Free Republic

North Korea announced Thursday it had executed the uncle of leader Kim Jong Un, declaring him a traitor who tried to overthrow the state. The announcement came only days after Pyongyang announced through state media that Jang Song Thaek -- long considered the country's No. 2 power -- had been removed from all his posts because of allegations of corruption, drug use, gambling, womanizing and leading a "dissolute and depraved life." State news agency KCNA said a tribunal examined Jang's crimes, including "attempting to overthrow the state by all sorts of intrigues and despicable methods with a wild ambition to...

CLEVELAND (Reuters) - Ohio Governor John Kasich on Wednesday stayed the execution of convicted killer Ronald Phillips to assess whether Phillips's non-vital organs or tissues can be donated to his mother or possibly others. Phillips, 40, was scheduled to be executed Thursday for the 1993 murder of 3-year-old Sheila Marie Evans. But Kasich granted a stay until July 2 to allow medical experts to assess whether Phillips's non-vital organs or tissues can be donated to his mother or others.

Man convicted of killing two women, attempting to kill a third, executed by lethal injectionA convicted killer who had been on death row for 23 years was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison on Tuesday. Marshall Lee Gore, 49, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m., authorities said. Gore, a former Miami-Dade escort service owner, was convicted of killing two women in the 1980s and executed for the March 1988 murder of of one of those women, exotic dancer Robyn Novick. The 30-year-old nude body was found dumped in rural Miami-Dade County. Gore was also convicted of killing another...

Kim Jong Un orders 9 executed to protect wife from scandal September 21, 2013 By YOSHIHIRO MAKINO/ Correspondent North Korea executed nine music group performers in an apparent attempt to squelch rumors leaking that the wife of leader Kim Jong Un might once have led a provocative lifestyle. The information comes from a high-ranking North Korean government official who recently defected. According to sources, both the Japanese and South Korean governments have confirmed the veracity of the report. Kim's wife, Ri Sol Ju, was a singer with the Unhasu Orchestra before she married him in June 2012. The scandal involves...

A former South Texas street gang member started snoring as he was lethally injected in a Texas prison. Robert Gene Garza, 30, smiled and blew a kiss to friends and relatives as they entered the death chamber. In a brief final statement, he thanked them for coming and told them he loved them. 'I know it's hard for you. It's not easy. This is a release. Y'all finally get to move on with your lives,' he said. Garza took several deep breaths as a lethal dose of pentobarbital began flowing into his arms, then began snoring. All movement stopped within...

<p>The ex-girlfriend of North Korean leader Kim-Jong-un was one of a dozen people reportedly executed by a firing squad last week.</p> <p>The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reports that singer Hyon Song-wol and 11 others had been arrested on August 17 for violating North Korea's laws against pornography and was executed three days later.</p>

A new video has surfaced on YouTube portraying what is said to be Sunni Muslims executing 3 Syrian truck drivers. The Al Qaeda linked terrorists are waving over the drivers and questioning them about their religious affiliations to ascertain whether they be Muslim or not. Upon finding them to be non-Muslim, the men are lined up and shot execution style. Their bodies then appearing to be posthumously shot multiple times. NOTE: This video contains extremely graphic material. - See more at: http://freepatriot.org/2013/08/27/shocking-graphic-video-surfaces-alleging-execution-truck-drivers-non-muslim-ties/#sthash.EkV3OB1i.dpuf

Hamas plans to publicly execute two prisoners in Gaza this week as a "lesson" to others, according to Amnesty International. The organization has described the move as "deeply disturbing," reported the British Guardian. The human rights organization said a 23-year-old man had been sentenced to death for "collaboration with an enemy entity," He told his lawyer he had been beaten during interrogation, Amnesty said. An appeal at a military court is scheduled for Wednesday but he will be at risk of imminent execution if it is unsuccessful, reported the Guardian. The second man, 27, confessed to the rape and murder...

The nation’s most active death penalty state is running out of its execution drug. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice said Thursday that its remaining supply of pentobarbital expires in September and that no alternatives have been found. It wasn’t immediately clear whether two executions scheduled for next month would be delayed. The state has already executed 11 death-row inmates this year, and at least seven more have execution dates in coming months. … Texas switched to the lethal, single-dose sedative last year after one of the drugs used in its three-drug execution process became difficult to obtain and the...

Star witness Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi has spent hours in lurid description of how he and his old partner, James "Whitey" Bulger, tortured victims, yanked out teeth with dental tools and buried bodies in secret graves. But Flemmi stammered and hesitated Monday. Bulger's lawyers were asking the questions on cross-examination and they opened with the January 1985 murder of 26-year old Deborah Hussey – a stepdaughter Flemmi is accused of having sexually abused.

A quick Google search can tell you what John Lennon’s last words were, but for anyone who isn’t a celebrity, last words are either forgotten or unmemorable. In the case of death row convicts in the state of Texas, they may not all be famous, but their words are being preserved forever. Ever since the death penalty was reinstated in December 1982, last words have been recorded, and more recently they’ve been posted on a penitentiary website. Texas euthanizes more convicts than any other state in the U.S., having reached their monumental 500th execution on June 26. …

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.