Pence Criticized Over Call for “Expedited” Death Penalty for Mass Shooters

On Sunday, former Vice President Mike Pence — who is also running for the GOP nomination for the 2024 presidential election — reacted to a shooting over the weekend in Jacksonville, Florida, by suggesting that mass shooters should be subjected to an “expedited” death penalty process.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Pence said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” program, “and I’m calling for an expedited federal death penalty for anyone engaged in a mass shooting like took place in Jacksonville.”

Egypt sentences 75 to death over Rabaa protests

An Egyptian court has sentenced 75 people to death, including senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, over a 2013 sit-in protest in Cairo that ended with the killing of hundreds of protesters.

Senior Brotherhood leaders Essam el-Erian and Mohamed Beltagi were sentenced to death, while Mohamed Badie, the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, was handed a life sentence.

Saudi Arabia Seeks Its First Death Penalty Against Female Human Rights Activist

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor is seeking the death penalty against five human rights activists from the kingdom’s Eastern Province currently on trial in a secretive terrorism court, groups including Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.

Among the detainees is Israa al-Ghomgham, whom Saudi activists said was the first woman to possibly face the death penalty for rights-related work. Charges against her include incitement to protest and providing moral support to rioters.

Egypt Court Sentences 75 To Death Over 2013 Sit-In

CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian court sentenced 75 people to death on Saturday, including top figures of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, for their involvement in a 2013 sit-in, state media reported.

The Cairo Criminal Court referred the sentences to the Grand Mufti — the country’s top theological authority — for his non-binding opinion as is the norm in capital cases. Though non-binding, the formality gives a window of opportunity for a judge to reverse an initial sentence.

The Overwhelming Evidence Against the Death Penalty

The continuing controversy surrounding America’s reliance on lethal injection for capital punishment was vividly on display in the four executions Arkansas carried out last week. Two of those executions were marked by serious problems. Last Monday, it took almost an hour to find a vein and complete the execution of Jack Jones. And a witness to Thursday night’s execution of Kenneth Williams said the condemned man was “coughing, convulsing, lurching, (and) jerking” after the administration of midazolam, which was supposed to make him unconscious and insensate.

Florida Governor Rick Scott Is Punishing a Prosecutor for Opposing the Death Penalty

The top prosecutor in Orlando, Florida, took to a podium outside the Orange County courthouse last week to outline a new policy: Her office would no longer seek the death penalty in any capital case.

The prosecutor, State Attorney Aramis Ayala, told assembled reporters that seeking the death penalty is “not in the best interests of this community or in the interest of justice.” After considerable research, she said, she had concluded that capital punishment offers no empirical benefits to society: It is not a deterrent, it neither enhances public safety nor protects law enforcement officers from violence, and it costs millions more — in litigation and housing — to kill a defendant than it does to confine them behind bars for life.

Citing Racist Trial, Protesters Hold Vigil as Georgia Executes Kenneth Fults

EARLY TUESDAY EVENING, as the state of Georgia prepared to kill 47-year-old Kenneth Fults, I drove 10 miles west from historic Jackson toward Prison Boulevard, which leads to death row. Along the way, green lawn signs lined Highway 36, advertising “Jesus.” Soon after I arrived, a dozen peaceful protesters began pulling up at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, gathering just inside the gate. A black-clad security squad wearing helmets and riot gear stood watch as vehicles approached; one by one, drivers exited their cars before parking so that German Shepherds could search for contraband.

The US Is One of the Top Executioners in the World

The global death penalty rate is skyrocketing. According to the latest tallies, published today by Amnesty International, at least 1,634 people were put to death last year, a 54 percent increase from the previous year. That's the highest number of recorded executions in more than a quarter century, and it's not even counting deaths in China, the world's top executioner, where death penalty data is treated as a state secret.

Hillary Clinton’s Indefensible Stance on the Death Penalty

IF THERE WAS anything surprising about Hillary Clinton’s defense of capital punishment when questioned by an Ohio death row exoneree Sunday night, it was only that she was not better prepared to deliver it. This was no gotcha question, no unscripted ambush like the one carried out last month by Black Lives Matter protesters who confronted Clinton at a fundraiser with her ’90s-era rhetoric about “superpredators.” Although the CNN-sponsored Democratic town hall dictated that candidates do not receive questions in advance, the Clinton campaign almost certainly knew that Ricky Jackson, who spent an incomprehensible 39 years in prison as an innocent man, would be in the audience — and that if called upon, he would probably ask Clinton to justify her support for a policy that sent him to die for a crime he did not commit.

Richard Glossip Is Granted a Stay of Execution by Oklahoma’s Governor

The execution of Richard Glossip was postponed Wednesday for 37 days, thanks to Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin.

Glossip’s case—discussed in depth here by Truthdig columnist Bill Blum—has drawn widespread attention, as activists and high-profile supporters continue to rally behind a man they believe is innocent and yet soon could be put to death.

Justices Breyer, Ginsburg Say It Is 'Highly Likely' The Death Penalty Is Unconstitutional

WASHINGTON -- Two liberals on the Supreme Court on Monday suggested that the death penalty itself may be unconstitutional, saying that it may violate the Eighth Amendment.

Both Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined two other liberals on the court in the dissent that suggested that states would be able to burn prisoners at the stake under the majority's ruling on Oklahoma's use of lethal injection drugs. But Breyer also wrote a dissent, joined by Ginsburg, which said the death penalty in any form may be unconstitutional.

Breyer wrote that he believed it was "highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment" and called for the court to address that "basic question." He suggested that the decline of the death penalty made it an "unusual" punishment that, for the past 40 years, has been "imposed arbitrarily."

Supreme Court Liberals: Lethal Injection Decision Would Allow Prisoners To Be 'Burned At The Stake'

WASHINGTON -- In a scathing dissent in the Supreme Court ruling on Monday which upheld Oklahoma's use of a lethal injection drug, some of the court's liberal justices suggested that the high court's ruling would allow prisoners to be "drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death, or actually burned at the stake" by states that wished to put them to death.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissenting opinion joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Eleana Kagan, wrote that the majority opinion in the 5-4 case left those sentenced to the death penalty "exposed to what may well be the chemical equivalent of being burned at the stake."

Justices Fire Sharp Questions During Death Penalty Hearing

WASHINGTON – Exactly one year after a botched execution in Oklahoma, the state’s new lethal injection protocol came under intense questioning Wednesday by a divided U.S. Supreme Court, with the pivotal justice, Anthony Kennedy, doing little to tip his hand.

Some of the strongest verbal fireworks came from justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote the court’s dissent in an earlier failed bid to stay the execution of Oklahoma inmate Charles Warner.

The Future of Lethal Injection Is Being Debated at the Supreme Court. Read These 6 Stories Now.

Same-sex marriage is not the only major item on the Supreme Court's docket this week: Today, the court will begin considering the future of a drug used in lethal injections. The suit, Glossip v. Gross, was brought by three Oklahoma inmates sentenced to death and challenges the use of the sedative Midazolam. The inmates' lawyers argue that the drug—used in the botched execution of Clayton Lockett, who gasped for air and writhed in pain for a prolonged period as he was put to death—violates the Eighth Amendment's protection from cruel and unusual punishment.

Utah Governor Signs Law Reinstating Firing Squad As Backup Execution Method

Firing squads are a legal execution method once again in Utah.

A law signed Monday by Gov. Gary R. Herbert (R) establishes firing squads as a secondary execution method in the event the Department of Corrections can't obtain drugs for lethal injection.

Lethal injection remains the primary execution method for Utah and the 31 other U.S. states that allow the death penalty as a punishment for certain murders.

"That's What That N----- Deserved"

"The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box." —Lawyer Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird

IN APRIL 2005, nearly eight years after Kenneth Fults was sentenced to death for kidnapping and murdering his neighbor Cathy Bounds in Spalding County, Georgia, one of the trial jurors made a startling admission under oath: He'd voted for the death penalty, he said, because "that's what that nigger deserved."

Utah Lawmakers Vote To Allow Execution By Firing Squad

Utah's state Senate voted Tuesday to allow execution by firing squad in instances where lethal injection drugs are not available.

The bill, which passed by a vote of 18-10, would call for the use of a firing squad if lethal drugs could not be obtained at least 30 days in advance of a scheduled execution.

The state's House of Representatives passed the legislation last month. The measure now heads to Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R), who has not said whether or not he will sign the bill into law.

Egyptian Court Sentences 183 Muslim Brotherhood Supporters To Death

CAIRO, Feb 2 (Reuters) - An Egyptian court sentenced 183 supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood to death on Monday on charges of killing police officers, part of a sustained crackdown by authorities on Islamists.

The men were convicted of playing a role in the killings of 16 policemen in the town of Kardasa in August, 2013 during the upheaval that followed the army's ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Mursi. Thirty-four were sentenced in absentia.

Egypt has mounted one of the biggest crackdowns in its modern history on the Brotherhood since the political demise of Mursi, the country's first democratically-elected president.

France's Far-Right Leader Exploits the Paris Attack and Calls for Reviving the Death Penalty

Shortly after gunmen burst into the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo and murdered a dozen people, Marine Le Pen, the leader of Front National, a far-right, anti-immigrant party, called for France to revive the death penalty, which it abolished in 1981. In an interview with France 2, she declared that capital punishment should be part "of our legal arsenal," and she vowed to hold a national referendum to restore it if she is elected president in 2017.

La Pen's remarks were not surprising. While the manhunt for the Charlie Hebdo killers was underway, she used the horrific attack to justify her own political war on Islam. And it did seem that her party, which promotes a hard-line anti-Islam and anti-immigrant message, was in a good position to gain politically.

Egyptian Court Convicts 188 To Death In Preliminary Verdict

CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian court sentenced 188 people to death Tuesday pending the opinion of the country's top religious authority, the latest mass death sentence handed down by the country's judicial system despite widespread international criticism.

The 188 were charged over the killing of 11 policemen last year in Kerdasa, a restive town west of Cairo considered a militant stronghold. The attack, which saw the policemen's bodies mutilated, is considered one of the country's grisliest assaults on security forces.