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A convicted cop killer who became the second death row inmate in South Carolina to die by firing squad chomped on a ribeye steak, mushroom risotto, broccoli, collard greens and cheesecake before he was executed on Friday night. Mikal Mahdi, 42, had three slugs fired into his heart by trained correctional volunteers at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia and was pronounced dead at 6:05 p.m. for the ambush killing of Orangeburg Public Safety Captain James Myers in 2004. Mahdi, who washed down his hearty last meal with a sweet tea, did not make a final statement before his execution,...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — I've now watched through glass and bars as 11 men were put to death at a South Carolina prison. None of the previous 10 prepared me for watching the firing squad death of Brad Sigmon on Friday night. I might now be unique among U.S. reporters: I've witnessed three different methods — nine lethal injections and an electric chair execution. I can still hear the thunk of the breaker falling 21 years later...... I also pored over the transcript of his trial, including how prosecutors said it took less than two minutes for Sigmon to strike...

A rundown of the gruesome murders committed by the death-row inmates getting commutations by President Joe Biden.Two days before Christmas, in the waning days of his presidency, Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 out of 40 federal prisoners to a life sentence. Only by hearing what they had done can we begin to grapple with their offense. Many of them were responsible for gruesome murders of multiple persons:Jorge Avila-Torrez “sexually assaulted and stabbed to death two girls — Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9 — who had been riding their bicycles in their neighborhood in a suburb...

North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper (D) commuted death sentences for 15 inmates on his last day in office. On Tuesday Cooper announced that he has commuted the sentences of 15 people on death row in North Carolina to life without the possibility of parole after a thorough review of detailed petitions for clemency. “These reviews are among the most difficult decisions a Governor can make and the death penalty is the most severe sentence that the state can impose,” said Governor Cooper. “After thorough review, reflection, and prayer, I concluded that the death sentence imposed on these 15 people should...

As RedState previously reported, President Joe Biden decided to drop an unwelcome Christmas surprise on the families of murder victims whose killers were on federal death row by commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 inmates to life in prison without the possibility of parole."... guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level," Biden's said in a statement posted to the White House website Monday.In...

President Biden needs to explain his death-sentence commutations “to our faces,” says the furious brother of a young female naval officer murdered by one of the “despicable’’ clemency recipients. “I’d rather see it go back to the way it was, where he was sentenced to death,” said Alex Snell, 42, of Jorge Avila-Torrez, who fatally strangled Snell’s 20-year-old sister, Amanda Snell, in her Arlington, Va., barracks in July 2009. “He should have gotten that penalty,” Snell told The Post of the killer — who also sexually assaulted and murdered two little girls and raped a grad student. In a sweeping...

President Biden is commuting the sentences of nearly all the inmates on federal death row, a move that comes not even two weeks after he went through with the "largest single-day grant of clemency" in American history, the White House announced Monday. Of the 40 inmates on federal death row, according to DeathPenaltyInfo.org, Biden is commuting 37 men sentenced to death, reclassifying their sentences to life without the possibility of parole.

WASHINGTON — President Biden is considering commuting the death sentences of most — if not all — of the 40 men currently on federal death row for murder, according to a new report. In addition to a handful of well-known notorious killers, five of the men murdered children, nine butchered fellow inmates and one killed a prison guard with a hammer while serving a life sentence for raping and murdering his wife, a US Marine. Attorney General Merrick Garland has recommended that Biden, who opposes capital punishment, commute the sentences to life imprisonment for all but a handful of the...

After botching a series of executions by lethal injection, the State of Alabama is planning to use nitrogen gas to put condemned prisoners to death. The first execution will amount to a human experiment, because neither Alabama nor any other state has ever tried to kill people this way. Late last month, prison guards distributed the state’s new execution protocol to prisoners in solitary confinement on Alabama’s death row. One hundred and sixty men and five women await execution in Alabama. They would be secured to a gurney, their nose and mouth would be covered by a mask, and nitrogen...

Gov. Josh Shapiro Thursday boldly called on legislators to abolish Pennsylvania’s costly, ineffective and immoral death penalty. In urging legislators to act, an unprecedented move, Mr. Shapiro showed some sorely needed leadership from the governor’s office. Unless Mr. Shapiro engages the legislature, the death-penalty statute will endure. He needs to take the lead in persuading the Democrat-controlled House and Republican-controlled Senate to approve bills that would repeal it. Former Gov. Tom Wolf refused to do that. In making his statement a month after his inauguration, Mr. Shapiro signaled that getting state government out of the business of killing people will...

It was hard to miss the loaded headline regarding a convicted psychopathic killer titled “Clemency Probe Fails to Exonerate Kevin Cooper.” It just goes to show that this was intended as a politically motivated exoneration project and not as a search for objective truth. A better and more accurate headline should have read DNA Tests Confirm Kevin Cooper’s Guilt, Again. This recent probe further proves Cooper’s guilt to a degree of accuracy that more than meets the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. There is a better chance of you having the recent billion dollar MegaMillions ticket than of Kevin...

Attorneys for Gabriel Paul Hall claimed that their client had a "no contact" order without consent from legal counsel while "awaiting trial after being indicted on a high-profile capital murder charge," but jail officials allowed Hall to be interviewed by Ross and a production team. Footage from "Jeff Ross Roasts Criminals: Live At Brazos County Jail" was then "introduced against Petitioner at the penalty phase of his trial, and he was sentenced to death," according to the petition. The petition described a "nine-person film crew led by actor and professional insult comic Jeff Ross" being allowed into the high-security area....

Williams was convicted of six murders, including one triple murder in 1989, but freed after almost 30 years in prison when his final murder charge was tossed because evidence of prosecutorial misconduct came to light. Williams was part of a funeral procession for formerly incarcerated friend Tyree Little in Philadelphia, his friends told the Philadelphia Inquirer. As he stepped out of his car on the 3000 block of Lehigh Avenue at around 2.20pm, he was shot once in the head. [snip]

The case stems from an incident on the set of the 2015 film 'Straight Outta Compton.'A civil trial in the wrongful death lawsuit filed against Suge Knight stemming from a 2015 incident ended in a mistrial on Wednesday (June 22). The jurors were deadlocked seven to five in favor of the plaintiffs, the Los Angeles Times reports. Their inability to come to a conclusion led to the mistrial decision. The case stems from an incident on the set of the 2015 film Straight Outta Compton involving Knight and two men, Terry Carter and Cle “Bone” Sloan. The men reportedly got...

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.

Tennessee's governor on Thursday called off what was to have been the state's first execution since the start of the pandemic, granting a temporary reprieve to the oldest inmate on death row for what was called an "oversight" in preparations for the lethal injection. Republican Gov. Bill Lee didn't elaborate on what issue forced the surprise 11th-hour stop to the planned execution of 72-year-old Oscar Smith. The inmate was to have received a three-drug injection only a short while later in the evening at a Nashville maximum security prison. "Due to an oversight in preparation for lethal injection, the scheduled...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — ​​South Carolina has given the greenlight to firing-squad executions, a method codified into state law last year after a decade-long pause in carrying out death sentences because of the state’s inability to procure lethal injection drugs... ...Lawmakers set about tweaking state law to get around the lethal injection drug situation. Legislation that went into effect in May made the electric chair the state’s primary means of execution while giving inmates the option of choosing death by firing squad or lethal injection, if those methods are available....

SACRAMENTO -- California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who three years ago placed a moratorium on executions, now is moving to dismantle the nation's largest death row by moving all condemned inmates to other prisons within two years. The goal is to turn the section at San Quentin State Prison into a "positive, healing environment." "We are starting the process of closing death row to repurpose and transform the current housing units into something innovative and anchored in rehabilitation," corrections department spokeswoman Vicky Waters told The Associated Press.

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...

SHANGHAI (Kyodo) Two Japanese nationals in their 50s received heart transplants between 2001 and 2004 at a Shanghai hospital whose organs mainly come from death-row inmates, sources at a Taiwanese company that arranged the procedures said Thursday. Japan was seemingly unaware of the cases, as a survey released March 9 by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said there were no cases of Japanese receiving heart transplants in Asia outside of Japan. Ethical and medical concerns have often been raised regarding organ transplants in China over issues that include the use of organs of prisoners on death row and uncertain...