a new sentence, said the Sudan Media Center.

<p>LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- A former chief of staff for Bill Clinton when he was Arkansas' governor has been charged with attempting to smuggle contraband goods into the state's death row.</p> <p>Betsey Wright, of Rogers, faces 51 felony charges stemming from her arrest May 22 at the state's Varner Unit. An Arkansas State Police report claims she attempted to smuggle in a box cutter, a pocket knife, tweezers and tattoo needles.</p>

Because courts can sentence murderers to life without parole, why not get rid of the death penalty? It's a frequent question posed by readers and advocates who oppose the death penalty. For years, my answer has been: If death-penalty opponents ever succeed in eliminating capital punishment, their next target for elimination will be life without parole - or, as lawyers call it, LWOP. As if to prove my point, the Sentencing Project just released a report, "No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America," which advocated for - you guessed it - the elimination of LWOP. The report...

Convicted killer William Wright III of Altoona on Wednesday reiterated his desire to die. Wright asked a federal appeals court to step in, remove public defenders from his case and allow his execution to proceed. In a legalistic, self-written appeal filed in U.S. District Court in Johns-town, Wright said federal public defenders in Pittsburgh “do not have petitioner’s consent to file any further pleadings of any kind on petitioner’s behalf.” The Federal Public Defender’s Office in Pittsburgh had no comment Wednesday. The petition was the latest development in back-and-forth volleys in which Wright’s life hangs in the balance: •  In...

WASHINGTON – A federal grand jury has indicted an elderly white supremacist on charges that could earn him the death penalty in the fatal shooting of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Hate crimes charges have been added to the case against James von Brunn, who has been in a hospital since the shooting last month. Officials say the 89-year-old shot and killed museum guard Stephen T. Johns. Von Brunn was shot in the face by other guards in the June 10 shootout, but survived.

34-years-ago, Karen Grammer was brutally killed after a botched robbery in Colorado Springs. Her convicted killer, Freddie Glenn, is now up for parole. Karen's brother, actor Kelsey Grammer has said he will be at that parole hearing at the Limon Correctional Facility Monday. Former Assistant District Attorney Chuck Heim..."She was sitting outside ...waiting for her boyfriend to get out of work and these clowns picked her up," It was July 1st, 1975. 18-year-old Grammer was sitting in a car outside of a Red Lobster in Colorado Springs, when three men, including Freddie Glenn, tried to rob the restaurant. When that...

This news is 2 months old but I felt it needed coverage in light of the debate about the death penalty... ----------------------------------------------------- A former US soldier convicted of rape and murder in Iraq has been spared the death penalty. Steven Green, 24, will now be sentenced to life in prison, after jurors in the state of Kentucky could not agree unanimously on his punishment. A judge is expected to formally sentence Green in September. In May, the jury found Green guilty of the rape of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and the killing of her and her family near Baghdad in...

Take a trip with me down memory lane to the mid-60’s, 70’s and early 80’s and try to remember the huge surge in violent crime that swept across the United States. The judicial activism of Chief Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren laid the foundation for liberal action against the death penalty. The result of tampering with capital punishment was immediate and clear. Murder rates spiked in the 70’s and didn’t really come back down until voters demanded tough penalties and reinstatement of the death penalty. The impact of bringing back capital punishment is very clear. According to the US Bureau...

LUCASVILLE, Ohio — A man who went on a 1992 Christmas holiday killing spree that left six people dead, including an 18-year-old mother gunned down at a pay phone, was executed Tuesday, the state's second execution in two weeks and the 1,000th lethal injection in the U.S. since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Later Christmas Eve, Keene and accomplice DeMarcus Smith approached 18-year-old Danita Gullette at a pay phone, took her jacket and shoes and fatally shot the woman, prosecutors said. Gullette was the mother of a 2-year-old girl.