Free Republic

Longtime readers know that I personally oppose the death penalty, and that mine is a minority opinion around here — and I’m comfortable with that. If I wasn’t, I might look for moral support from one of the most hopelessly liberal states in the country, my native state of California. Surely, if one state would have an electorate opposed to the death penalty, it would be the one who keeps cluelessly electing Democrats in a near-one-party government despite thundering towards fiscal and economic collapse. Right?Wrong: By 2:1, CA Voters Back Death Penalty: 61% of registered voters from the state of...

700 gather outside San Quentin for Occupy protest As many as 700 peaceful Occupy demonstrators gathered outside San Quentin State Prison this afternoon as part of a nationwide effort to call for prison reform. "It's been an amazing day," said Crystal Bybee, a spokeswoman for the local Occupy 4 Prisoners group. "We've had hundreds of people out here reading messages from prisoners and speaking out about issues that are important to us." Among the reforms protest organizers are calling for are elimination of solitary confinement, a ban on the death penalty and an end to California's "three-strikes" law. The protest...

The man who killed 9-year-old Matthew Cecchi of Oroville, California, in 1998, was found hanged in his cell on death row on Thursday. Since the state re-instituted capital punishment in 1978, 86 inmates have died — 54 of natural causes, 19 by suicide and 13 by actual execution. I am sure that someday the argument will be that death row is cruel and unusual punishment because it “drives” so many people to suicide. The murder of Matthew Cecchi led to the Matthew Cecchi Public Safety Act, which provides for family restrooms in parks in San Diego. Erika Lyn Smith explained...

Death-row inmates headed to their executions will no longer be able to pick what they’d like for their last meal. Brad Livingston, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, issued this statement in response to concerns from Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire: “I believe Senator Whitmire’s concerns regarding the practice of allowing death row offenders to choose their last meal are valid. Effective immediately, no such accommodations will be made. They will receive the same meal served to other offenders on the unit.” Here’s the original post about Whitmire’s concerns: Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman...

A chilling look inside the minds of female prisoners unfolds on Thursday with the première of the new TLC show, Prison Diaries. The first episode of the series focuses on Emilia Carr, one of just 63 women on death row in the U.S. Carr is seen in ankle chains and handcuffs, led by a burly, fully-armed female guard as she leaves her cell. She wears bright orange overalls and trainers, her long, dark hair allowed to fall around her hunched shoulders.

Humberto Leal Garcia was executed in Huntsville, Texas, Thursday after being convicted of raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl in 1994. His death comes after failed attempts by his attorney as well as the Obama administration to delay his execution until the end of this year due to concerns of rights violations. According to the local newspaper, Huntsville Item, Garcia accepted responsibility for his crimes and appeared remorseful prior to his death. While he was lying “strapped to a gurney in the death house, he apologized for his actions and said he wanted Christ in his life.” “I’ve hurt a...

A bill that seeks to abolish California's death penalty advanced Thursday after its first legislative hearing with support from the author of the state's death penalty and a former warden who presided over executions. Sen. Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, said she introduced the bill because California can no longer afford a capital punishment system that is both expensive and ineffective as it battles persistent multibillion-dollar budget deficits. If eventually signed into law, the bill would put the question before voters in 2012. The Assembly Public Safety Committee voted 5-2 along party lines in favor of SB490 after hearing testimony from Sacramento...

Texas is set to execute on Thursday Mexican national Humberto Leal Garcia for the rape and murder of a teenage girl, defying pleas by the Mexican government and President Barack Obama to delay it because his consular rights were violated

<p>The Obama administration is taking the unusual step of asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stop Texas from executing a Mexican citizen who was convicted and sentenced to die for the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl.</p> <p>The administration is asking the court to delay the July 7 execution of Humberto Leal, 38, for as long as six months to give Congress time to consider legislation that would directly affect Leal's case.</p>

SOME 300 drug traffickers are on death row in Iran, the judiciary has announced, reflecting Tehran’s hard line on narcotics which has added to international concerns over its extensive use of capital punishment. "For 300 drug-related convicts, including those who were in possession of at least 30 grammes of heroin, execution verdicts have been issued," Sharq daily quoted Tehran prosecutor-general Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi as saying yesterday. Although the list was long it did not contain any big-time traffickers or ringleaders, he said. All the convicts face death by hanging. Amnesty International says Iran is second only to China for the...

Mississippi is set to execute later on Tuesday a man convicted in 1999 of slaying four people, the first inmate in the state to be put to death using a new drug as part of the lethal injection. Benny Joe Stevens is scheduled to be executed shortly after 6 p.m. local time on Tuesday, according to Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood. He will be executed using the drug pentobarbital, a sedative often used to euthanize animals, because of a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental. Several states have switched to pentobarbital because of the shortage.

The Obama administration has launched a quiet campaign over the past two months to seize from local officials a key drug used in lethal injections -- part of a spreading investigation that has contributed to a de facto death penalty freeze in several states. The investigation stems from concerns about the overseas source of the drug, though some question whether those concerns make a handy excuse to slow the pace of executions. "States have death penalty laws, and the federal government is trying to make it harder for the states to execute those laws," Saunders said.

PHILADELPHIA -- A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered a new sentencing hearing for convicted police killer and death-row activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, finding for a second time that the death-penalty instructions given to the jury at his 1982 trial were potentially misleading. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals told prosecutors to conduct the new sentencing hearing for the former Black Panther within six months or agree to a life sentence. Abu-Jamal's first-degree murder conviction still stands in the fatal shooting of Officer Daniel Faulkner, who was white.

On the eve of his execution, a Texas death row is saying that he does not want to be the state’s guinea pig for the use of a new drug for lethal injection. Cleve Foster, who is accused of murdering Sudanese refugee Nyaneur Pal in 2002, is set to be executed on Tuesday, but he doesn’t want to be the first Texan to be executed with the new drug pentobarbital.

Prison officials say an inmate at San Quentin State Prison has died of natural causes while awaiting execution for a 1994 slaying in Sacramento County. The state corrections department says Richard Ray Parson died at an outside hospital Monday. He was 67.

Shirley Lynette Ledford was a pretty, 16-year-old teenage girl just coming into her own in 1979, the year she was kidnapped and murdered. She would have turned 48 this year. I got to thinking about her Wednesday after reading another story about how we can't seem to come up with a humane way to thin out the waiting list on San Quentin's death row without causing murderers too much pain and suffering. It's a hard argument to swallow when you know the pain and suffering Ledford went through at the end of her short life. I can still hear her...

The Indian government Wednesday said it would not abolish death penalty, but that capital punishment is awarded only to criminals involved in heinous crime considered as rarest of rare cases. "There is no proposal under consideration of the government to abolish capital punishment," Minister of State for Home Affairs Mullappally Ramachandran told the Indian Parliament in a written reply. Stating that since 2007, the UN General Assembly has adopted three resolutions titled "Moratorium on the use of the death penalty", the minister said that all these resolutions have been passed after a vote. But, he said that 141 countries had...

The state of Oklahoma is planning to execute death row inmates with drugs intended for use on animals. Lawmakers want to switch away from the only brand of anaesthetic that has been used in the US for lethal injections because there is not enough to go around. The replacement is likely to attract controversy because it is currently used by vets to anesthetise animals for operations. Other states are watching closely and may well follow suit, but such a move is likely to face a challenge from human rights groups to ensure that it is safe to use.

Excuse the vanity please. The Rats remind of a death row inmate who gets a 3 month stay as he's walking to the gas chamber. You can tell they fully expected to lose the Senate and maybe 80 seats or more in the House. They were scared. In a few days they'll again begin to realize their dire plight.