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Recently, I joined with 80 other current and former Iranian athletes and sports figures in signing a letter that urges an international commitment to saving the life of an Iranian national champion in wrestling, Navid Afkari. The 27-year-old is the youngest of three brothers who were arrested in 2018 for taking part in anti-government protests that summer in the city of Kazerun. While the two elder brothers have been handed prison sentences totaling more than 81 years, Navid Afkari was apparently made a scapegoat on the basis of his celebrity, and was given two death sentences along with a sentence...

The FBI has warned Chicago-area law enforcement that nearly three-dozen street gangs "have formed a pact to 'shoot on-site any cop that has a weapon drawn on any subject in public'," reports ABC7. According to an August 26 'situation information report' from Chicago-based FBI officials, "members of these gang factions have been actively searching for, and filming, police officers in performance of their official duties. The purpose of which is to catch on film an officer drawing his/her weapon on any subject and the subsequent 'shoot on-site' of said officer, in order to garner national media attention." Alerts based...

“They executed my partner. They hunted him down, they hunted us down. They recognized our Patriot Prayer hats. For anybody who doesn’t know Joey Gibson, citizens advocating for men, we support him, Christian and conservative. Um, so they identified our hats: “We got a couple of ’em right here. We got a couple of ’em right here. Pull it out. Pull it out”…I turned around. I didn’t even, it didn’t even register that somebody was pointing a gun at us until the shots went off and took off running…the shooter took off running and uh, you know, you, it takes...

On this date in 1936, thousands thronged Owensboro, Kentucky, for a glimpse of what would prove to be the last public hanging in the United States. The U.S. followed the trend of its onetime mother country, England, in moving the formerly iconic public hanging increasingly behind closed doors, but its federalist structure made that change uneven. In Kentucky itself at this time, the law displayed sedimentary layers of death penalty history. Caught up for killing a 70-year-old woman — done in the midst of a drunken burglary, he had left a telltale ring at the scene; fingerprint analysis also helped...

Source: Mugshot of Darius Nathaniel Sessoms via Wilson Police Department We have a brutal crime in North Carolina, and if the races of those involved were reversed, this would be a national story. Instead, the victim is white. A five-year-old was shot in the head by a 25-year-old black man in front of his siblings as they played outside of their father’s house in Wilson, North Carolina. We don’t know a motive, other than pure evil (via WSOCTV): A 25-year-old man accused of shooting his 5-year-old neighbor in the head at point blank range in Wilson, North Carolina on Sunday...

A prisoner on San Quentin's death row died Sunday at an outside hospital, apparently from complications related to the COVID-19 coronavirus, the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Sunday. Orlando G. Romero, 48, was sentenced to death in Riverside County on Aug. 28, 1996, for first-degree murder and second-degree robbery while armed with a firearm. .... He was admitted onto death row on Sept. 4, 1996 Romero is the 11th condemned prisoner at San Quentin to die since late June, the Department of Corrections said. He was the 20th San Quentin prisoner overall to die from complications of COVID-19,...

The most recent execution in the Russian Federation was that of serial killer Sergey Golovkin on this date in 1996. Known as “The Fisher” or “The Boa”, Golovkin (English Wikipedia entry | Russian) grew up in Moscow as a shy outsider type (Russian link) with a noticeable slump and a predilection for animal cruelty, the kind of whom oblivious classmates will later say that they never saw it coming. He graduated from an agricultural academy and worked as a horse-breeding expert: people skills just weren’t his thing. But people killing skills …

Attorney General William P. Barr today directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of two federal death-row inmates who were each convicted of murder. William Emmett LeCroy raped and murdered Joann Lee Tiesler, a 30-year-old nurse, in 2001. LeCroy had previously served 10 years in federal and state prison for, among other crimes, aggravated assault, burglary, child molestation, and statutory rape.  After his release to supervised probation, LeCroy began planning to flee the country.  In furtherance of that plan, LeCroy broke into Tiesler’s home in Gilmer County, Georgia.  Once she returned home, LeCroy attacked her, bound her...

Department of Justice Spokesperson Kerri Kupec has issued the following statement:“Today, Dustin Lee Honken was executed at USP Terre Haute in accordance with the death sentence imposed by a federal district court in 2004.  Honken was pronounced dead at 4:36 p.m. EDT by the Vigo County Coroner.In 1993, Honken, a meth kingpin, kidnapped, fatally shot, and buried Lori Duncan, a single, working mother, Duncan’s two young daughters — 10-year-old Kandi and 6-year-old Amber — and Greg Nicholson, a government informant who testified against Honken on federal drug trafficking charges.  Honken also murdered Terry DeGeus, who Honken thought might also...

The Supreme Court on Wednesday lifted another injunction on the Trump administration's rapid push to resume federal death sentences this week. A divided court lifted one of a handful of injunctions temporarily blocking the execution of a man whose lawyers say suffers from severe dementia. The vote was 5-4 with the liberal justices — Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor — dissenting. DEVELOPING...

A federal judge in Washington has blocked federal executions scheduled for this week, citing concerns that the lethal injection protocol involved is "very likely to cause extreme pain and needless suffering." Judge Tanya Chutkan said the last-minute ruling only hours before executions were set to resume for the first time in 17 years was "unfortunate," but she blamed the Justice Department for racing ahead before legal challenges had been fully aired. The judge said the prison's plan to use a single drug, pentobarbital, could cause pulmonary edema, producing a sense that the condemned men were drowning. That would violate the...

Attorney General William P. Barr has issued the following statement:“This morning, in the first federal execution in 17 years, Daniel Lewis Lee was executed by lethal injection at FCI Terre Haute in accordance with a death sentence imposed by a federal district court in 1999.  Lee, a member of a white supremacist organization, brutally murdered William Frederick Mueller and Nancy Ann Mueller, along with her eight-year-old daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Powell.  After robbing and shooting them with a stun gun, Lee duct-taped plastic bags around their heads, weighed down each victim with rocks, and drowned the family in the Illinois...

he U.S. on Tuesday carried out its first federal execution in almost two decades, killing by lethal injection a man convicted of murdering an Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest. The execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, over the objection of the victims’ relatives and following days of legal wrangling and delays, revived the debate over capital punishment during a time of widespread social unrest. *** Lee, 47, of Yukon, Oklahoma, professed his innocence just before he was executed at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. “I didn’t do it," Lee...

ERRE HAUTE, Indiana (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge issued an injunction on Monday delaying what would have been the first federal execution in 17 years, scheduled for later in the day, thwarting at least for now the Trump administration’s goal of reviving capital punishment at the federal level. Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. district court in Washington ordered the U.S. Department of Justice to delay four executions scheduled for July and August to allow continuation of the condemned men’s legal challenges against a new lethal injection protocol announced in 2019. “The scientific evidence before the court overwhelmingly indicates...

Two San Quentin Prison death row inmates died Friday from what appear to be complications related to the COVID-19 coronavirus, according to a statement from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. There have been at least three death row inmates at the prison who have died of the virus since June 24. Scott Thomas Erskine, 57, had been on California's death row since 2004, and Manuel Machado Alvarez, 59, had been on death row since 1989, both died on July 3, 2020, at outside hospitals. A third death row inmate at San Quentin, Richard Stitely, 71, died June 24...

On this date in 1865, the Japanese samurai Okada Izo was dispatched by crucifixion. He was one of* the “Four Hitokiri“ — manslayers — whose legendary blades coruscated in the Bakumatsu era that marked Japan’s pivot from an isolationist feudal state, one where samurai were big men on prefectures, to a burgeoning modern power ruled by industry and mass conscription. The irony was that dinosaurs like the Hitokiri helped bring the asteroid down on their own heads. During the chaotic Bakumatsu period, triggered by Japan’s becoming involuntarily opened to the outside world, the emperor — long a figurehead marginalized by...

The State Department inspector general whose recent dismissal ignited a political firestorm sent copies detailing a sensitive investigation to his personal email account, according to a probe into his conduct run by the Defense Department's inspector general. The inquiry report, dated March 17, confirms that fired State Department inspector general Steve Linick was the subject of a broad investigation related to the leaks of politically charged materials to journalists, specifically a draft evaluation report into Brian Hook, the State Department’s top Iran official. The report, which was provided to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, concluded that while Linick was permitted...

Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo told a press briefing an officer was shot around 11 p.m. Monday night and is in critical condition and on life support at University Medical Center. Lombardo said officers were dealing with a large group of rioters at a George Floyd protest near the Circus Circus hotel-casino when the officer went down. Rioters were allegedly throwing rocks and debris at the officers before the officer was shot, KTNV Las Vegas reports. “Our officers were attempting to take rocks and bottles from the crowd,” said Lombardo during the press conference. “Officers were attempting to get some...

This date in 1965 saw the end of the road (and the end of the rope) for Dick Hickock and Perry Smith, the drifters who slaughtered the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, and inspired Truman Capote’s magnum opus In Cold Blood.

Abdul Majed was hanged at the Dhaka Central Jail on Sunday after he was found hiding in India for nearly two-and-a-half decades.Bangladesh has executed a former military captain for his involvement in the 1975 coup in which the country's founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated, nearly four-and-a-half decades after the massacre. Abdul Majed was hanged at the Dhaka Central Jail in Keraniganj at 12:01 AM (local time) on Sunday, bdnews24.com reported. Jailor Mahbubul Islam said that Mazed was executed by hanging. He was arrested in Dhaka on Tuesday after hiding in India for nearly two-and-a-half decades. On Friday, Majed's...