Free Republic

While warden of San Quentin for 10 years, I supervised reactivation of the gas chamber and California's first two executions in the modern era. I unhesitatingly served Clarence Ray Allen, who is scheduled to die Jan. 17, with his first death warrant for ordering three murders from his prison cell in 1980. I firmly believe that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment and that the state of California has the right to enforce its criminal laws. But I also believe it must be administered in accordance with civilized standards of decency to maintain its integrity. Because the execution of...

Kenneth Boyd’s execution in North Carolina this week marked only the 1,000th time the death penalty has been used since the Supreme Court reinstated it in 1976. But a simple comparison of the number of murders to the number of executions shows that the murderers are winning—by a long shot. According to the Justice Department, 32,665 people were murdered in America in 2003 and 2004. In those same two years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, 124 murderers were executed. That was 0.0037% executions per murder.

Visit almost any American college campus, walk down the streets of practically every city, and you will see idyllic youth proudly wearing a shirt showing a handsome Latino face cast against a sea of customary red – emblems of the personality cult of communist revolutionary Che Guevara. The image of Che attracts many youth in the West; they see only dreaming eyes, wild jet-black hair cascading under a military beret that's crowned with a single soviet star. His face is a stamp on products filling sales racks, a symbol, an icon of pop culture – a patron saint for society's...

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraq hanged three convicted murderers Thursday, the first executions since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, the government said. Iraqi authorities reinstated the death penalty after the end of the U.S.-led occupation in June 2004 so they would have the option of executing Saddam Hussein if he is convicted of crimes committed by his regime. Saddam is expected to stand trial soon after the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum, an official said Thursday. "At 10 a.m. in Baghdad, the first executions were carried out since the fall of the regime, against three criminals," spokesman Laith Kubba said....

An Australian who was held hostage in Iraq has described the murders of two fellow detainees in the same room. In his first extensive interview, Douglas Wood, 63, also told Australian TV of his efforts to retain his sanity during his captivity. The engineer was held for 47 days by gunmen in Baghdad before being rescued by Iraqi forces earlier this month. He was reportedly paid A$400,000 dollars (US$307,000; £169,000) by Channel Ten for his story. Mr Wood was bound, gagged, beaten and fed only bread and water by his captors. 'Replay of my life' He said he heard two...

When a doctor examined Zahra Kazemi, he found, according to his medical report, "Bruises from forehead to ear," "Skull fracture," "Two broken fingers," "Broken and missing fingernails," "Severe abdominal bruising" and "Evidence of very brutal rape." Iranian security agents had arrested Kazemi in June 2003. Her crime: photographing a demonstration outside Tehran's Evin prison. One year later, Atefeh Rajabi, 16, was sentenced to death and hanged. Her crime: an "act incompatible with chastity." Last month a cleric in the security forces gunned down a 20-year-old man in a train station because he had verbally teased two young women. These cases...

The latest hysteria alleging American human rights abuses of suspected terrorists comes from Amnesty International, which apparently hopes to turn even the slightest supposed mistreatment of prisoners into a full-scale Abu Ghraib-type scandal. According to the Washington Times, Amnesty International "last week called on foreign governments 'to uphold their obligations under international law by investigating U.S. officials implicated in the development or implementation of interrogation techniques that constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment' at the U.S. military base known as Gitmo." Furthermore, in a report titled "The State of the World's Human Rights," the organization charged that "the...

Iraqi police have found the bodies of 14 men, apparently the victims of execution-style killings, in Baghdad. They were found in shallow graves, blindfolded with their arms bound and with bullet wounds to the head - possible victims of revenge killings. The grim find came as at least eight police officers died in a bombing near the northern city of Tikrit. Later at least 16 people were killed and more than 40 injured in a suicide car bomb south of Baghdad. The blast happened in a market in Suwayra, 60km (40 miles) south of the capital. There has been intense...

Health - HealthDay U.S. Executions by Lethal Injection May Not Be Humane 1 hour, 3 minutes ago Health - HealthDay THURSDAY, April 14 (HealthDay News) -- Prisoner executions by lethal injection in the United States may not be painless or humane, and may not even meet veterinary standards for putting down animals. So claims a research letter in this week's issue of The Lancet. The authors concluded that prisoners executed by lethal injection may have experienced awareness and unnecessary suffering as they died because they weren't properly sedated. Anesthesia during lethal injection is essential to minimize the prisoner's suffering. Lethal...

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Two people have been arrested in the murder of an Egyptian Christian family, authorities said Friday. The suspects were to be arraigned Friday afternoon in state Superior Court. The Hudson County prosecutor's office would not release the identities of those arrested or the charges they face until they appear in court.

Authorities have made a major break in the case of the slain Jersey City family, with two suspects scheduled to be arraigned today. Although the Hudson County prosecutor's office isn't releasing the names of the two people or saying what the charges are, local press reports one of them is a former tenant of the building where the Coptic Christian family lived and was found murdered Jan. 14. As WorldNetDaily reported, Hossam Armanious, was found in his home with his wife and two daughters -- Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8 -- bound and gagged with their throats slashed.

JERUSALEM -- It was midnight in the West Bank city of Ramallah where the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat spent the final years of his stormy life. Out of nowhere, a squad of gunmen appeared in Manara Square with an unarmed 20-year old civilian in tow. They stood him up, took aim and opened fire. His bullet-riddled body was discovered at dawn by unfazed pedestrians. Summary executions are par for the course of the so-called Palestinian Revolution. The victim this time was accused of informing on two members of Hamas and Fatah who were killed by Israeli troops in Betunya,...

A mass grave being excavated in a north Iraqi village has yielded evidence that Iraqi forces executed women and children under Saddam Hussein. US-led investigators have located nine trenches in Hatra containing hundreds of bodies believed to be Kurds killed during the repression of the 1980s. The skeletons of unborn babies and toddlers clutching toys are being unearthed, the investigators said. They are seeking evidence to try Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity. It is believed to be the first time investigators working for the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) have conducted a full scientific exhumation of a mass grave. "It...

Amnesty International Outraged at Execution of a 16 Year Old Girl! Public Statement Amnesty International today expressed its outrage at the reported execution of a girl who is believed to be 16 years old, Ateqeh Rajabi, in Neka in the northern Iranian province of Mazandaran, on 15 August, for "acts incompatible with chastity" (amal-e manafe-ye 'ofat). Ateqeh Rajabi was reportedly publicly hanged on a street in the city centre of Neka. Amnesty International is alarmed that this execution was carried out despite reports that Ateqeh Rajabi was not believed to be mentally competent, and that she reportedly did not have...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, the American Medical Association and 48 nations are among those who lobbied the Supreme Court Monday to end the execution of killers who committed their crimes before age 18. The United States is among only a handful of nations that allow the practice. The high court will reconsider this fall whether such executions are constitutional. "By continuing to execute child offenders in violation of international norms, the United States is not just leaving itself open to charges of hypocrisy, but is also endangering the rights of many around the world," said a friend...

Savage executions in the Arab world must be condemned as wrong by anyone's standards David Aaronovitch, columnist of the year Sunday May 16, 2004 The Observer A man from Maidstone had this letter published in the Independent last week. 'Why is it barbaric,' he asked, 'to decapitate an innocent man with a knife but civilised to do it with a laser-guided bomb?' Or to rephrase the question, is the video executioner of Nicholas Berg in any way morally deficient compared to the general or politician who gives an order that - whatever the intention - will almost certainly lead to...

The legacy of a mass murderer.A field outside Baghdad THE DEAD DON'T TALK in Iraq but their graves do. In northern Iraq, a grave was unearthed last July with several thousand bodies, mostly women and children. From the bullet holes in the top of the skulls, it was clear the deaths weren't natural. The victims had been shot from above while kneeling or after being forced into a mass grave. They had personal household items with them like baskets. They had their clothes on. These were clues that helped identify their hometown and led to the conclusion they'd been compelled...

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Kidnappers have released up to 12 foreigners taken hostage in Iraq, a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council said Monday. Meanwhile, two U.S. troops and seven employees of American contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Houston-based Halliburton, were missing following an attack "two days ago" on a convoy near Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said Monday. He refused to say whether they had been abducted. More than 30 foreigners from at least 12 countries — including a Mississippi man whose fate also was unclear — have been kidnapped in recent days...

A new study softens Texas' image as the nation's death penalty capital, finding the state doles out death sentences less often than even Oregon, a state better known for approving assisted suicide than for demanding capital punishment. Figures in this month's Journal of Empirical Legal Studies show Texas imposed death penalties in 2 percent of murder cases that had an arrest — just below the national average and slightly behind Oregon, which ranked No. 15 among the 31 states with more than 10 inmates on death row. By comparing death sentences with solved murder cases between 1977 and 1999, the...

Utah May End Executions by Firing Squad Reporters look at the chair where John Albert Taylor was later strapped into and executed in by a firing squad, during a media tour of the execution chamber in Utah State Prison at Point of the Mountain, Utah, Jan. 24, 1996. The Utah Senate approved a bill Thursday, Feb. 19, 2004, that would eliminate firing squad executions - used most recently here in 1996 - unless lethal injection executions are found unconstitutional. There has not been an execution by firing squad in the United States since Taylor's execution in 1996. Utah moved toward...