Arizona: Jurors deadlock on Jodi Arias penalty

PHOENIX (AP) - The judge in the Jodi Arias murder trial declared a mistrial in the penalty phase Thursday after the jury reported for a second time that it was deadlocked on whether to sentence her to life in prison or death for killing her boyfriend in 2008.

The judge scheduled a retrial for July 18. A new panel likely will be seated to try again to reach a decision on a sentence - unless the prosecutor takes death off the table agrees to a life sentence.

Under Arizona law, a hung jury in the death penalty phase of a trial requires a new jury to be seated to decide the punishment. If the second jury cannot reach a unanimous decision, the judge would then sentence Arias to spend her entire life in prison or be eligible for release after 25 years. The judge cannot sentence Arias to death.

Former Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley has said the case could drag on for several more months as the new jury reviews evidence and hears opening statements, closing arguments and witness testimony in a "Cliffs Notes" version of the trial.

However, if the prosecutor decides not to pursue the death penalty a second time, the judge would then sentence Arias to one of the life in prison options, and the trial would come to a conclusion.

Source: AP, May 23, 2013

Colorado: Hickenlooper strikes major blow to death penalty

Denver, Colorado

In Colorado, a moderate Governor temporarily halts an execution, raising huge questions about capital punishment

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is known for a lot of things – his cheery nature, his self-promoted “quirkiness,” his beer-brewing background, his loyalty to his oil and gas donors – but he is not known for being a particularly courageous conviction politician. After all, much of the high-profile change that has happened in Colorado has come not from his strong leadership, but from the Democratic-controlled legislature forcing his hand.

But in a stunning announcement today, Hickenlooper displayed a burst of genuine courage rarely seen anywhere in politics, much less in Colorado’s ultra-cautious Democratic Party culture. Facing the decision of whether to execute convicted murderer Nathan Dunlap for his role in 1993′s infamous Chuck E. Cheese killings, Hickenlooper used a temporary reprieve order for Dunlap to raise huge questions surrounding the death penalty itself.

Specifically, unlike the few pro-death-penalty-reform governors from other states who have cited fears that the capital punishment may be executing wrongly convicted citizens, Hickenlooper halted the Dunlap execution by making a larger critique of the entire capital punishment system. Saying the “question is about the use of the death penalty itself, and not about (Dunlap),” the governor cited “information that exposes an inequitable system” to argue more broadly that “it is a legitimate question whether we as a state should be taking lives.”

Hickenlooper’s criticism of the death penalty is similar to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s recent (and laudable) critique. However, it’s arguably much bigger political news because the Colorado governor doesn’t represent a blue state. Instead, he is a purple-state politician (with rumored national political ambitions) from the “hang ‘em high” Rocky Mountain West. That context means such an expansive criticism of the whole institution of the death penalty potentially prompts a discussion not merely of one case, but of the whole system.

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Source: Salon, May 22, 2013)

Federal appeals court allows capital murder retrial of Justin Wolfe; lower court had ordered him freed

McLEAN, Va. — A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that Virginia should be allowed to pursue a capital murder case against an alleged drug kingpin from northern Virginia, overruling a lower court that had sought to put an end to the 12-year legal saga by ordering his unconditional release.

In a 2-1 ruling, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond overturned a federal judge in Norfolk who had ordered a halt to the prosecution of Justin Wolfe, who faces death penalty charges in Prince William County for the 2001 slaying of a large-scale marijuana supplier, Daniel Petrole.

The district court judge, Raymond Jackson, said misconduct by prosecutors in Prince William County made it impossible for Wolfe to get a fair trial.

But a majority on the appellate court disagreed. Judges Robert Bruce King and Allyson Kay Duncan ruled that a new trial can be done fairly. They wrote that Jackson “fashioned an overbroad remedy and thereby abused (his) discretion by precluding the Commonwealth from retrying Wolfe.”

A dissenting judge, Stephanie Thacker, said the misconduct was so bad that freeing Wolfe was the only proper outcome. She reeled off a long list of examples of misconduct, including failures by Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul Ebert to disclose evidence that would have undermined the credibility of the state’s star witness.

Wolfe’s case has now been in front of the appeals court three separate times. He was sentenced to death after his 2002 conviction in Manassas, and spent a nearly a decade on death row. In 2011, Jackson overturned Wolfe’s conviction and the appeals court upheld his action.

Source: AP, May 22, 2013

UK: Appeals Court releases judgment detailing decision to dismiss appeal launched Lindsay Sandiford

MOSCOW, May 23 (RAPSI, Ingrid Burke) – The Court of Appeal of England and Wales released a judgment Wednesday detailing its earlier decision to dismiss an appeal launched by Lindsay Sandiford – a 56-year-old British woman sentenced to death by firing squad in Indonesia after having been caught with ten packets of cocaine in the Bali airport – challenging the Secretary of State’s decision not to assist in funding her death-penalty appeal.

Two days after being sentenced to death in late January, Sandiford appealed to England seeking an order compelling the Secretary of State to arrange for the availability of funds for an adequate legal team to assist in her efforts to appeal.

Specifically, Sandiford sought £8,000 – a discounted rate offered by the Indonesian lawyer of her choice. Having no funds of her own, she sought government assistance to supplement third-party donations she had been receiving.

Notably, Wednesday’s decision mentioned that she may no longer be in need of the government’s assistance at all: “It seems that, since the date of the hearing, she has received by third party donations the whole of the sum that is required. It may, therefore, be that the appellant no longer has an interest in the outcome of the appeal.”

The court opted to render its judgment no less, however, due to its implications for other UK nationals facing capital punishment abroad.

The Secretary of State’s decision was based on the following policy rationale, quoted by the court from the guide Support for British Nationals Abroad: “Although we cannot give legal advice, start legal proceedings, or investigate a crime, we can offer basic information about the local legal system, including whether a legal aid scheme is available. We can give you a list of local interpreters and local lawyers if you want, although we cannot pay for either. ”

On appeal, Sandiford asserted the unlawfulness of the Secretary of State’s decision not to stray from the above policy on three bases: 1) she claims that the Secretary’s decision breaches her rights under the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (Charter); 2) she claims that the decision violates her rights as guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights (Convention); and 3) she claims that the Secretary’s policy never to fund legal costs in death penalty cases no matter the particular circumstances of a case is “irrational and therefore unlawful as a matter of domestic law.”

With regard to the first point, Sandiford claimed that her case is within the scope of EU law due to the fact that it is within the scope of a certain Framework Decision governing elements and penalties for drug trafficking crimes.

The Appeals Court held that the Secretary of State did not render his decision within the meaning of the Framework Decision, and that no other decision has been rendered which would serve to implement EU law in this case. As the Secretary had not been implementing the Framework decision when issuing his decision refusing to pay Sandiford’s legal fees, the decision was not in violation of EU law.

Lindsay Sandiford

With regard to the second point, Sandiford argued that the Convention had been invoked by the fact that her situation fell within the scope of UK jurisdiction owing to the involvement of the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) and its consular officers in her case. These activities included: visits to Sandiford in custody, providing consular assistance and support, speaking with prison officials and police about various concerns, attending court hearings, assisting her and her family in obtaining legal representation, and providing light legal assistance.

After considering the relevant case law, the Appeals Court concluded that in certain cases, the activities of diplomatic and consular officials can draw a case into the jurisdiction of a given member state to the Convention. However, this tends only to occur when “the acts or omissions of which complaint is made come within the scope of an exercise of control and authority by the state in question.”

The Appeals Court held that Sandiford’s case did not give rise to such a jurisdictional finding, due to the nature of the assistance provided by the consular officials involved in the case. According to the judgment: “in circumstances where the individual is completely under the control of and detained by the foreign state, it is difficult to see how the necessary degree of authority and control can be exercised by diplomatic and consular agents who do no more than provide the kind of assistance that was provided to the appellant in the present case.”

With regard to the third point, Sandiford argued that the Secretary of State’s blanket policy excluding the provision of legal funds for any UK national facing the prospect of capital punishment abroad is irrational due to its failure to take into account individual circumstance.

Speaking to this point, an FCO official explained that a policy change would introduce its own crises of logic. Various arguments included, among others, the idea that the provision of legal funds for death penalty cases could create a slippery slope as far as other cases are concerned, and the assertion that it would be quite difficult for local consular officers to vet each lawyer involved in such cases for competency.

The Appeals Court held that while the practical problems presented by the FCO can be overcome, “the question is not whether the Secretary of State could produce a different policy which many would regard as fairer and more reasonable and humane than the present policy. It is whether the policy that he has produced is irrational.” To this, the judgment concludes that the policy is not irrational, and that it is in fact based in reasoning that is “neither arbitrary nor perverse.”

Accordingly, the Appeals Court upheld the lower court’s decision concluding that the Secretary’s decision was not unlawful.

Source: RAPSI, May 23, 2013

Related article:

Death Penalty News: Lindsay Sandiford to go to court over UK ...

Apr 21, 2013

Lawyers for British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford will go to the Court of Appeal in London over a UK government refusal to fund her appeal against a death sentence for drug smuggling imposed by an Indonesian court.

http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/

Afghanistan: Surge in Women Jailed for ‘Moral Crimes’

Statistics from Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry indicate that the number of women and girls imprisoned for “moral crimes” in Afghanistan had risen to about 600 in May 2013 from 400 in October 2011 – a 50 percent increase in a year and a half. Since October 2011, there has been an almost 30 percent increase overall in the number of women and girls imprisoned in Afghanistan’s prisons and juvenile detention facilities.

“Four years after the adoption of a law on violence against women and twelve years after Taliban rule, women are still imprisoned for being victims of forced marriage, domestic violence, and rape,” said Brad Adams, Asia director. “The Afghan government needs to get tough on abusers of women, and stop blaming women who are crime victims.”

In a March 2012 report, “‘I Had to Run Away’: The Imprisonment of Women and Girls for ‘Moral Crimes’ in Afghanistan,” Human Rights Watch documented that some 95 percent of girls and 50 percent of women imprisoned in Afghanistan were accused of the “moral crimes” of “running away” from home or zina (sex outside of marriage).

These “moral crimes” usually involve flight from unlawful forced marriages or domestic violence. Women and girls imprisoned on “moral crimes” charges who were interviewed by Human Rights Watch described abuses including forced and underage marriage below age 16, beatings, stabbings, burnings, rapes, forced prostitution, kidnapping, and threats of “honor killing.” Virtually none of the cases had led even to an investigation of the abuse, let alone prosecution or punishment.

“Running away,” or fleeing home without permission, is not a crime under the Afghan criminal code, but the Afghan Supreme Court has instructed its judges to treat women and girls who flee as criminals. Zina is a crime under Afghan law, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Some women and girls have been convicted of zina after being raped or forced into prostitution.

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Source: Human Rights Watch, May 21, 2013

Nation's longest serving death-row inmate dies in Florida

Gary Alvord, the Florida prison inmate who lived on death row longer than anyone else in America, has died of natural causes.

The 66-year-old murderer died Sunday at Union Correctional Institution, nearly 40 years after he strangled to death three women in Tampa.

Ultimately it was a brain tumor, not the electric chair or a lethal injection needle, that claimed Alvord's life, his attorneys said. In recent years, he had also battled lung cancer.

"Gary is a product of a sick system," said attorney Bill Sheppard of Jacksonville, who represented Alvord for most of the four decades he was on death row. "He was a living example of why we should not have a death penalty."

Gov. Bob Graham twice signed death warrants for Alvord, in 1981 and 1984. But the execution never happened. The reason: Alvord was too crazy to be killed.

Born in Michigan in 1947, Alvord was plagued by delusions and disordered thoughts that doctors attributed to paranoid schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder. The law forbids the execution of anyone with such a mental condition.

In the late 1970s when Florida leaders were working to resume executions, Alvord was among half a dozen inmates considered. But his mental condition led psychiatrists to conclude that he did not understand his punishment.

In 1984, he was sent to a state hospital in Chattahoochee to be restored to competence. But doctors there refused to treat him, citing the ethical dilemma of making a patient well just so that he could be killed. He was quietly returned to death row in 1987 and remained there ever since. His final appeal expired in 1998.

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Source: Tampa Bay Times, May 21, 2013

Maldives UN team calls for abolition of death penalty, flogging

The UN country team in the Maldives has issued a statement calling for the abolition of both corporal punishment and the death penalty in the Maldives.

While the Maldives still issues death sentences, these have traditionally been commuted to life sentences by presidential decree since the execution of Hakim Didi in 1956, for the crime of practicing black magic.

Recent calls for presidential clemency to be blocked led former attorney general Azima Shukoor to draft a bill favouring the implementation of the penalty via lethal injection. It was met with opposition by several religious groups such as the NGO Jamiyyathul Salaf, which called for the draft to be amended in favour of beheadings or firing squads.

More recently, the state has called for a High Court verdict on whether the practice of presidential clemency can be annulled.

The Maldives continues to issue and implement flogging sentences for certain crimes, notably extra-marital sex. The vast majority of those sentenced are women.

An earlier call by UN High Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay in 2011 calling for a moratorium on flogging as a punishment for extramarital sex led to protesters gathering outside the UN building, carrying placards with angry slogans including “Islam is not a toy”, “Ban UN” and “Flog Pillay”.

Earlier this year, widespread global publicity of such a sentence handed to a 15 year-old rape victim led to two million people signing an Avaaz petition calling for an end to the practice of flogging in the Maldives.

In its statement, the UN team in the Maldives called for the Maldives to ensure its legislation and practices fulfilled the international human rights obligations to which it was signatory.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Minivan News, May 22, 2013

Boston Marathon Bombing: Tsarnaev records request approved

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

A federal magistrate judge has approved a request by ­Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to have prison officials provide his lawyers with records related to his incarceration, including daily activity and suicide watch logs, psychology data files, photo­graphs, commissary files, and other records.

But US Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler rejected a defense request to have the US Bureau of Prisons keep that infor­mation from prosecutors without a court order or the ­defense lawyers’ consent.

The request for the records was made in a secret filing with the court. Bowler made the ­request public in her ruling Monday after finding there was no reason to keep it confidential. The nature of the request and how the information would be used was not immediately clear.

On Friday, the judge similarly made public a defense ­request for periodic photos of Tsarnaev, to document his condition and whether it improves, in what could be an attempt to show that the 19-year-old was in poor health when he reportedly gave statements claiming responsibility for the bombings, which killed three people and injured more than 260.

The photos could be used as evidence to try to have the statements suppressed, with the lawyers arguing they were made involuntarily. Legal ­observers also said the photos could be used to argue against the death penalty, by making the claim that the teenager had suffered injuries during his capture and that a lifelong prison sentence would be suitable.

“It is true that photographs may provide probative evidence to support sentence mitigation arguments,” Bowler wrote.

Tsarnaev is being held at the Federal Medical Center Devens in Ayer. US Attorney General Eric Holder will decide whether prosecutors should seek the death penalty. Tsarnaev is facing charges of using a weapon of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death in the bombings.

Source: The Boston Globe, May 20, 2013

Saudi Arabia executes 5 Yemenis, displays bodies

Darkness at noon...

Riyadh: Saudi Arabia on Tuesday executed five Yemenis and displayed their bodies in public for killing a national and forming a gang that committed robberies across several towns in the kingdom, the interior ministry said.

The five were executed in the southwestern town of Jizan, bringing the number of people executed in the kingdom this year to 46, according to an AFP tally.

A witness in Jizan told AFP that the five men were displayed in public near a university.

In a picture posted on Twitter (left), five men are seen hanging from a rope tied to their waists on a horizontal bar between two cranes. It was unclear if they were beheaded or shot.

The ministry said that Khaled, Adel and Qasim Saraa as well as Saif Ali Al Sahari and Khaled Showie Al Sahari had formed a gang which committed “several crimes in various regions in the kingdom and robbed stores.”

The five had killed Ahmad Haroubi, a Saudi, by beating him up and strangling him, it said.

In March, a Saudi firing squad executed seven men convicted of armed robbery in public despite last-minute appeals by rights groups that their lives be spared.

In 2012, the kingdom executed 76 people, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. The US-based Human Rights Watch put the number at 69.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery, homosexuality and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia’s strict version of sharia.

Source: Agence France-Presse, May 21, 2013

Saudi Arabia: Syrian national beheaded for drug trafficking

Public beheading in KSA

His beheading brings to 41 the number of people executed in Saudi Arabia since the start of 2013.

Riyadh: Saudi authorities beheaded a Syrian man on Monday after convicting him of drug trafficking, the interior ministry said.

Mohammad Yousuf Ezzeddine was executed in the northern city of Qurayat, near the borders with Jordan, the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.

His beheading brings to 41 the number of people executed in Saudi Arabia since the start of 2013, according to an AFP tally.

In 2012, the kingdom executed 76 people, according to a count based on official figures.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery, homosexuality and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia’s version of Sharia, or Islamic law.

Source: Agence France-Presse, May 20, 2013

Death penalty film trip: 5,000 miles of flaws and false confessions

One for Ten project comes to an end having filmed series of shorts highlighting injustice in US capital punishment system

The journey has taken them from Philadelphia to Albuquerque via false confession, unreliable witnesses, official misconduct and racism.

The One for Ten road trip comes to an end this week after a 5,200-mile cross-country trek to interview 10 death row exonerees and make a short film about each that highlights different flaws in the US capital punishment process.

The name of the project is inspired by the more than 1,300 executions and 142 exonerations since the death penalty was reinstated in the US in 1976 – a remarkably high number of errors considering the gravity of the punishment and avowed thoroughness of the system.

The film-makers are now in New Mexico to meet Juan Melendez. He spent more than 17 years on death row in Florida, convicted largely thanks to testimony from a convicted felon who held a grudge against him - even though another man had made a confession in a recorded interview that was never played at trial.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Guardian, May 16, 2013

Saudi Arabia: Two Asian maids get 10 years, 1,000 lashes for sorcery

Asians were accused of practicing witchcraft on their employers

A Saudi court sentenced two Asian housemaids to 10 years in jail and ordered their lashed 1,000 times each after they were found guilty of indulging in sorcery at their employers’ houses in the Gulf Kingdom, a newspaper reported on Monday.

Their Saudi employers reported the two maids to the Gulf country’s feared religious police, saying they had discovered that their families had been harmed because of sorcery practiced by the maids against them.

Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice who searched the two houses in Riyadh found talismans and other magic items in the bedrooms of the two maids, Sabq Arabic language daily said.

“The court found them guilty and sentenced them to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes each,” the paper said without identifying the maids or specifying the harm they caused.

Saudi Arabia, which strictly enforces Islamic law, has beheaded many persons convicted of practicing magic over the past years.

More than two million domestic servants work in Saudi Arabia, mostly from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Africa.

Source: Emirates 24/7, May 20, 2013

Bali Nine smuggler Myuran Sukumaran 'nervous, worried' after executions

M. Sukumaran and A. Chan

ONE of the Bali nine drug smugglers facing execution has been left "very worried and nervous'' after three prisoners in Indonesia were put to death by firing squad on Friday.

Myuran Sukumaran and fellow smuggler Andrew Chan remain on death row in Kerobokan Prison as Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono weighs up their bids for clemency.

The pair's lawyer Julian McMahon told News Limited yesterday that Sukumaran had heard of the executions of three Indonesian nationals convicted of murder.

"Myuran's response had been reliably confirmed to me, he said it made him feel 'very worried and nervous','' the Melbourne-based barrister said.

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Source: Courier Mail, May 19, 2013

British woman could face death penalty in Indonesia for drug trafficking

JAKARTA - A British woman could face the death penalty in Indonesia after being arrested for allegedly smuggling crystal methamphetamine into the country from China, an official said Saturday.

The woman, identified only by her initials AR, was arrested at a hotel in the city of Surabaya, East Java province, last month with 1.47 kilograms (three pounds, four ounces) of the drug, the national narcotics agency said.

“Because she smuggled drugs weighing more than five grams, she could face the death penalty,” agency spokesman Sumirat Dwiyanto told AFP.

He declined to give further details about the woman, who is being held in Jakarta, or when she was likely to be charged. A British embassy spokesman confirmed the news: “We are aware of the arrest of a British national... We are providing consular assistance.”

The case comes just months after British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford was sentenced to death for attempting to smuggle $2.4 million of cocaine into the resort island of Bali.

Foreigners are regularly charged with drugs offences in Indonesia, which has some of the toughest anti-narcotics laws in the world, but most are caught in Bali.

Sandiford, 56, was sentenced to death in January after being caught with cocaine as she arrived at Bali airport, in a shock verdict after prosecutors recommended 15 years in jail.

She lost a first appeal against the sentence last month, and has since lodged a last-ditch appeal to Indonesia’s top court.

Death row convicts in Indonesia rarely manage to get their sentences lifted. Most spend years in jail before being taken to an isolated location at night and executed by firing squad.

Source: Agence France-Presse, May 19, 2013

Florida Gov. Rick Scott speeds up warrants for death row inmates

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Rick Scott has accelerated the pace of signing death warrants in Florida by lining up three executions over the next few weeks, the most in such a brief period of time in more than two decades.

Scott and his chief legal adviser say they are doing nothing unusual. But legal experts who oppose the death penalty wonder whether other factors are at work — such as Scott’s desire to improve his standing with voters as he seeks re-election next year.

Not since 1989, when an unpopular Gov. Bob Martinez set a record by signing six death warrants in a single day, has a Florida governor been so eager to use the death penalty.

“In the past, governors wouldn’t do multiple warrants at a time. It was a much more orderly process than this,” said Martin McClain, an attorney who has defended many Florida Death Row inmates. “If appears that every 10 days, Gov. Scott is signing a death warrant.”

Scott recently signed three death warrants in succession, for condemned murderers Elmer Leon Carroll, William Van Poyck and Marshall Lee Gore. All three have been on Death Row for longer than 20 years. Their executions, set over the next six weeks, will keep the death chamber at Florida State Prison in Starke unusually busy. Two other recent death warrants have been blocked in federal court.

Scott had signed a total of six death warrants before the recent burst.

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Source: The Miami Herald, May 19, 2013

Iran: Two hanged in Tehran's Evin prison for 'espionage'

Tehran's Evin prison

Iran Human Rights, May 19: Two prisoners were hanged in Tehran’s Evin Prison early this morning Sunday May 19.

According to the state run Iranian news agency Fars, Kourosh Ahmadi and Mohammad Heydari were charged with espionage for giving sensitive information to the CIA and the Israeili intelligence service Mossad respectively and convicted of Moharebeh (war against the God).

Iran Human Rights (IHR) is investigating about the background of these prisoners.

Collaboration with foreign intelligence services is a charge commonly used by the Iranian authorities against journalists and political activists.

IHR strongly condemns execution of Kourosh Ahmadi and Mohamad Heydari and holds Iranian regime’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei responsible for these executions. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the spokesperson of IHR urged the international community to condemn today’s executions. Amiry-Moghaddam said: " Today’s executions are part of the Iranian regime’s attempts to prevent protests before the upcoming presidential elections in June. Iranian regime’s Supreme leader Ali Khamenei knows well that new protests can lead to the fall of his dictatorship". Amiry-Moghaddam added:" Several political prisoners are at imminent danger of execution in the Iranian prisons. The international community must intervene to stop these executions."

Since April 16 at least 62 people have been executed in Iran.

Source: Iran Human Rights, May 19, 2013

Iran: Death-row inmate hanged in Khoramabad

Iran Human Rights, May 18: One prisoner was hanged in the prison of Khoramabad (western Iran) today May 18.

According to the Iranian state broadcasting one prisoner who was not identified by name, was hanged in the prison of Khoramabad early this morning. The prisoner was convicted of possession and trafficking of 768 grams of crack, said the report.

Source: Iran Human Rights, May 18, 2013

Saudi man spared paralysis sentence

Sentence dropped after family accepted 1m riyals in compensation

Riyadh: A Saudi man escaped a sentence of paralysis for stabbing and paralysing another man by offering him compensation, media reported on Sunday, although the authorities have denied issuing the punishment.

The sentence was dropped after the family of Mohammad Al Hazim, 26, accepted one million riyals (Dh991,440) in compensation from the family of convicted Ali Khawahir, 24, Al Watan daily reported.

A court in the eastern city of Al Ahsa had registered a waiver by the plaintiff’s family, and will now proceed with the release of Khawahir, who has already spent 10 years in jail.

Last month Amnesty International said Khawahir had reportedly been sentenced to qisas, or retribution, and could be paralysed from the waist down if he failed to pay compensation.

The London-based human rights watchdog said Khawahir had stabbed a friend in the back in 2003, and paralysed him. Khawahir was 14 years old at the time.

But the Saudi justice ministry categorically denied the court had passed the verdict, saying on Twitter the judge had dismissed demands for the sentence.

"A ministry spokesman also told AFP reports of the sentence were “false.”

Amnesty said a Saudi court had passed another sentence of paralysis in 2010, but it was unclear if it had been carried out.

Source: Gulf News, May 19, 2013

Organ donor cards hard to implement in China, official says

A system of donor cards indicating consent for organ transplants will not work in China as families will insist on having the final say, and many people see nothing wrong in using organs from executed prisoners, an official said on Friday.

Nearly 1.5 million people in China need transplants every year, but only 10,000 can get organs, according to the Health Ministry.

Many of those organs are taken from executed criminals and rights groups say it is often done without their consent - something the government denies, even as it tries to move away from obtaining organs from death-row inmates.

"China has an obvious family hierarchy," Huang Jiefu, who oversees transplants for the ministry, told a news conference when asked whether China could adopt an organ donor card system as practiced in countries like the United States and Britain.

"Every Chinese family has a core figure - be it the grandfather, father or grandmother - and this person has the final say," he said.

In traditional Chinese thought, the body is a sacrosanct gift from your parents not to be defiled, Huang said.

"That's why it won't work without family consent," he said.

However, Huang was optimistic that attitudes were changing, citing a ministry survey that found 70 % of young people had no problem with organ donation.

China in 2007 banned organ transplants from living donors, except spouses, blood relatives and step or adopted family members, but launched a national system to coordinate donations after death in 2009. The organ shortage has driven a trade in illegal organ trafficking in the country.

Huang repeated that the goal was to reduce reliance on prisoners for organs by 2015, though he did not give any figures and China does not publish its death penalty numbers.

Still, many Chinese believe there is nothing wrong in using the organs of executed prisoners for transplants, he said.

"The legal philosophy of the death penalty is 'an eye for an eye' or 'a life for a life'. The public believes that saving a life is a worthy redemption of a dead prisoner.

"Every organ donation from executed prisoners has written consent from both the individual and the family," added Huang, who is an Australian-trained liver transplant surgeon.

But eventually, China will probably abolish the death penalty, so it will have to develop alternatives, he said.

"Depending on death row inmates for donations will lead China's organ transplants to a dead end."

Source: Reuters, May 17, 2013

Kansas has a death penalty, but it isn’t being used

No one has been put to death in Kansas since 1965.

“Kansas is 10 years and $20 million away from its first execution,” predicted lawyer and capital punishment opponent Sean O’Brien of Kansas City.

Kansas lawmakers reinstated the state’s death penalty in 1994. Since then, 13 men have been condemned to death for murder. All remain alive. Only nine sit on the state’s death row, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections’ website. The others’ sentences were reduced after appeals and plea agreements, or have been vacated pending a new trial.

Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court validated rewritten capital punishment laws, only two states with death penalty statutes — Kansas and New Hampshire — have not executed a single inmate.

The long gap between capital crime and capital punishment in Kansas is the result of several interlocking factors, experts say.

The state’s death penalty law is narrow, providing a way for even the most brutal killers to escape the punishment. Some prosecutors use the death penalty more as a negotiating tool than a criminal sanction, and some politicians remain ambivalent about executions, as do many residents in the state.

And the courts play a critical role.

All death sentences in Kansas are automatically reviewed by the state’s Supreme Court. It’s uniquely allowed to “scour the record” for trial and sentencing errors in capital cases, even those not raised by defense lawyers. That further raises the chances for delays.

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Source: The Kansas City Star, May 17, 2013

Arkansas loses pharmaceutical company account after revealing plans to use its drug in executions

Weeks after Arkansas acknowledged buying an anti-seizure drug to use in executions, the state correction department said Wednesday it's losing its account with the pharmaceutical company that supplied the chemical.

West-Ward Pharmaceuticals notified the Arkansas Department of Correction on Wednesday that the company was closing its account, prisons spokeswoman Shea Wilson told The Associated Press.

Wilson said she didn't know why the drug company was closing the prison system's account, but West-Ward's London-based parent company, Hikma Pharmaceuticals, said Wednesday that it objects to its products' use in capital punishment.

Hikma also said it has halted direct sales of injectable phenobarbital to U.S. corrections departments after Arkansas' actions last month. However, Hikma spokesman Matthew Cole would not discuss specifics about Arkansas' account.

"More broadly, we're working to try to ensure that there's no unintended use of our product for capital punishment purposes," Cole said.

The AP first reported last month that Arkansas planned to use phenobarbital in executions, even though the barbiturate has never been used in U.S. lethal injections.

Arkansas and many of the more than 30 other death penalty states once used a virtually identical three-drug process: The barbiturate sodium thiopental was administered to put an inmate to sleep, and two other drugs were administered to stop breathing and the heart.

As sodium thiopental supplies dried up, however, Arkansas and several other states initially turned their attention overseas, obtaining the drug from a different British supplier. But, in 2011, they lost their supplies to federal agents amid legal questions about how they got the drug.

So, as drugmakers have continued to object to their products' use in lethal injections, states have been looking for alternatives.

Arkansas this year said it was turning to phenobarbital, the drug it bought from West-Ward Pharmaceuticals.

However, lawyers for 9 death row inmates are challenging the use of the drug, contending that it could be inhumane.

Arkansas hasn't put a prisoner to death since 2005, and for now, the state doesn't have any pending executions.

That's expected to change, though, as Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel asked Gov. Mike Beebe to schedule execution dates for seven of the state's 37 death row inmates.

Source: Associated Press, May 16, 2013