Free Republic

Iraqi authorities executed 13 men by hanging Tuesday after they were convicted of murder and kidnapping, lining them up in hoods and green jumpsuits with their hands bound behind their backs. In a rare move that came amid chaotic violence sweeping the capital, the Iraqi government recorded and distributed graphic television footage of the convicts in the moments before they were put to death. The footage was given to both Iraqi and foreign media. The images showed two men standing together on a gallows with nooses around their necks. Several of them stooped, and one had his arm around the...

After a botched execution that took 34 minutes to end a convicted murderer’s life, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has suspended all death sentences until a commission can review lethal-injection procedures “to ensure they don’t inflict cruel and unusual punishment on their helpless victims.” In a gesture of goodwill, Florida’s leading association of murderers also announced a temporary hold on premeditated and/or serial killings as well as brutal rapes, according to a spokesman, “until we can determine if some of our victims experience discomfort or pain.” The Sunshine State Coalition of Capital Criminals released the statement through its ACLU attorney, pledging...

Iranian photographer Jahangir Razmi, took 70 pictures of an execution in Kurdistan on Aug. 27, 1979. One picture (No. 20, below) won the Pulitzer Prize. It was, however, awarded to an unnamed photographer -- the only anonymous recipient in the 90-year history of the award. Mr. Razmi preserved 27 of the photos on a contact sheet and stowed it away in his home. Below are those photos -- made public for the first time. Photos: http://online.wsj.com/public/page/8_0004.html VIDEO - interview of WSJ reporter's story about identifying the photographer http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-iranpics0611-28.html

Shocking new evidence of the trade in human body parts has revealed how British patients could be buying organs from executed prisoners for £50,000.An undercover investigation has found doctors in China are willing to sell organs from death row prisoners to foreigners in need of a transplant. The grisly practice add to mounting evidence of how human organs are being traded around the globe. Only last week it emerged at least 40 British patients may have been given transplants using body parts stolen by a corpse-snatching gang. More than 1,000 bodies including that of veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke, were stolen...

The brutal excesses of Saddam Hussein's regime were relived yesterday as Iraq's new government announced that it had hanged 27 prisoners convicted of terror and criminal charges. Mass executions at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, which has several gallows erected in the execution chamber, were suspended after coalition-led troops overthrew Saddam three years ago. The death penalty was reinstituted in 2004, and yesterday's executions took place just days after control of Abu Ghraib was handed over to the Iraqi authorities. An Iraqi Justice Ministry official said two of those hanged had been convicted of terrorism charges, and the other 25 –...

American Medical Association President Dr. William G. Plested said Monday that medical professionals should not participate in executions of prisoners. "The American Medical Association is troubled by continuous refusal of many state courts and legislatures to acknowledge the ethical obligations of physicians, which strictly prohibit physician involvement in a legally authorized execution," he said in a statement. "The AMA's policy is clear and unambiguous - requiring physicians to participate in executions violates their oath to protect lives and erodes public confidence in the medical profession. "A physician is a member of a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is...

Doctors shouldn't help put inmates to death by lethal injection or work with the legal system to ensure inmates don't feel pain when they are executed, said the president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists in a message to his colleagues. "The legal system has painted itself into this corner and it is not our obligation to get it out," Dr. Orin F. Guidry, president of the 40,000-member group, wrote in a message posted Friday on the organization's Web site. Patients could lose trust in their doctors if they see them as executioners, he wrote. Guidry said Monday he posted...

Excerpt - ST. LOUIS — A federal judge on Monday halted executions in Missouri until the state makes sweeping changes to ensure that inmates do not suffer excruciating pain when they are put to death. U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. cited "numerous problems" with the state's lethal injections, including a lack of a written protocol setting drug levels and a dyslexic doctor who is in charge of mixing the three drugs used. ~ snip ~

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court decided, in a 5-to-3 opinion, that a Tennessee prison inmate named Paul G. House was entitled to prove he did not commit the crime for which he was sent to death row. On the same day, I received a letter from Centurion Ministries, which argued for more than a decade that a Virginia man named Roger K. Coleman had not committed the crime for which he was executed in 1992. The letter admitted that Centurion had been wrong. These cases have something in common: they pivot on the question of innocence. For too many...

Less than two hours before he was to die by injection for three 1996 murders, Percy Levar Walton won a six-month reprieve from Gov. Timothy M. Kaine last night. The governor delayed the execution until Dec. 8 so Walton's long-debated mental capacity and competence to be executed can be independently evaluated.

Part of me died when I saw this cruel killing, HALA JABER EVEN by the stupefying standards of Iraq’s unspeakable violence, the murder of Atwar Bahjat, one of the country’s top television journalists, was an act of exceptional cruelty. Nobody but her killers knew just how much she had suffered until a film showing her death on February 22 at the hands of two musclebound men in military uniforms emerged last week. Her family’s worst fears of what might have happened have been far exceeded by the reality. Bahjat was abducted after making three live broadcasts from the edge of...

Judges in several states have started to put up potentially insurmountable roadblocks to the use of lethal injections to execute condemned inmates. Their decisions are based on new evidence suggesting that prisoners have endured agonizing executions. In response, judges are insisting that doctors take an active role in supervising executions, even though the American Medical Association's code of ethics prohibits that. A federal judge in North Carolina, for instance, ordered state officials there to find medical personnel by noon today to supervise an execution scheduled for next week. Otherwise, the judge said, he will impose a stay of execution. "This,...

In commemoration of International Women’s Day, human rights activists have prepared a report on the condition of Iranian women and the widespread oppression on Iranian citizens during the year 2005. Using this set of statitstics on women only, indicates a minute part of the tragic and intolerable conditions that Iranians are subjected to under the boot of the present rulers. The statistics shown below are the scant number of cases that the regime itself partially admits to, in its own media. Note that there are three separate networks of law enforcement, secret police, and nationwide sets of prisons governed by...

ATLANTA - A moratorium should be placed on seeking the death penalty in Georgia because the state cannot ensure fairness in trials and appeals, according to a new report by the American Bar Association. The 323-page report found seven flaws in Georgia's administration of the death penalty. For example, Georgia is the only state in the nation that does not guarantee lawyers for death row inmates' habeas corpus appeals, which challenge the constitutionality of convictions and sentences and sometimes result in new trials, the report found. And, of the 26 states that prohibit executing the mentally retarded, the report says...

<p>BASRA, Iraq (AP) - Ali Hassan al-Majid, dubbed ``Chemical Ali'' by opponents of the Iraqi regime for ordering a poison gas attack that killed thousands of Kurds, has been found dead, a British officer said Monday.</p> <p>Maj. Andrew Jackson of the 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment told The Associated Press that his superiors had confirmed the death of the man who is also President Saddam Hussein's first cousin.</p> <p>Jackson said the body was found along with that of his bodyguard and the head of Iraqi intelligence services in Basra.</p>

I am so tried of these movie stars showing up only at slect death row hearings tokie williams etc. that is fine that they oppose the death penalty but they only show up to further their carreer and at big names in the news small cases they are no where to be found.Sounds like a bunch of phonies to me and what are we to base their opionons on ours for?

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....