Free Republic

Re: Please stop the execution of Abdul Rahman The Embassy of Afghanistan greatly appreciates public concern about Mr. Abdul Rahman. We have received a significant number of inquiries about his case, which initially involved a civil lawsuit in child custody filed by his family. Please note that the Government of Afghanistan is fully aware of and pursuing the best ways to resolve his case judicially. It is too early to draw any conclusion about the punishment, and we appreciate public understanding of the sensitivity of religious issues. The Afghan judicial system is currently evaluating questions raised about the mental fitness...

Karzai 'gives pledge' to save Christian convert from execution By Isambard Wilkinson in Islamabad (Filed: 25/03/2006) President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is reported to have given assurances that an Afghan convert to Christianity will not face the death sentence for apostasy. Mr Karzai is under growing pressure from his western allies to resolve the case of Abdul Rahman. Abdul Rahman converted to Christianity Mr Rahman was arrested last week for converting to Christianity from Islam 16 years ago and could face the death penalty if he refuses to become a Muslim again. The case prompted expressions of concern from President...

PRIME Minister John Howard will personally protest to the Afghanistan Government over the prosecution of a man who faces possible execution for converting from Islam to Christianity. Mr Howard said those who would advocate such a course were no friends of Australia. Australian diplomats in Kabul have already expressed Australia's view to the Afghanistan Government. "I am going to personally protest again to the president of Afghanistan," he told Southern Cross radio. "This is appalling. When I saw the report about this I felt sick literally. "We are putting the lives of Australian soldiers on the line. This is outrageous....

HUNTSVILLE, Texas - A Lubbock man was executed Wednesday night for the April 1997 beating death of his girlfriend's 2-year-old daughter. "To everybody on both sides of that wall, I want you to know that I love you both," Robert Salazar Jr., said in a final statement, acknowledging his family and Adriana Gomez's mother and other relatives who were there as witnesses. He looked toward his family during his remarks. "I am sorry that the child had to lose her life, but I should not have to be here. Tell my family I love them all and I will see...

RALEIGH, N.C. — A man who fatally shot his then-girlfriend's husband in a plot to collect insurance money was executed by injection early Friday. Patrick Moody, 39, was executed at Central Prison for the slaying of Donnie Robbins of Thomasville. He was having an affair with Robbins' wife Wanda, who persuaded Moody to shoot her husband so they could collect on a $5,000 insurance policy. Wanda Robbins was sentenced to life in prison plus 65 years after pleading guilty to murder and insurance fraud charges. Moody was pronounced dead at 2:19 a.m. EST, said Keith Acree, a spokesman for the...

China Executes Former Tycoon for Murder By ALEXA OLESEN, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 5 minutes ago A Chinese tycoon once worth more than $360 million has been executed by lethal injection for having a man who tried to blackmail him killed, a court statement and news reports said Saturday. Yuan Baojing and two accomplices were put to death by lethal injection Friday after a court in China's northeastern Liaoning province upheld a death sentence handed down last year, said a notice on the official Web site of China's courts. News photos in several Chinese papers showed a bespectacled Yuan,...

HUNTSVILLE — A former Marine was executed tonight for the death of a Chicago-area woman who was shot and killed along with a friend during a robbery outside a northwest Dallas theater in August 1997. "I love my family," Tommie Hughes, 31, said in his final statement. "You all stay strong. Watch over each other," he told his mother, grandmother and some friends as they watched from a nearby window. Hughes kept repeating "I love you. I love you" and looking at his family until the drugs took effect. He said nothing about his victims, but at one point turned...

ARLINGTON, VA. -- The death of "peace activist" Tom Fox, and the threatened execution of the three others held with him in Iraq, is doubly tragic. It is tragic whenever an innocent person is murdered. It is also tragic because the likelihood that the presence of Mr. Fox and his colleagues would change the attitude or behavior of their captors was zero to none. That the "peace activists" believed their brand of Christianity would trump the fanatical Muslims who regarded them as infidels and worthy of death meant that Mr. Fox and the others would either be used for propaganda...

Jordan executes killers of U.S. envoy Two with ties to al Qaeda hanged for 2002 assassination (CNN) -- The Jordanian government Saturday executed two al Qaeda-linked terrorists convicted in the 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat, according to Jordan's Petra news agency. Salem Sa'ed Salem bin Suweid, a Libyan national, and Yasser Fathi Ibraheem, a Jordanian, were hanged at the Siwaqa Correctional and Rehabilitation Center for the killing of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley.

THE ESSENTIAL NEED FOR CAPITAL PUNISHMENT by Timothy Rollins, Editor and Publisher March 3, 2006 WARNING: This DOUBLE-LENGTH article contains material that is brutally and even horrifically graphic. This is not recommended reading for children, those with weak stomachs, or those whose sensitivities may be destroyed by so doing. Neither this author nor The American Partisan will be considered liable for either the contents of this article or the reaction of its readers to viewing, reading or hearing it. Think it over VERY CAREFULLY before deciding to proceed past this point.If there was ever a case begging for capital punishment-despite...

Anyone curious about the motives of the federal judge who has temporarily put the brakes on executions in California should know this: Jeremy Fogel comes with plenty of personal biases. He leans decidedly toward the San Francisco Giants. He would probably rule in favor of the jazz stylings of pianist Keith Jarrett. And he's partial to the steam-poached salmon with Dijon beurre blanc when dining at Maddalena's in Palo Alto. His true feelings about the death penalty, however, are not up for discussion. ``My feeling is that it's constitutional,'' Fogel said this week in an interview with the Mercury News....

A court in Bangladesh has sentenced 21 Islamic militants to death for their involvement in 400 simultaneous blasts across Bangladesh last year. On August 17 last year, 400 bombs were detonated in Bangladesh, exploding in almost every city and town. It was a violent confirmation that Islamic militancy was thriving in the country, despite determined government denials. The outlawed militant group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) claimed responsibility for the blasts. The JMB wants Bangladesh to be ruled by strict Islamic law. Twenty-one men, all aged between 20 and 25 have now been sentenced to death by hanging for their involvement...

For hundreds of years, doctors have been involved in executions. But their efforts to get out of this grisly business put them on a collision course this week with a federal judge who ordered that they assist in killing a California inmate. "There's been an attempt to medicalize executions all the way back to the French Revolution," when Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin invented the guillotine as a humane method of death, said University of Minnesota bioethicist Dr. Steven Miles. "Doctors then got involved again in designing electrocution for the same reason in the United States," he said. "The medical profession has...

San Francisco - The execution of a man convicted of raping and murdering a 17-year-old girl was postponed Tuesday after two anaesthesiologists who were to ensure a painless death withdrew on ethical grounds. The execution of Michael Morales, 46, had been scheduled for 12.01 a.m. Tuesday after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and U.S. courts denied his final appeals. But the two anaesthesiologists cited concerns over a last-minute ruling by a judge who ordered them to intervene in the event that Morales woke up or appeared to be in pain from the administering of the lethal combination of drugs. "Any such intervention...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO - The state on Tuesday postponed indefinitely the execution of a condemned killer amid a court battle over the state's method of lethal injection and the role doctors may play in the death chamber.</p> <p>State officials notified the federal courts they would be unable to comply with a judge's order to have a lethal dose of barbiturate administered to Michael Morales by a medical professional in the execution chamber, a spokeswoman for the federal courts told The Associated Press.</p>

SAN QUENTIN, California (Reuters) - The execution of a California man who raped and murdered an 17-year-old girl was delayed for at least 15 hours early on Tuesday because two court-appointed anesthesiologists walked off the job over ethical concerns. The doctors backed out when the language in an early-morning U.S. District Court ruling did not sufficiently allay their ethical concerns, San Quentin State prison spokesman Lt. Vernell Crittendon said. They were on hand after a court said the state must ensure the condemned man, Michael Morales, was in fact unconscious before a lethal injection was administered, thereby minimizing the pain...

Lodi, San Joaquin County -- Terri Lynn Winchell left home on the last night of her life in January 1981 to help a boy she knew hated her. That's just the way she was, friends and family said. Good-hearted. A devout believer in turning the other cheek, in giving people a second chance. But this was a chance she should not have given. By the end of the evening, the 17-year-old church choir singer and high school beauty lay raped, hammered and stabbed to death, her corpse sprawled between two rows of grapevines. She had no inkling of it, but...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to stay the execution of convicted killer Michael Morales. Justice Anthony Kennedy reviewed the case, then sent it to the full court, which denied Morales' final appeal at 6:29 p.m. EST, according to court spokesman Ed Turner. "The court entered orders denying the request for stays of execution," he said. The Supreme court was the only legal option left for Morales, 46, who is scheduled to die from lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. at San Quentin State Prison for killing teenager Terri Winchell, of Lodi. He would become the...

San Francisco -- A California condemned prisoner who murdered, raped and tortured a girl 25 years ago moved a step closer to death when a federal appeals court dismissed on Sunday petitions seeking to block Tuesday's lethal injection. Barring a reprieve by the U.S. Supreme Court, where the case is to be appealed, Michael Morales, 46, is to become the 14th prisoner California has executed since voters reinstated capital punishment in 1978. It would be the third execution at San Quentin State Prison, located a few miles north of here, since the Dec. 13 injection of Crips co-founder Stanley Tookie...

Clyde Smith, 32, was executed just after 6 p.m. Tuesday in the state’s death chamber in Huntsville for the 1992 murder of a cab driver in Houston. Jacobs was shot four times in the head and robbed of about $100. Smith confessed to detectives about the February 1992 slaying and the similar shooting and robbery six weeks later of another cab driver, but later said the confession was made under duress. He later claimed he wasn’t present when Jacobs was slain, but arrived at the scene after the shooting.