Free Republic

Alabama's Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the state to execute an inmate using nitrogen gas. The state's attorney general’s request for an execution warrant for Kenneth Eugene Smith was granted in a 6-2 decision by an all-Republican court. Last year, the Alabama Department of Corrections called off the execution of Smith when the people responsible for connecting two intravenous lines to him for lethal injection could not do so. While the ruling moves the state closer to becoming the first to attempt execution with nitrogen gas, there is likely to be additional legal dispute on the matter. Alabama joins Oklahoma...

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way Thursday night for the state of Alabama to execute an inmate who contended that an intellectual disability combined with the state's inattention cost him a chance to avoid lethal injection and choose a new method. The nation's highest court upheld a state request to lift a lower court order that had blocked prison workers from executing Matthew Reeves. The state said earlier that it was prepared to execute Reeves, 43, by lethal injection at Holman Prison if notified to proceed. The execution was originally scheduled at 6 p.m. CST.

A pro-Trump congressional candidate in Virginia called for election audits in every state after an audit in Arizona's Maricopa County found no substantial changes in the results of the 2020 election, upholding President Joe Biden's victory. Republican Jarome Bell, who is running in Virginia's second congressional district, tweeted Friday, "Audit all 50 states. Arrest all involved. Try all involved. Convict all involved. Execute all involved. #MaricopaCountyFraud." Bell, who served in the Navy as a chief petty officer for 27 years, is running as a conservative "America First" candidate in the suburban swing district encompassing the Virginia Beach area, according to...

A disturbing surveillance video has emerged showing the moment two men wearing face masks jumped out of a Jeep brandishing guns topped with silencers and opened fire at a biker gang leader, killing him on a Bronx street in the middle of the day. The suspected execution took place on Hollard Avenue near Boston Road in the Allerton section of The Bronx at around 3.20pm on Sunday. The victim has been identified by unnamed law enforcement sources as Francisco Rosado, the 51-year-old leader of the Bronx chapter of the notorious Pagan Motorcycle Club. The newly released video begins with a...

Militants wearing security force uniforms stopped two buses in southwest Pakistan on Thursday and killed 14 passengers after ordering them out of the vehicles, police said. Balochistan provincial police chief Mohsin Ali Butt told CNN that 15 to 20 attackers stopped the buses near the town of Ormara, in the south of the province. The militants ordered 14 out of the total passengers to disembark and shot them at close range before escaping. "This was an act of targeted killing," he said. An alliance of Baloch separatists, Baloch Raaji Aajoi Sangar (BRAS), claimed responsibility for the killings, saying in a...

IRBIL, IRAQ — A brother of an Iranian Kurdish man sentenced to death for belonging to a Kurdish nationalist group says the dissident has told a lawyer that he has hours to live after being transferred back to death row.Speaking exclusively to VOA Persian on Thursday, Amjad Hossein Panahi said his detained brother Ramin Hossein Panahi was moved to death row at a prison in the northwestern city of Sanandaj in the past day. Amjad Panahi, who is based in Germany, said Ramin met with defense lawyer Hossein Ahmadiniaz on Thursday and told the lawyer that he expected to be executed...

Retha Moody walked across the asphalt to the beat of a clanging flagpole, past the barbed-wire fence, toward the red brick building, balancing a long white box in her arms. She led the handful of relatives she had assembled through the metal doors and signed in at a glass booth. After securing their personal belongings in lockers, the group paraded through metal detectors before being led up to the second floor, past several doors that locked behind them. The family had come to the Department of Youth Services facility in Dorchester to celebrate the 15th birthday of Raeshawn Moody, who...

Amnesty International has condemned Jordan for executing Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists in "revenge" for the group burning Jordanian pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh alive on camera. “The Jordanian authorities are rightly horrified by this utterly reprehensible killing but the response should never be to resort to the death penalty, which itself is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment," Philip Luther, director of AI's Middle East and North Africa Program, stated Wednesday. "The death penalty should also not be used as a tool for revenge. The ISIS’s gruesome tactics must not be allowed to fuel a bloody cycle of reprisal executions.” .....

FULL TITLE: Florida set to execute man who has been on death row for 22 years for raping and murdering his 10-year-old stepdaughter and her mother A Florida Panhandle man is set to be executed tomorrow for raping and murdering his 10-year-old stepdaughter 22 years ago, just minutes after he killed her mother. Chadwick Banks, 43, is scheduled to die at 6pm Thursday at Florida State Prison in Starke for the 1992 slaying of Melody Cooper, who was found on her knees naked from the waist down and her body slumped on her bed at their Gadsden County trailer home....

Photo Over the past few weeks, Hamas executed dozens of tunnel excavators, according to a Mako report. A source in Gaza, familiar with the tunnel industry, told Mako that Hamas suspected these tunnel diggers had information on the location on the tunnels, including their entrances and exits. Hamas was afraid the diggers could have passed the information on these tunnel to Israel. The source said that most of the workers who dug the tunnels did not know their actual locations. Truckloads of blindfolded workers were brought inside buildings, and searched to make sure they had no phones, cameras or GPS...

AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas is set to execute on Wednesday an aspiring rap musician who was convicted of slitting the throat and stabbing to death a music studio owner in San Antonio so that he could rob him of equipment.

PHOENIX (Reuters) - An Arizona judge on Monday set a September court date to try again to determine whether convicted murderer Jodi Arias will be put to death for killing her ex-boyfriend nearly six years ago, court officials said. Arias was convicted by a jury in May 2013 of murdering Travis Alexander, whose body was found slumped in the shower of his suburban Phoenix home in June 2008. He had been stabbed multiple times, shot in the face and had his throat slashed. But the jury deadlocked on whether the former California waitress should be executed or face life in...

On Wednesday, barring a reprieve, Kimberly McCarthy will become the 500th convicted killer in Texas to receive a lethal injection. [...] The death penalty is on the books in 32 states. On average, Texas executes an inmate about every three weeks. The murderer: Kimberly McCarthy

Syria threatens to execute 'terrorists' under new lawFrom Saad Abedine and Kindah Shair, CNN updated 8:12 AM EST, Tue December 20, 2011 (CNN) -- Syria will execute anyone who participates in terrorist acts or distributes weapons, state television announced Tuesday, in the latest escalation against an uprising the United Nations estimates has claimed about 5,000 lives since March. The announcement comes as two opposition groups claimed that more than 100 people were killed Monday, which would be the single deadliest known day of the protests against President Bashar al-Assad's government. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that dozens of...

<p>FREMONT, Calif. (AP) - FBI agents executed search warrants on Thursday at the headquarters of California solar firm Solyndra, which received a $535 million loan from the federal government before filing for bankruptcy last week.</p> <p>Agents executed multiple search warrants at the company's headquarters in Fremont as part of an investigation with the Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General, according to FBI spokesman Peter Lee. Lee said he could not provide details about the investigation.</p>

KILLEEN, Texas — The US Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people in a shooting spree on a Texas army base has been ruled sane and thus fit for trial, a source familiar with the case said. The ruling by a group of medical experts, called a sanity board, opens the door for a court martial that could end in the execution of Major Nidal Hasan, who was paralyzed from the neck down during the November 5, 2009 massacre. Neither prosecutors nor retired Army Colonel John Galligan, a veteran military lawyer representing Hasan, 40, would confirm the board's decision.

The state of Oklahoma is planning to execute death row inmates with drugs intended for use on animals. Lawmakers want to switch away from the only brand of anaesthetic that has been used in the US for lethal injections because there is not enough to go around. The replacement is likely to attract controversy because it is currently used by vets to anesthetise animals for operations. Other states are watching closely and may well follow suit, but such a move is likely to face a challenge from human rights groups to ensure that it is safe to use.

A crack addict was found guilty today of carrying out a nightmare home invasion that lead to the brutal deaths of a mother and her two young daughters. Steven Hayes was convicted of six capital crimes, all of which are punishable by death. The 47-year-old career criminal was found guilty of 16 of 17 charges, including the murder of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters Hayley, seventeen, and Michaela, eleven.

According to news received by the International Committee against Executions, 29 people are to be executed tomorrow, Saturday, in Ghezal Hesar prison in Karaj. It has been reported that the 29 have been separated from other prisoners. There is no information on their charges. The executions are being carried out in order to intimidate people and is directed at the protesting people of Iran.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the leading challenger to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has issued a fresh call to his supporters to maintain peaceful protests after the government confirmed the result of the disputed election.