Free Republic

The prospect of gently dozing off while taunting victims right-to-the-end is hardly an effective deterrent... The death penalty is currently a legal sentence in 33 American states and in the federal civilian and military legal systems. Lethal injection has become the most common method of capital punishment utilized since SCOTUS re-enstated the death penalty in 1976, popularity owed to the theory it's the most 'humane' method available... but humane to whom? Not society, the victims, nor their families, that's for sure... Case-in-point being yesterday's execution of Richard Cobb (29) in Texas: he and his crime partner Beunka Adams (righteously executed April 2012) went on...

A Texas inmate was executed Thursday evening for fatally shooting one of three people he and a partner abducted during a convenience store robbery nearly 11 years ago. Richard Cobb, 29, didn’t deny using a 20-gauge shotgun to kill Kenneth Vandever in an East Texas field where two women also were shot and one was raped. He was convicted of capital murder. “Life is death, death is life. I hope that someday this absurdity that humanity has come to will come to an end,” Cobb said when asked if he had any last words. “Life is too short. I hope...

Arkansas plans to put prisoners to death with a drug that apparently hasn’t been used in a U.S. execution, and lawyers for condemned inmates warn that it could take longer for someone to die from it than from other lethal injection drugs. Arkansas Department of Correction spokeswoman Shea Wilson told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the state plans to use phenobarbital, along with lorazepam, in lethal injections. None are currently scheduled, but Arkansas recently passed a law that will allow the state to resume executions. … In a letter obtained by the AP, federal public defender Jennifer Horan told...

NEW DELHI: Fewer countries are carrying out executions than a decade ago, but India along with nations like Gambia, Pakistan and Japan bucked the trend to resume handing out death penalties. An Amnesty International report says that 21 countries executed convicts last year as compared to 28 in 2003. But there is greater concern that Indian courts had meted out at least 78 death sentences with more than 400 estimated to be on death row at the end of this year. The new death sentences given by India (78) are second only to Pakistan (242) in the Asia-Pacific region. At...

A Dallas judge has halted the scheduled Tuesday night execution of a Texas woman who would have been the first woman put to death in the U.S. in three years. The order from state District Judge Larry Mitchell moves the execution of Kimberly McCarthy, 51, to April 3. McCarthy faced lethal injection for the 1997 beating, stabbing and robbery of a 71-year-old neighbor in Lancaster, about 15 miles south of Dallas.

RICHMOND — A man who strangled his prison cellmate and made good on a vow to continue killing if he wasn’t executed was put to death Wednesday in Virginia’s electric chair. Robert Gleason Jr., 42, was pronounced dead by authorities at 9:08 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center. He became the first inmate executed in the U.S. this year and the first to choose death by electrocution since 2010. In Virginia and nine other states, death row inmates are allowed to choose between electrocution and lethal injection. Gleason was serving life in prison for the 2007 fatal shooting of a man...

On Saturday, the Minister Louis Farrakhan began a 52-week sermon series entitled, “The Time and What Must Be Done.” Originally announced in early January, the lecture series will air every Saturday at 6 p.m. CT. Intended to educate African Americans about building a better future and taking control of their destiny, it also has some seriously-apocalyptic undertones. For example — and like past sermons — Farrakhan’s introductory message had no shortage of anti-American sentiment, calling U.S. citizens “a savage people” while dismissing the country’s current culture as “wild, untamed, uncivilized, uncultured [and] unrefined.” America, he claimed, is referred to in...

NEW DELHI: Jolted by the extreme cruelty unleashed on Nirbhaya by the only juvenile among the six accused in the Delhi gang-rape case, the government may be looking at enhanced punishment for minors — even a waiver of the delinquent's age by six months to a year — keeping in view the severity of the crime. While this review comes too late for the Delhi gang-rape case as it cannot be applied with retrospective effect, the shift is significant because heinousness of the crime committed rather than the exact age of the accused will determine the punishment. If the government...

Manuel Pardo was a decorated Florida highway patrolman and police officer who went horribly bad, slaying nine people during a three-month crime spree after he had been fired for lying. Now, almost 27 years later, Pardo, 56, is scheduled to be executed Tuesday night at Florida State Prison in Starke barring a last-minute stay, fulfilling a request he made to jurors at his 1988 trial.

Richard Stokley was executed this morning by lethal injection. He was convicted of the killing of two 13 year old girls in Elfrida. The killings happened in 1991. Stokley's accomplice, Randy Brazeal, is free after serving a 20-year sentence.

A man who killed two teenagers in his home in Little Falls on Thanksgiving Day told investigators he shot and wounded the two at close range before "finishing" them with shots to the head. Byron David Smith, 64, was charged Monday, Nov. 26, in Morrison County District Court with two counts of second-degree murder without premeditation in the deaths of Nicholas Brady, 17, and his cousin Haile Kifer, 18. Smith claims Brady and Kifer broke into his home and he was "fearful" they had weapons, according to the criminal complaint.

Official KNCA news agency: 'obliterated' for  drinking during official Kim Jong Il mourning period Anybody hoping for some sort of improvement from new leadership in the penniless Stalinist hell of North Korea can get back to reality now that a monstrous  bloody purge has been executed by 28-year-old 'Outstanding Leader' Kim Jong Un... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kim Chol, vice minister of the army, was taken into custody earlier this year on the orders of Kim Jong-un, who assumed the leadership after the death of his father in December.  On the orders of Kim Jong-un to leave "no trace of him behind, down...

North Korean official is executed by MORTAR SHELL for drinking during 100-day mourning period for late 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-il • Senior military official broke the rules of mourning Kim Jong-il • During the 100-day mourning period North Koreans were forced to abstain from pleasurable activities - including drinking A North Korean military officer has been executed with a mortar shell blast for disrespecting late 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-il by drinking alcohol during the 100-day mourning period. South Korean media claim Kim Chol, the secretive state’s former vice minister of the army, was forced to stand on a spot that...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. A South Dakota man who beat a prison guard with a pipe and covered his head in plastic wrap to kill him during a failed escape attempt was put to death Monday, in the state's first execution since 2007. Eric Robert, 50, received a lethal injection and was pronounced dead at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls at 10:24 p.m. He is the first South Dakota inmate to die under the state's new single-drug lethal injection method, and only the 17th person to be executed in the state or Dakota Territory since 1877. Robert had no expression...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Tuesday evening execution of a Texas death row inmate whose lawyers say should be ineligible for the death penalty because of his low IQ.

A video showing the public execution of a 22-year-old woman accused of adultery in Afghanistan has been condemned by the government as un-Islamic and inhuman. The video shows her being shot repeatedly in the back in front of a crowd of men in Qol village in Parwan province just north of the capital Kabul. The woman, named as Najiba, was married to a member of a Taliban militant group and was accused of adultery with a Taliban commander, said Roshna Khalid, a Parwan provincial spokeswoman, yesterday. "Within one hour they decided that she was guilty and sentenced her to death....

Twenty-four hours after a police officer shot Lily, a 5-year-old Border Collie-English Setter mix, its owners still don't understand why the police officer was on their property and why he used lethal force. ... had just returned from a shopping trip and their two dogs had slipped into their truck, then into the garage, before re-emerging when an officer walked up the driveway... Asked by the officer to control his two dogs, Mark Boling urged him not to advance, but he did. "My dogs don't bite, They're not going to hurt you," Boling, 52, an electronics technician with a defense...

In 1916, a circus in Tennessee sentenced an elephant to death by hanging In the early 1900s, it wasn't uncommon for humans to use their waxing technological prowess for the express purpose of torturing the hell out of animals. In one particularly mind-boggling incident, a five-ton circus elephant named Mary was condemned to death by hanging after her owners nixed executions by firearms, dismemberment, and electrocution. After Mary killed her handler in St. Paul, Virginia because of abuse/poor training/a toothache/some nebulous combination thereof, the proprietors of Sparks World Famous Shows executed the pachyderm in the railyards of Erwin, Tennessee on...

WikiLeaks: The sleazy criminal organization dedicated to publishing U.S. secrets may loudly deny its leaks led to the hanging of a man in Iran Tuesday. But that's irrelevant because WikiLeaks gave Tehran the pretext it sought. A 24-year old Iranian man was the latest victim of the mullahs' monstrous tyranny this week, executed as a spy for Israel, supposedly for killing an Iranian nuclear scientist on behalf of his Zionist masters. That's a whiff of the twisted kangaroo court verdicts typical of Iran. In reality, Majid Jamali Fashi was a young kick-boxing instructor who visited Baku, Azerbaijan, for a tournament...

An appellate court is paving the way for executions of death row inmates, including two from East Tennessee. The Tennessee Court of Appeals last week issued an opinion affirming the decision of Davidson County Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman to uphold a new procedure set by the state Department of Correction to try to ensure a death row inmate is unconscious before fatal drugs are administered under the state's three-drug lethal injection process. "Plaintiffs have simply failed to carry their heavy burden to demonstrate that the lethal injection protocol as revised in November 2010 constitutes wanton exposure to an objectively intolerable risk...

A convicted child sex offender was executed Wednesday for the beating death of a 10-month-old boy he was baby-sitting at a home in Dallas.

Three men convicted of multiple killings were hanged Thursday in Japan's first executions in more than a year and a half.

Three death row inmates in Japan were executed by hanging on Thursday, the country's first executions in more than a year and a half. The men were reportedly hanged in three different prisons. One was convicted of ramming a car into a train station and then knifing people nearby, killing five, in 1999. The second killed two people in 2001 and the third killed three in 2002.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court refused last-day appeals from convicted killer Jesse Joe Hernandez, clearing the way for his execution Wednesday evening for the 2001 beating death of a 10-month-old boy he was baby-sitting at a home in Dallas. The high court ruling came about two hours before the 47-year-old Hernandez, who previously was convicted of a child sex offense, could be taken to the Texas death chamber for lethal injection. The justices' order was brief and did not include an explanation for their decision. The execution would be the fourth this year in Texas. Ten-month-old Karlos...

/begin my excerpts On the Kim Jong-eun's Order "Not even a hair should be left" ... Mortar Used Lee Yong-soo Kim Jong-eun Ordered, "Not even a hair should be left" More than ten generals purged this year, "Another day, another one disappears." Since Kim Jong-il's sudden death last year, Kim Jong-eun took over and N. Korean military has been in the vortex of unprecedented 'purge drive' and the means of execution is (very) cruel, such as using mortar fire, a knowledgeable government source on N. Korea revealed on Mar. 21. He said, “Since Dec. 30 last year when Kim Jong-eun...

A young woman sits cross-legged on the ground laughing playfully as she is fed a lychee. Another plays cards in pair of baggy pink pyjamas. The moving images could show any group of young women as they go about their daily lives in prison. But just hours - and in some cases minutes - after the pictures were taken, each of the four women were led into a concrete yard and executed.

A 79-year-old man died after a nurse mistakenly gave him a drug used in state executions rather than an over-counter medicine. Richard Smith was admitted to hospital in Miami, Florida, after complaining of stomach pains and shortness of breath. The former teacher was prescribed Pepcid, an over-the-counter antacid, to try and cure the problem. Dead: Richard Smith, 79, was admitted to hospital in Miami, Florida, after complaining of stomach pains and shortness of breath Dead: Richard Smith, 79, was admitted to hospital in Miami, Florida, after complaining of stomach pains and shortness of breath But nurse Uvo Ologboride picked up...

BOISE - Triple murderer Paul Ezra Rhoades was executed this morning despite repeated last-minute appeals, in Idaho’s first execution since 1994 and only its second since 1957. “The time of death is 9:15,” Mountain time, Idaho Department of Corrections spokesman Jeff Ray announced. “The procedures are complete.” In his final words, Rhoades took responsibility for one of the murders, but not the other two. A friend of the family of one of the victims, who was in the chamber witnessing the execution, said, “The devil has gone home.” Unlike the last person executed in Idaho, double murderer Keith Eugene Wells,...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — A convicted sex offender was set to die Wednesday evening for slipping into a San Antonio apartment in the middle of the night, snatching a 7-year-old girl and raping and strangling her.Appeals were exhausted and no late legal maneuvers were made to keep Guadalupe Esparza, 46, of San Antonio, from becoming the 13th Texas inmate to receive lethal injection this year. A clemency petition was rejected Monday by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.The battered body of Alyssa Maria Vasquez was found in some weeds behind a convenience store near her home hours after she was...

IRAN: Act by 9 November to call for Pastor Nadarkhani's pardon during Eid Pastor Nadarkhani was arrested in Rasht in 2009 while attempting to register his church. In 2010 he was tried and found guilty of apostasy (abandoning Islam), and was sentenced to death. He now awaits a decision on his case from the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, and a formal written verdict. His life is still in the balance.

A convicted killer raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips Wednesday when an Orange County jury announced that he should receive the death penalty for gunning down the manager of a Tustin Home Depot during a botched robbery in 2007. A jury of six men and six women deliberated for five hours before deciding that death was the appropriate penalty for Jason Russell Richardson, 40, convicted last year of first-degree murder plus special circumstances for the shooting death of Tom Egan, who was trying to protect his employees when he was shot in the stomach Feb. 9, 2007. ...

TRIPOLI, Libya—Fresh evidence has emerged that fighters battling for control of Moammar Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte were responsible for numerous extrajudicial killings and other possible atrocities, raising new questions about the final moments in Libya's revolution and adding to the challenges of national reconciliation. Residents of Sirte and medical workers say that they have identified dozens of corpses of both Gadhafi loyalists and antiregime fighters, who appear to have died by shots to the back of the head while their hands were bound. They say these bodies are among hundreds of unidentified corpses littering the streets of Sirte and filling...

The sitting U.S. President Obama, publicly supported the capture of Gaddafi which was soon followed by what appears to be his execution-style murder by his captors. When U.S. soldiers captured Saddam Hussein during the Presidency of George W. Bush, he was taken prisoner, handed over to Iraqi authorities and eventually tried, convicted and executed by them. President Bush has long been excoriated by liberals and leftists as a "war criminal", yet U.S. troops showed excellent restraint and control when arresting Saddam. Now various groups around the world are calling for an investigation into what, according to video of the event,...

And in a butcher shop (!) What's up next, string 'em from a bridge...? They were screaming "Allahu Akbar" when they finished him off- just like Al Qaeda does it, how bout that. While we still do not know who the rebels we just boosted to power actually are (yet plenty of reason to suspect the worst- i.e. packed with AQ and Muslim Brotherhood types), hey, we're about to find out.  Alas, so far-so bad, as they're already committing war crimes, up to and including summary executions... which appears to be just what happened to ole Muammar and out-of-luck son Mutassim. The UN and ICC suspect as much, as...

RAIFORD— A Florida man convicted of shooting a police officer to death during a traffic stop in 1978 is scheduled to be executed Wednesday. Barring an 11th-hour stay, Manuel Valle, 61, is set to become the first prisoner to die from the state's newly revised mix of lethal drugs. The concoction has been challenged, twice delaying the death sentence.

Manuel Valle scheduled to die of lethal injection in FloridaThe execution of a Florida man convicted of killing a Coral Gables police officer 33 years ago is scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. Manuel Valle, 61, is set to be executed by lethal injection at 4 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Raiford, over eight weeks after his original execution date. Valle was convicted of fatally shooting 41-year-old Luis Pena in the neck during a traffic stop in April 1978. He was driving a stolen car when he was stopped by Pena and officer Gary Spell, who also was shot but saved...

JASPER - Longtime civil rights activist and comedian Dick Gregory held a prayer vigil in Jasper Tuesday night in protest of Lawrence Brewer's execution. Brewer was sentenced to death and is scheduled to die Wednesday for his role in the dragging death of James Byrd Junior in 1998. Gregory, a strong opponent of capital punishment, will conduct an 18 hour fast and vigil at the Walls Unit in Huntsville. "When do the State qualify to kill somebody and the government qualify to kill somebody and it's all right"? said Gregrory. "It's never all right to kill somebody intentionally. There are...

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...

(CBS/AP)  JACKSON, Ga. - Georgia executed Troy Davis on Wednesday night for the murder of an off-duty police officer, a crime he denied committing right to the end as supporters around the world mourned and declared that an innocent man was put to death. Defiant to the end, he told relatives of Mark MacPhail that his 1989 slaying was not his fault. "I did not have a gun," he insisted.

'It's Over': After Three Torturous Hours Strapped To The Chair Troy Davis Has Been Executed Davis finally died at 11.08pm All nine Supreme Court justices voted to deny the stay after taking more than four hours to come to their decision Appeal had challenged ballistics linking Davis to the crime, and eyewitness testimony identifying Davis as the killer Davis convicted of killing off duty police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989 Defence lawyers say there is still 'lingering doubt' of Davis' guilt By HANNAH ROBERTS 22nd September 2011 Mental torture: The convicted murderer was sedated and strapped to the chair in...

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — White supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed Wednesday evening for the infamous dragging death slaying of James Byrd Jr., a black man from East Texas. Byrd, 49, was chained to the back of a pickup truck and pulled whip-like to his death along a bumpy asphalt road in one of the most grisly hate crime murders in recent Texas history. Brewer, 44, was asked if he had any final words, to which he replied: "No. I have no final statement." He glanced at his parents watching through a nearby window, took several deep breaths and...

The execution of Troy Davis was delayed temporarily by the US supreme court on Wednesday night in a dramatic intervention just as he was due to be put to death by lethal injection. The last-minute decision caused confusion outside the prison in Jackson, Georgia, where family, supporters and civil rights campaigners broke into celebration as they believed the court had granted Davis a stay of execution. But it quickly emerged that the delay was only temporary, while the justices considered whether to issue a stay. Until that moment it seemed almost certain that Davis would be executed, as the Georgia...

Georgia inmate Troy Davis's last-ditch request for a lie detector test to try to prove his innocence ahead of tonight's planned execution has been denied by Georgia Department of Corrections. Defence lawyer Stephen Marsh said he had hoped the polygraph would convince the state pardons board to reconsider a decision against clemency, which was rejected yesterday. Davis, 42, is scheduled to die at 7pm tonight. It is the fourth time in four years that Davis' execution has been scheduled by Georgia officials.

Georgia inmate Troy Davis's last-ditch request for a lie detector test to try to prove his innocence ahead of tonight's planned execution has been denied by Georgia Department of Corrections. Defence lawyer Stephen Marsh said he had hoped the polygraph would convince the state pardons board to reconsider a decision against clemency, which was rejected yesterday. Davis, 42, is scheduled to die at 7pm tonight. It is the fourth time in four years that Davis' execution has been scheduled by Georgia officials.

In what is normally a very unusual move for the Supreme Court, they have now stepped in twice to put the brakes on execution of convicted killers in the Lone Star State. This time it’s the case of Cleve Foster. For the second time in a week, the Supreme Court intervened in the final hours to block a planned execution in Texas.Cleve Foster, a 47-year-old former Army recruiter, was scheduled to die for the rape and murder of a woman he met at a Fort Worth bar in 2002. Foster has maintained that another man who was with him at...

Beneath the guard towers and behind the razor wire of a Texas prison, Lawrence Brewer lifts his arm to display his racist tattoos. “Like a cross burning and an intertwined KKK,” he explains, showing off the images cut into his flesh that turned his body into a billboard for hate. His worldview of racial relations came from an earlier stint in prison. “Watching the blacks and the Mexicans and other races literally beat people near death. So I came out after four years of that, with that mentality,” he said. What he did after he came out of prison made...

ATLANTA (AP) — Yet another appeal denied, Troy Davis was left with little to do Tuesday but wait to be executed for a murder he insists he did not commit. He lost his most realistic chance to avoid lethal injection on Tuesday, when Georgia's pardons board rejected his appeal for clemency. As his scheduled 7 p.m. Wednesday execution neared, his backers resorted to far-fetched measures. They asked prisons officials to let him to take a polygraph test; urged prison workers to strike or call in sick; asked prosecutors to block the execution and they even considered a desperate appeal for...

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.

US Supreme Court halts Texas execution MICHAEL GRACZYK September 15, 2011 HUNTSVILLE, Texas — The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution Thursday of a black man convicted of a double murder in Texas 16 years ago after his lawyers contended his sentence was unfair because of a question asked about race during his trial.

When Rick Perry threw his hat into the ring for the Republican presidential nomination, it set off such a collective cringe among liberal Texans that it likely scored on the Richter scale. Being a native Texan with basic respect for modern civilisation means living in a constant state of low-grade humiliation, as the state's size provides an interrupted stream of news stories highlighting the cranks and Bible-thumpers who win state and local offices – but a presidential campaign means exponentially expanding the amount of national and international attention paid to the streak of mean-spirited ignorance that rules Texas politics. With...