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The U.S. is one of the few western countries where execution remains the punishment for heinous crimes. About sixty percent of the states and the federal government have retained it, but roughly two-thirds of executions since 1976 – when new death penalty laws were affirmed by the Supreme Court – have occurred in six states: Texas, Virginia, Florida, Missouri, Louisiana and Oklahoma. Like euthanasia enthusiasts, death penalty abolitionists argue for their cause as a matter of "human rights." I have no use for that sanctimonious bundling. The 1948 Declaration of Human Rights deliberately avoided condemnation of the death penalty, except...

President Donald Trump announced that the planned firing squad execution of convicted Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan will not be livestreamed, reversing an earlier Pentagon announcement that the public would be able to watch the convicted mass killer's final moments. Trump said in a Truth Social post that broadcasting the execution could serve as a powerful deterrent to terrorism but acknowledged that many Americans would rather not witness Hasan's death. "He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed," Trump wrote. Hasan’s execution is scheduled for Dec. 3. Trump said immediate family members of...

Pressure has been mounting as many, including the archbishop of Catholics in the U.S. military, speak out against the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the execution scheduled for December. President Donald Trump is reportedly reconsidering the widely criticized public broadcasting of the execution of Nidal Hasan, days after the Pentagon announced the plan to livestream it. Citing four people who have reportedly spoken with Trump, Axios reported Oct. 12 that the President has expressed “misgivings” about the plan in private. According to Newsmax, Trump reportedly told a confidant outside the administration that the livestream “might not happen,” Axios reported. The source...

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, head of all pastoral services to Catholics serving in the U.S. military, said that his fellow churchmen cannot participate in the upcoming firing squad of Nidal Hasan. Controversy erupted last week when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the Pentagon will be livestreaming Hasan’s execution, which has been scheduled for December 3. Hasan was convicted and sentenced to death for the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood that killed 14 people — 12 U.S. Army soldiers, one civilian, and an unborn child. Another 33 were injured. In a statement on Monday, Broglio said that Catholics who serve on...

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is threatening to execute any U.S. nationals that the terrorist group kidnaps if the U.S. government follows through with its scheduled execution of Nidal Hasan, the 2009 Fort Hood shooter. Al Qaeda said in a statement released Monday that “the day America makes this decision,” referring to the execution of Mr. Hasan, “it will have made a decision to execute whoever among you falls captive to us.” The terrorist group voiced support for Mr. Hasan, who killed over a dozen people, and for the Omani homicide attacker who unsuccessfully planned to fly a plane...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As public debate continued over the scheduled live-streaming of terrorist Nidal Hasan's death by firing squad, President Donald Trump told liberals who are uncomfortable with public executions to just imagine that it's a healthcare CEO. Trump's suggestion came on the heels of public outcry that live-streaming Hasan's execution is barbaric. The trick, Trump said, is for the liberals to view the man who went on a murderous rampage at Fort Hood and killed 14 people with the same level of disdain as an executive of a healthcare corporation. "If they picture him that way, they'll cheer for...

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) President Archbishop Paul Coakley on Oct. 9 condemned the Pentagon’s plan to livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan as a “barbaric promotion of a culture of death.” The statement comes shortly after the War Department confirmed plans to livestream the execution of Hasan, the former Army major convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in the 2009 Fort Hood, Texas, shooting. Hasan, who described the attack as an act of jihad, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 3 at Fort Hood. A military jury convicted him in 2013 and sentenced...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the execution would be “public.” Hegseth, speaking to the conservative TV outlet Real America’s Voice News on Wednesday, said the execution of Hasan will take place at Fort Hood on Dec. 3. Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in a shooting at the military base in 2009. “We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public,” Hegseth said.

Texas authorities executed a man on Wednesday, the first execution in the nation since Christa Pike survived two lethal injections in Tennessee in late September. Jamaal Howard, 46, was pronounced dead at 8:03 p.m. after receiving a fatal dose of pentobarbital at the state prison in Huntsville. He was convicted of killing Vickie Swartout, 42, during a store robbery in 2000. Howard’s attorneys unsuccessfully sought to block the execution by arguing that he was intellectually disabled and that he faced risks similar to those in Pike’s case because both states use pentobarbital for lethal injections. Asked by the warden if...

President Donald Trump has approved the use of a firing squad for the execution of Nidal Hasan, who was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding dozens of others in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas. It would be the US Army’s first such execution of a soldier since World War II and its first imposition of any death penalty on an armed service member in 65 years. * * * Acting Army Secretary Adam Telle announced Tuesday that Hasan’s execution is scheduled for December 3 at 2 p.m. ET at Fort Hood. * * * Convicted...

In November 2009, Nidal Hassan killed 13 people and injured 30 more at the Fort Hood army base, shouting — per witnesses — ‘Allah Akbar’ during his indiscriminate rampage. Despite the subsequent investigation turning up Hassan’s ties to terrorists, the Obama Administration labeled the atrocity “workplace violence.”

Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell announced that Hasan will be just the second person since 2010 to be put to death by a firing squad Monday. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009,' he wrote on social media. 'He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting 'Allahu Akbar' during the attack,' Parnell added. 'The Secretary of the Army will set the time and...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — An ambulance is designed to save a life, but Wednesday night, one was called to Riverbend Maximum Security Prison after the State of Tennessee tried to end one. The failed execution of Christa Pike, who was sentenced to death for brutally torturing and murdering 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in Knoxville in 1995, has raised a lot of questions, including why prison officials called emergency medical services so Pike could receive lifesaving care after attempting to execute her just minutes prior. Pike received two doses of the lethal drug, pentobarbital and survived on Wednesday. According to Pike’s attorneys,...

Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike — who is now in the hospital after a botched execution — was given the all-female lethal injection team she had requested, her attorneys revealed on Thursday. “What I saw was consistent with that,” Randy Spivey said in response to a question about whether the execution staff was made up solely of women, according to a report by the New York Post. Pike, who was supposed to become the first woman to be put to death in Tennessee since 1819, has instead become the first woman to survive lethal injection drugs during an execution...

Christa Pike shouldn’t still be breathing. She survived two injections of lethal drugs in a harrowing failed execution by the state of Tennessee, raising questions about how the procedure was carried out and how it went wrong. Nearly 24 hours after Pike was set to be put to death for a murder she committed when she was 18, she remains in critical condition and is receiving care, her lawyers said Thursday afternoon. Her prognosis is unclear, said Randall Spivey, one of her lawyers. Neither he nor another lawyer, Stephen Ferrell, who spoke with reporters, said he had seen her in...

Tennessee death row inmate Christa Pike will likely have brain damage after her botched execution, during which she chillingly lifted her head and asked if the pain she was feeling was normal. Pike, 50, was rushed to the hospital Wednesday after the Tennessee Department of Corrections administered two doses of the highly potent sedative, Pentobarbital, but it failed to kill her. The murderer, who was sentenced to death for the monstrous 1995 slaying of a classmate, was “being provided life-saving measures” in the hospital, her lawyers said – but she likely has a brain injury as a result. Emory University...

Christa Pike has “horrible nightmares.” Her “nerves are shredded.” In eight days, the 50-year-old who killed her friend when she was a teenager will have her worst nightmares realized inside the execution chamber in Nashville, Tennessee. Pike is set to become the first woman put to death in Tennessee since 1819 if Governor Bill Lee does not put a stop to the scheduled execution before 10 a.m. local time on September 30.

BBC Correspondent gives his first interview

The man convicted of kidnapping, raping and murdering 5-year-old Kamarie Holland in Phenix City is scheduled to be executed Thursday evening in south Alabama. Jeremy Williams, 42, is set to be executed Aug. 13 at approximately 6 p.m. CT at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. Williams was convicted in the December 2021 death of Kamarie Holland, whose disappearance sparked a large-scale search across the Chattahoochee Valley. According to court testimony, Kamarie was reported missing from her mother’s home on Dec. 13, 2021. Investigators reviewing phone records determined Williams and Kamarie’s mother, Kristy Siple, had been in contact the...

Florida is set to become the first state in nearly a decade to carry out a double execution in one day with the lethal injections of a child murderer and an octogenarian. Former police officer James Duckett, 68, died by a lethal injection at 1.19 p.m. Tuesday at Florida state prison near Starke for raping and drowning an 11-year-old girl in 1987. Duckett said “No sir” when asked if he wanted to make a final statement and about four minutes after the three-drug injection began, the prison warden shook Duckett and shouted his name, receiving no response.