Free Republic

Kuwait hanged seven prisoners in a mass execution on Wednesday, including a royal family member and a woman convicted of killing 58 women and children when she set fire to a wedding tent — the first death sentences carried out in several years in the oil-rich emirate. Those executed included a Bangladeshi, a Filipina, an Ethiopian, two Kuwaitis and two Egyptians, according to a statement carried on the state-run KUNA news agency. KUNA said that all had been convicted of murder except the Bangladeshi man, who was convicted of rape, kidnapping and theft. Kuwait's ruler, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al...

GREENSVILLE COUNTY, Va. -- Ricky Javon Gray was put to death by lethal ejection at 9.42 p.m. Wednesday at the Greensville Correctional Center in Greensville County. Gray’s last appeal was denied hours before his execution when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Gray's request for a stay of execution. When officials asked Gray if he had any final words, he replied “nope,” according to CBS 6 reporter Jon Burkett, who observed the execution in the death chamber. Burkett reports Gray declined his final meal before the execution. Gray and his nephew Ray Dandridge shocked the Richmond community in January 2006 --...

340 N.Koreans Executed Since Kim Jong-un Came to Power December 30, 2016 08:22 North Korea has executed or purged 340 people over the past five years in leader Kim Jong-un's struggle to consolidate his rule. The Institute for National Security Strategy, a think tank run by South Korea's National Intelligence Service, said Thursday executions of officials have steadily increased since 2012, with some 140 high-ranking officials purged or executed this year alone. Public executions of ordinary people are also becoming more common. The institute said more than 60 cases were recorded as of August this year, double the annual...

A Virginia inmate asked a federal court Wednesday to block the state's plans to execute him next month with lethal injection drugs from a secret compounding pharmacy, suggesting even a firing squad would be more humane. Attorneys for Ricky Gray said in a federal complaint that there is a serious risk that Virginia will "chemically torture" the man to death when it uses compounded drugs for his execution scheduled for Jan. 18. Although firing squads aren't permitted under Virginia law, his attorneys argue even that method would be a more humane alternative. "It is both more humane, quicker, more effective,...

— A man who killed an Alabama convenience store clerk more than two decades ago was put to death Thursday night, an execution that required two consciousness tests as the inmate heaved and coughed 13 minutes into the lethal injection. Ronald Bert Smith Jr., 45, was pronounced dead at 11:05 p.m., about 30 minutes after the procedure began at the state prison in southwest Alabama. Smith was convicted of capital murder in the Nov. 8, 1994, fatal shooting of Huntsville store clerk Casey Wilson. A jury voted 7-5 to recommend a sentence of life imprisonment, but a judge overrode that...

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Senator Tom Cotton made an extraordinary revelation: Hillary Clinton’s staff discussed an Iranian nuclear scientist who was recently executed in emails found on Clinton’s private email server. The nuclear scientist, Shahram Amiri, was an expert in radioactive isotopes at Tehran’s Malek Ashtar University and reportedly gave information to the United States on Iran’s nuclear program.  According to Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje’I, a former Iranian intelligence chief, “This person had obtained top secret information and established contacts with our number one sworn enemy, America, and passed on our country’s most crucial intelligence to the enemy.” According to the Washington Post, “Amiri...

Iran’s justice minister has said the country should execute fewer people and revise its death penalty laws, local media reported Sunday. “These last years, the quantity of executions has not been effective. As a result, there must be a revision of the death penalty law,” said Mostafa Pourmohammadi, according to the Tasnim news agency. “The judiciary as a whole shares this opinion,” he said. Pourmohammadi called for “alternative penalties,” but said it was not possible to abolish capital punishment entirely because “there are corrupt people in the country for whom there is no alternative but execution.”

ISIS has marked Eid by hanging prisoners upside down from meat hooks and 'butchering them like sheep' in a gruesome new execution video. In one sickening scene, men accused of being US spies are filmed having their throats cut in a slaughter house in Deir ez-Zor, north-eastern Syria. The video, named 'The Making of Illusion' was released on the first day of the Muslim holy time of Eid al-Adha and, bizarrely, features short clips showing actors Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise in the 2015 movie Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.

South Korea's Unification Ministry says North Korea appears to have executed a vice premier. Ministry spokesperson Jeong Joon-hee said on Wednesday that vice premier Kim Yong Jin, who was in charge of education, allegedly disobeyed the ruling Korean Workers' Party. Other South Korean officials said Kim was investigated for laziness during a session of the Supreme People's Assembly in June. They believe he was killed by firing squad in mid-July. The spokesperson also said another senior North Korean official, Kim Yong Chol, has been subjected to "re-education." He is the head of the party's United Front Department handling inter-Korean relations....

ISIS hurled several gay men from the op of Mosul’s tallest building recently. Of course, the kids were brought out to witness the gory execution. via Religion of Peace: Four men were thrown to their deaths after being found guilty of homosexuality and sodomy in the Nineveh province in Iraq. Two of the men were allegedly part of the ISIS organisation. The men were thrown from the top floor of a former insurance company’s offices in Mosul. The location is apparently used often for such executions. A local source told IraqiNews.com that “ISIS members executed four people, including two of...

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday halted an execution planned for next week of a man convicted as an accomplice to a murder he did not commit in a case that raised questions about how the state applies the death penalty. Jeffery Wood, 43, was scheduled to be executed on Aug. 24 by lethal injection. He was convicted of taking part in a 1996 convenience store robbery during which clerk Kriss Keeran was fatally shot. In its decision, the appeals court asked a lower court to review his sentence and claims from Wood's lawyer that it was obtained...

Terri Been’s voice shook as she read a long text message from her niece. “I had a nightmare about my dad last night,” Paige Rowan told her aunt in the text. Rowan described a dream in which she watched helplessly as the execution needle pierced her father’s skin. She woke up screaming, panicking and feeling hopeless, she told Been.

(LEAD) N.K. publicly executes some 60 people this year: source 2016/08/12 12:20 (ATTN: ADDS more info, backgrounds from para 7) SEOUL, Aug. 12 (Yonhap) -- North Korea has publicly executed some 60 people so far this year as the reclusive country's leader Kim Jong-un strengthens his reign of terror, a source said Friday. The move comes as more ordinary North Koreans are expressing dissatisfaction as Pyongyang has been forcing people to work longer hours and pay money to the regime in the face of economic hardships stemming from international sanctions, according to an insider familiar with the matter. "As of...

Iran has executed a nuclear scientist convicted of handing over “confidential and vital” information to the United States, a judicial spokesman said on Sunday, confirming claims made by the man’s family over the weekend.

The home to the Surratts would be named Surrattsville and today is Clinton The first woman to be executed in America took place on July 7, 1865. Her name was Mary Surratt. President Jefferson Davis said; “I love the Union and the Constitution, but I would rather leave the Union with the Constitution than remain in the Union without it.” America had not yet celebrated her 85th birthday when the South seceded from the Union in the year of our Lord 1861. Secession was recognized as a God given right that was also exercised by the 13 American Colonies in...

For nearly a week now, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has refused to answer a simple yes or no question: whether she favors the Department of Justice’s decision to seek the death penalty for Dylann Roof, who is accused of killing nine people last year at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

Human rights campaigners warn action is needed to stop use of unlicensed drugs or other legally unsatisfactory methodsHuman rights groups have welcomed news that pharmaceutical firm Pfizer is to block the sale of its drugs in the US to perform executions, but warned that legally dubious alternatives could take their place. All companies licensed by the US government to manufacture drugs for state executions have now blocked their use in lethal injections. Pfizer’s withdrawal follows a campaign targeting pharmaceutical companies and their shareholders. The company said: “Pfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we...

The Indiana blogger, Gary Walsh, was found dead by apparent gunshot to the head in a stairwell outside his office in Indianapolis. Next to his body was a gun. Gary Walsh exposed a great many corrupt politicians in Indiana, who were shredding official documents. Too, he exposed the photo of Raphael Cruz, Sr., handing out leaflets while accompanying Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans, from 1963.

Most of those going to execution appear to be in tranceThe executioner denied reports that those sentenced to death are drugged just before their execution. (Supplied) Convicted women sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia have been more resistant to beheading than men, prompting authorities to change the execution method to shooting, a well-known Saudi executioner has said. Abu Bandar Al Bishi, a massive man who has beheaded scores of convicted criminals in public places in the Gulf Kingdom, said most of those brought to the execution area appear to be in “trance” ahead of their death. Quoted by the Saudi...

Attorney General Mike DeWine said in a 9 p.m. news conference that he would not say there is a "person of interest." He did say many of those who were interviewed were in Chillicothe. Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said they believe the killer or killers are still on the loose and should be considered armed and dangerous. All victims were shot in their heads. Seven victims are adults, and one victim was a 16-year-old male, DeWine said in a Friday afternoon news conference. DeWine said that the victims were shot "execution-style." All the victims are believed to be members...