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Julius and ethel Rosenberg were executed 55 years ago, on June 19, 1953. But last week, they were back in the headlines when Morton Sobell, the co-defendant in their famous espionage trial, finally admitted that he and his friend, Julius, had both been Soviet agents. It was a stunning admission; Sobell, now 91 years old, had adamantly maintained his innocence for more than half a century. After his comments were published, even the Rosenbergs' children, Robert and Michael Meeropol, were left with little hope to hang on to -- and this week, in comments unlike any they've made previously, the...

The New York Times reports that the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg now accept that their father was a spy for the Soviet Union based on the belated admission of a confederate, Morton Sobel, age 91, that he had lied for more than a half-century when he said they were innocent of a conspiracy to give government military secrets to the USSR. The sons' desire to vindicate their parents spurred their political radicalism in the 1960s and 70s and led them to establish the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a charity for the children of leftist activists, which CRC described...

Myanmar's junta said Friday it would carry out its first executions since 1990 by hanging four people, including a former lawmaker from the party of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and a rights activist. Myanmar is one of several dozen countries, including the United States, China, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia that continue to put prisoners to death, using methods including beheading, electrocution, hanging, lethal injection and shooting. In a recent report, Amnesty International noted an "alarming" increase in the recourse to the death penalty in Myanmar, which it attributed to cases of civilians being transferred to military or...

An Arizona man convicted of murder in the 1984 killing of an 8-year-old girl was put to death Wednesday in the state’s second execution since officials resumed carrying out the death penalty in May following a nearly eight-year hiatus. Frank Atwood, 66, died by lethal injection at the state prison in Florence for his murder conviction in the killing of Vicki Hoskinson, whose body was found in the desert, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said in a statement. Vicki went missing months earlier after leaving her home in Tucson to drop a birthday card in a nearby mailbox.

We never seem to get enough information in the hours and days immediately following a horrific crime, but after a few days or weeks have gone by, usually after the story has faded from the front page, the necessary backstory finally comes out. First, an “All Points Bulletin” on May 12 alerted the state of Texas that Gonzalo Lopez, a convicted murderer serving a life sentence, had just escaped from custody during a transfer, by breaking out of his transportation cage and stabbing the driver of the prison bus. He remained on the run for three weeks, using up precious...

A Georgia death row inmate set to be executed for the 1976 murder of an 8-year-old girl and rape of a 10-year-old girl has made his last meal request, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections Virgil Delano Presnell, Jr. is scheduled to be executed on May 17 at 7 p.m. Presnell, 68, was accused of abducting and attacking the two girls as they walked home from school in Cobb County, just outside Atlanta, on May 4, 1976. Presnell asked for four hamburgers, four French fries, two vanilla milkshakes, four sodas, and 8-piece bucket of chicken, potato salad and two...

Singapore on Wednesday executed a mentally disabled Malaysian man condemned for a drug offense after a court dismissed a last-minute challenge from his mother and international pleas to spare him. Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, 34, had been on death row for over a decade after he was convicted of trafficking about one-and-a-half ounces of heroin into Singapore. The city-state's government has said its use of the death penalty for drug crimes is made clear at its borders. Nagaenthran's family and social activists confirmed the execution Wednesday. "On this score may I declare that Malaysia is far more humane," his sister Sarmila...

The State Attorney’s Office will seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing a Daytona Beach couple as they returned home on their bicycles after a night of Bike Week festivities, according to a press release. Jean R. Macean, 32, of Orlando, was indicted on March 29 by a grand jury on two counts of first-degree murder with a weapon while acting with premeditation in the killings of Terry Aultman, 48, and Brenda Aultman, 55, according to the indictment. The Aultmans were stabbed repeatedly while riding their bicycles home early in the morning of March 6 after attending...

HOUSTON (AP) — Nearly half of the jurors who sentenced a Texas woman to die for the 2007 death of one of her 14 children have called for her upcoming execution to be halted and for her to get a new trial. Melissa Lucio, 52, is set to be executed Wednesday for the death of her 2-year-old daughter Mariah in Harlingen, a city of about 75,000 in Texas’ southern tip. Her lawyers say new evidence shows that Mariah’s injuries, including a blow to the head, were caused by a fall down a steep staircase, and many lawmakers and celebrities such...

A South Carolina inmate who has spent 21 years on death row has chosen a firing squad for his April 29 execution. If the execution happens it will be South Carolina's first since 2011. Richard Moore, 57, chose a firing squad over the electric chair. "I believe this election is forcing me to choose between two unconstitutional methods of execution, and I do not intend to waive any challenges to electrocution or firing squad by making an election," Moore said. Moore's lawyers continue to challenge the constitutionality of both types of execution. They are challenging the execution in both state...

Since 1989 conviction, Oscar Franklin Smith has been on death row and now he may choose between electrocution and lethal injection as a mode of deathOscar Franklin Smith, a 71-year-old triple murderer from Tennessee, has been informed that he may choose how he wants to die as the US state restarts capital punishment after a two-year break due to a pandemic. Since his 1989 conviction, Oscar Franklin Smith has been on death row. Oscar Franklin Smith, a Tennessee death row convict, was born on March 25, 1950. Smith was found guilty of murdering his estranged wife, Judy Lynn Smith, 35,...

Williamsport, Pa. -- A mother accused of the homicide of her two daughters, Nicole and Jasmine Snyder, admitted during a preliminary hearing on Wednesday that she and her girlfriend starved each of the two girls “so she would die.” During the hearing held at the Lycoming County Courthouse for Echo Butler and Ronald Butler, Marie Snyder relayed intimate details of the death of both of her daughters. The girls, just four and six years old at the time of their deaths, were subjected to physical abuse, verbal abuse, restraint, humiliation, and starvation, Snyder admitted.

BREAKING: #SCOTUS finds death penalty for Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was improperly thrown out by lower court. 6-3 — Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) March 4, 2022 #BREAKING Supreme Court reinstates death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber. (via AP) — WBZ | CBS Boston News (@wbz) March 4, 2022 Here's the opinion from Clarence Thomas in United States v. Tsarnaev: https://t.co/zeCKqPOiCa. The court divided along ideological lines, with Breyer (joined by Kagan and in part by Sotomayor) dissenting. — SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) March 4, 2022

udge sentenced Loyd to death for murder of Orlando police Lt. Debra ClaytonConvicted cop killer Markeith Loyd was sentenced to death by a judge Thursday morning for the murder of Orlando police Lt. Debra Clayton in 2017. Judge Leticia Marques made her final decision months after a jury recommended the death penalty for Loyd, 46. Loyd was found guilty on five charges, including first-degree murder, in the shooting death of Orlando police Lt. Debra Clayton outside a Walmart in 2017 while he was on the run for killing his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Sade Dixon, in December 2016. Orlando police officers who...

State officials on Thursday said its unlikely that prosecutors will be able to obtain a warrant to carry out death row inmate Zane Floyd’s execution before Nevada’s supply of one of the lethal injection drugs expires. “It’s theoretically possible but highly unlikely,” Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Alexander Chen said during a hearing in U.S. District Court. Floyd, who was sentenced to die for fatally shooting four people and gravely wounding another at a Las Vegas grocery store more than two decades ago, has multiple appeals in front of the Nevada Supreme Court. The high court would have to...

By | LIKE A push to repeal the death penalty in Utah, once a bedrock of conservative support for capital punishment, has garnered unlikely bipartisan support. Utah Rep. Lowry Snow, a Republican, voted twice against bids to repeal the death penalty in Utah in the past. Now, he’s the chief sponsor of HB 147, which seeks to prohibit the state from seeking the death penalty for aggravated murder committed after May 4, 2022. Instead, the current draft of the bill includes a possible sentence of 45 years-to-life for aggravated murder. He’s partnered with Sharon Wright Weeks, who started as a...

The Kansas Supreme Court issued opinions Friday morning upholding the convictions and death sentences for Reginald and Jonathan Carr, convicted of capital murder in the killings of five people in 2000. The court issued separate opinions for the appeals filed by the brothers, stating that while errors were made during their trial, the errors would not have led the jury to reach a different conclusion regarding the death penalty. Chief Justice Marla Luckert issued a partial dissent, stating that there was a reasonable possibility that the jury might have reached a different decision on the sentence. Sedgwick County District Attorney...

Japan hanged three death-row inmates on Tuesday, its first executions in two years, amid growing criticism by human rights groups of the country's use of the death penalty. One of the three, Yasutaka Fujishiro, was convicted of killing seven people and setting fire to their house in 2004, while the other two, Tomoaki Takanezawa and Mitsunori Onogawa, were convicted in the 2003 killings of two pinball parlor employees. Executions are carried out in high secrecy in Japan, where prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are hanged. Two death-row inmates recently filed a lawsuit against the...

On this date in 1774, Peter Galwin and John Taylor were hanged together in Burlington in New Jersey. Galwin was the principal of a small school in Northampton Township with a hankering for prepubescent children. According to court documents, Galwin raped or attempted to rape four young girls on four separate occasions in July and August 1774: Ann Prosser, Hope Reeves, Sarah Deacon and Ann Jones, all of them “infants under the age of ten years.” The assault caused “great damage” to Ann Jones in particular. Whether or not the victims were his students is not known. The crimes of...

Bowing to intense political pressure, Oklahoma's Kevin Stitt, the Republican governor of one of the nation's reddest states, commuted on Thursday the death sentence of convicted murderer Julius Jones. Stitt's commutation of Jones, who was convicted for a first-degree carjacking murder in one of the most reliably pro-death penalty states, is but the latest troubling data pointing toward the possible ultimate abolition of the death penalty in America. In 2020, former President Donald Trump directed then-Attorney General William Barr to resume federal executions after a 17-year hiatus. From July 2020 through January 2021, the Trump-led Department of Justice oversaw 13...