NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The Senate has voted to allow the state to electrocute death row inmates if lethal injection drugs cannot be obtained. The measure sponsored by Sen. Ken Yager passed on a 23-3 vote on Wednesday. The Harriman Republican said current law allows the state to use its alternate execution method only when lethal injection drugs are... NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The Senate has voted to allow the state to electrocute death row inmates if lethal injection drugs cannot be obtained. The measure sponsored by Sen. Ken Yager passed on a 23-3 vote on Wednesday. The Harriman Republican said current law allows the state to use its alternate execution method only when lethal injection drugs are not legally
Attorneys for James Holmes, the man charged with killing 12 people and injuring 70 in an Aurora, Colo. movie theater, have officially asked a judge to move the trial, saying potential jurors have been exposed to prejudicial news coverage and carry emotional burdens from the massacre. In09
Apr
2014
April 8, 2014: In 2013, non-governmental organisation Penal Reform International commissioned a detailed survey of public opinion about crime, punishment and the death penalty in Belarus. Market researchers, Satio, conducted the survey, interviewing 1,000 participants. The results show09
Apr
2014
Chinese police officers rehearsinglethal injection procedures GUIGANG, Guangxi, April 9 (Xinhua) -- A court on Wednesday rejected the appeal of a former policeman who was given a death sentence for shooting a pregnant woman dead in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous08
Apr
2014
Texas Death Chamber Overturning a death sentence is generally understood to be harder than preventing that sentence from being issued in the first place. For post-conviction lawyers, the looming threat of execution makes every client’s need for representation08
Apr
2014
A Christian couple have been sentenced to death in Pakistan for allegedly sending a text message considered insulting to the Prophet Mohamed. Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar, from the eastern town of Gojra, were found guilty of sending the text to the imam of their local mosque, who07
Apr
2014
Execution chamberat Tokyo Detention Center The world’s longest-serving death row inmate, Iwao Hakamada, was released after 48 years in prison, when a judge last month found that “the possibility of his innocence has become clear to a respectable degree.” Mr07
Apr
2014
Public execution in KSA Attacker kidnapped victims aged 6 to 11 from public areas and took them to his home in Jeddah Riyadh: Saudi Arabia’s supreme court has upheld a death sentence handed down against a teacher convicted of kidnapping and raping eight young girls, a07
Apr
2014
Terre Haute, Indiana A death row inmate once slated to be the 1st person executed by the federal government on President Barack Obama's watch has won an indefinite stay of execution from a federal judge. Jeffery Paul, 37, obtained the order Thursday from U.S. District Court04
Apr
2014
(CNN) -- Indonesia's government has stepped in at the eleventh hour to help save an Indonesian woman on death row in Saudi Arabia from being executed this weekend. Satinah Binti Jumadi Ahmad, a 40-year old working as a housemaid in the Gulf kingdom, was sentenced to death in 2011 after03
Apr
2014
LACK of proper procedures to handle inmates on death row in the country is weighing heavily on the Prisons Department budget and adding to the problem of congestion. The inmates who are waiting to be executed live in agony and despair of not knowing when the hangman will arrive, as a
Assistant Public Defender Corrie-Ann Mainville made headlines this past weekend when she was quoted as saying that the state of Connecticut would have to kill her before she allows it to execute a convicted murderer whom she says is mentally ill. "I will not live another peaceful day in10
Apr
2014
The death penalty remains in many parts of the globe, while around the world people are imprisoned for decades at a time. While trials, sentences and executions often make the headlines, other features of the death penalty and life imprisonment are largely unknown. The focus could be09
Apr
2014
April 9, 2014: the National Executive Council has given the green light for work to proceed in establishing necessary policies to enable the implementation of the death penalty through lethal injection. On 7 March 2014, a government committee had recommended that lethal injections be the09
Apr
2014
NCRI - The Iranian regime hanged a prisoner in a prison on Monday in northwestern city of Ardebil , state-run Fars News Agency reported. The Iranian regime's judiciary in the city did not identify the victim who had been imprisoned on drug related charges. The rate of hangings has08
Apr
2014
Kim Jong-un Tokyo: A North Korean official has been executed with a flame-thrower, South Korean media has reported. He is one of up to 11 senior party officials with close ties to Jang Song-taek — Kim Jong-un’s recently purged uncle — who have been08
Apr
2014
April 7, 2014: The Iraqi authorities carried out death sentences against two convicted of "terrorist” charges as their court judgments issued against them have been approved by republic presidency. “The first convicted was charged in accordance with Article 4 of terrorism, and
07
Apr
2014
When the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether a punishment is cruel and unusual, they examine it in terms of current standards of decency. The Court looks to the number of states using the punishment, and whether its use is frequent or declining. In 2005, for example, the court struck down07
Apr
2014
Indonesia has agreed to pay US$1.9 million to stop the impending execution of an Indonesian domestic helper on death row in Saudi Arabia for murder, a minister said. Satinah Binti Jumadi Ahmad was sentenced to death in 2011 for murdering her employer's wife and stealing money. She was due07
Apr
2014
An Associated Press survey of the nation's 32 death penalty states found that the vast majority refuse to disclose the source of their execution drugs. Some states with laws shielding information about execution drugs and policies and the challenges to those laws: GEORGIA Law: Shields the
Texas prison officials have offered scant evidence to support their claim that pharmacies that supply the state with execution drugs would be in danger of violence if their identities were made public. If those officials are investigating the threats, including a suggestion a truck bomb03
Apr
2014
Oklahoma Death Chamber Oklahoma will use a new and untried combination of compounded drugs in the executions of 2 men, according to an email the state sent to attorneys on Tuesday. Assistant attorney general John Hadden said the state plans to employ a lethal 3-drug
If you’ve been wrongly convicted through prosecutorial misconduct, there are a few ways you can try to hold the government accountable. The most obvious way would be to sue the prosecutor himself. This is just short of impossible. Anything a prosecutor does in his official capacity is09
Apr
2014
Ramiro Hernandez-Llanas A man who escaped prison while serving a murder sentence in Mexico was executed Wednesday by the US state of Texas for a separate 1997 killing. Ramiro Hernandez-Llanas, 44, was in the US illegally when he killed a university professor who had hired
Tennesse Death Chamber Tennessee wants to execute death row’s longest-standing resident. Donald Wayne Strouth, 55, has been on death row since 1978 for the murder of a second-hand store owner in Kingsport. He’s accused of knocking out and slashing the throat of
Edward Snowden The US has spied on the staff of prominent human rights organisations, Edward Snowden has told the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Europe's top human rights body. Giving evidence via a videolink from Moscow, Snowden said the National Security Agency &ndash
WASHINGTON — As states scramble to find drugs needed to carry out executions, the Supreme Court won't decide for now whether condemned prisoners deserve to know how they will die. The justices denied a hearing Monday to a Louisiana inmate who asked that state officials tell him what
Jakarta. Indonesian maid Wilfrida Soik escaped the death penalty after a Malaysian court on Monday acquitted her of murdering her elderly Malaysian employer on the ground of insanity, ending more than three years of legal battle that has drawn the attention of the Indonesian public and07
Apr
2014
Kerobokan Prison Jakarta: Schapelle Corby admitted her guilt and said the fateful 2004 drug run that saw her locked up for ten years was actually her fourth trip to Bali as a courier, according to fellow Australian prisoner Renae Lawrence. Lawrence, one of the Bali Nine07
Apr
2014
On June 29, 2009, upon conviction of running a Ponzi scheme that bamboozled investors of at least $18 billion, Bernie Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison. The sentence, the maximum prosecutors had requested, came at a time of public anger against bankers who had shown
Todd Willingham The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied a request for a posthumous pardon for Cameron Todd Willingham, a man executed in 2004 after being convicted of setting his house on fire and killing his three young daughters. Members of Mr. Willingham’s03
Apr
2014
Tommy Lynn Sells HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — A serial killer has been put to death in Texas after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his lawyers' demand that the state release information about where it gets its lethal injection drug. Tommy Lynn Sells was executed Thursday03
Apr
2014
Tommy Lynn Sells A federal appeals court on Wednesday threw out a ruling requiring the Texas prison system to disclose more information about where it gets lethal-injection drugs, reversing a judge who had halted an upcoming execution. Only hours before the appellate02
Apr
2014
Ohio Death Chamber In the past decade, Ohio’s Death Row has shrunk by one-third, from 209 to 139. But a new state report shows that the courts continue to sentence people to death at the same time the process of lethal injection is mired in legal controversy. The