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Nov. 14, 2012
Military prosecutors will seek the death penalty in case against Staff Sgt Robert Bales, who is accused of murdering 16 Afghan civilians in May rampage; defendant's lawyers raise questions about his mental and physical state at the time of crime, including fact that he was under the influence of several substances.MORE »
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Oct. 10, 2012
Supreme Court, in a pair of cases, considers what to do when people convicted of capital crimes are mentally incompetent and so unable to help their lawyers with challenges to their convictions and sentences; justices, who appear to have little support for the indefinite stays of execution imposed by lower courts, wrestle with how long to limit the length of such stays.MORE »
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Sep. 29, 2012
Pennsylvania Judge M Teresa Sarmina grants stay of execution and new sentencing hearing to Terrance Williams, saying prosecutors had withheld evidence that convicted murdered was sexually abused by the man he has been convicted of killing.MORE »
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Sep. 29, 2012
California jury recommends death penalty for Rickie L Fowler, arsonist convicted of murdering five men who died of heart attacks during a wildfire in Southern California in 2002.MORE »
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Sep. 26, 2012
Texas puts to death former Army recruiter Cleve Foster for the 2002 murder of a woman he met in a Fort Worth bar two hours after the Supreme Court, for a fourth time, refused to stop the execution.MORE »
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Sep. 18, 2012
Pennsylvania’s Board of Pardons denies an application for clemency by Terrance Williams, a convicted murderer who is scheduled to be executed in October.MORE »
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Sep. 12, 2012
Turkish Prime Min Recep Tayyip Erdogan say he will not send Tariq al-Hashimi, the Sunni vice president of Iraq, back to Iraq to face a death sentence; Hashimi, a fierce critic of Prime Min Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite, was convicted in absentia of running death squads.MORE »
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Sep. 4, 2012
Adam Liptak Sidebar column notes that process by which the Supreme Court granted convicted murderer John Balentine a stay of execution, as described by the Court's emergency application clerk Danny Bickell, provides a rare inside look at how the justices are prepared to rule on matters of life and death in capital cases.MORE »
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Aug. 30, 2012
India’s Supreme Court upholds the death sentence of the only surviving gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, in the deadly 2008 attacks in Mumbai that killed at least 163 people.MORE »
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Aug. 28, 2012
Gambia reports that it has executed nine prisoners, and critics call for sanctions on its president, Yahya Jammeh, whose plan to clear the country’s death row by mid-September has drawn international condemnation.MORE »
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Aug. 25, 2012
Gambia Pres Yahya Jammeh warns that he plans to execute everyone on death row by mid-September, a threat that journalists and opposition officials say must be taken seriously given his unpredictability and long record of human rights abuses.MORE »
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Aug. 15, 2012
Egyptian court sentences 14 people to death 14 people that it claims are Islamist militants who waged a deadly attack on a police station in North Sinai in 2011.MORE »
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Aug. 4, 2012
Oregon judge rules that death row inmate Gary Haugen has the right to reject Gov John Kitzhaber’s decision not to execute him.MORE »
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Aug. 2, 2012
Woman convicted of adultery is sentenced to death by stoning in Sudan; Sudan's Pres Omar Hassan al-Bashir said in July that the country will adopt 100 percent Islamic constitution, prompting concerns that the country would apply Islamic law more strictly.MORE »
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Jul. 3, 2012
North Carolina's Legislature overrides Gov Bev Perdue’s veto of legislation that rolls back a state law giving death row prisoners a way to seek a reduced sentence because of racial bias.MORE »
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Jun. 23, 2012
Arkansas Supreme Court strikes down the state's death penalty law, faulting a provision that permitted the Corrections Department to select the drugs used in an execution; court rules that the Legislature must set the quantity and type of drugs used in a lethal injection, in light of shortages of sodium thiopental, which is often used in the procedure.MORE »
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Jun. 20, 2012
Saudi Arabia executes Mareeh bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri for practicing witchcraft and committing adultery.MORE »
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Jun. 19, 2012
Federal government will seek the death penalty in the case of Jason W Pleau, the man at the center of a legal custody battle between the State of Rhode Island and federal prosecutors; Gov Lincoln Chafee had initially refused to hand over Pleau, who is accused of killing a gas station attendant during a 2010 robbery, arguing that doing so could expose him to the death penalty, which the state does not have.MORE »
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Jun. 12, 2012
Judge in New Orleans vacates the death sentence of Juan Smith, a convicted murderer, five months after the Supreme Court tossed out his conviction in a different murder case because prosecutors did not turn over key evidence.MORE »
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Jun. 6, 2012
Henry Jackson Jr, who was convicted of stabbing to death four nieces and nephews in 1990, is executed in Mississippi, despite pleas from his two sisters to spare him.MORE »
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Jun. 5, 2012
Two women are asking Gov Phil Bryant of Mississippi to spare their brother Henry Jackson Jr from execution even though he stabbed one of them, killed four of their children, and paralyzed another in a 1990 rampage.MORE »
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May. 31, 2012
Murder suspect Jason W Pleau is arraigned in a Federal District Court after being handed over by Rhode Island authorities; transfer ends lengthy custody battle that began with Gov Lincoln Chafee's refusal to expose Pleau to the death penalty.MORE »
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May. 23, 2012
Chinese tycoon Wu Ying, who had been sentenced to death for financial fraud, is resentenced to death with a two-year reprieve; charge will likely be changed to life after two years of good behavior.MORE »
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May. 18, 2012
Court in Malaysia convicts three Mexican brothers and two other people and sentences them to be hanged for drug trafficking.MORE »
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May. 16, 2012
Iran executes Majid Jamali Fashi, man accused of being an Israeli intelligence agent responsible for the 2010 assassination of nuclear scientist Masoud Ali Mohammadi.MORE »
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May. 8, 2012
Federal appeals court rules that Rhode Island must deliver Jason W Pleau, who is accused of robbing and killing a gas-station manager in 2010, to federal authorities; Gov Lincoln Chafee had refused to surrender the inmate in 2011, claiming that doing so could expose Pleau to the death penalty, which Rhode Island does not have.MORE »
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Apr. 21, 2012
China's Supreme People's Court overturns death sentence of businesswoman Wu Ying, who was convicted of financial fraud in 2009; orders High People's Court of Zhejiang, coastal province that is home to Wu and many other entrepreneurs, to revise the sentence.MORE »
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Apr. 21, 2012
Nebraska attorney general's office says state will not surrender sodium thiopental, drug used in executions, to the Food and Drug Administration because it believes court order requiring it to do so is flawed; federal court ruling ordered the FDA to notify states with foreign-manufactured stores of the drug that its use is illegal and that it must be surrendered.MORE »
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Apr. 21, 2012
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North Carolina Judge Gregory A Weeks finds that racial bias played a significant role when Marcus Reymond Robinson was sentenced to death in 1994 for kidnapping and murder of Erik Tornblom rules that sentence be changed to life in prison without parole, the first such decision under North Carolina's controversial Racial Justice Act, which allows future defendants and current death row inmates to present evidence suggesting that race played a role in their sentence.MORE »
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Apr. 17, 2012
Adam Liptak Sidebar column; case of Albert Holland Jr, a death row inmate in Florida who represented himself and won a new trial after his court-appointed lawyer blew a crucial deadline, highlights the spotty quality of court-appointed counsel in capital cases.MORE »
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Apr. 13, 2012
Opponents of the death penalty see Connecticut's decision to abolish the death penalty as part of a larger trend but not a major shift in the nation's thinking; as capital punishment erodes in the Northeast and other parts of the country, it remains well-rooted in the South.MORE »
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Apr. 12, 2012
Connecticut House of Representatives votes to repeal the state's death penalty, following a similar vote in the State Senate; Gov Dannel P Malloy has said he will sign the measure, which will make Connecticut the 17th state to abolish capital punishment for future cases.MORE »
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Apr. 7, 2012
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Ron Briggs and Donald J Heller, California Republicans who sponsored the state's strict 1978 proposition expanding the application of the death penalty, are prominent supporters of a ballot initiative to repeal capital punishment there they argue that the death penalty is not only morally wrong, but an unacceptable waste of resources as California faces a dire budget crisis.MORE »
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Apr. 6, 2012
Connecticut State Senate votes, 20-16, to abolish the death penalty, moving toward a national trend away from capital punishment; Democratic-controlled House of Representatives is expected to approve the bill, making Connecticut the 17th state without a death penalty.MORE »
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Apr. 5, 2012
Federal appeals panel hears arguments over Rhode Island Gov Lincoln Chafee’s refusal to surrender murder suspect Jason W Pleau to federal prosecutors; Chafee is concerned that if Pleau is tried in federal court, he will face death penalty, punishment Rhode Island does not have.MORE »
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Mar. 28, 2012
Federal District Court Judge Richard J Leon prohibits the use of imported death penalty drugs like sodium thiopental and has ordered the Food and Drug Administration to collect the drugs from any states that have imported them.MORE »
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Mar. 24, 2012
China says that within three to five years it plans to end practice of transplanting organs from executed prisoners, step that addresses what for decades has been one of the country’s most criticized human rights issues.MORE »
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Mar. 19, 2012
Belarus confirms that Vladislav Kovalyov and Dmitri Konovalov, convicted of bombing a subway station in April, 2011 in Minsk, had been put to death; executions are condemned by Western officials and international human rights groups, who express serious doubts that the men had been guilty; many in Belarus apparently also have their doubts as people laid flowers and lighted candles at the site of the bombing in what independent news agencies in the country describe as a protest against the executions.MORE »
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Mar. 17, 2012
International rights organizations and Western governments plead with Belarus authorities to put off execution of Dmitri Konovalov and Vladislav Kovalyov, two men convicted of carrying out deadly 2011 bombing at a Minsk subway station, because of serious questions about their guilt; men may already be dead, since Belarus officials do not typically inform family members or news media of execution dates.MORE »
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Feb. 29, 2012
Ugandan lawmakers have re-introduced a bill to impose the death penalty for homosexuality, building support for their cause by tapping resentment against the perceived meddling of Western nations; bill is in part an offensive against more aggressive policies by the US and Great Britain to punish anti-gay behavior abroad, which Ugandans perceive as colonialist.MORE »
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Feb. 22, 2012
Benhaz Hekmati travels to Iran to visit her son, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, a former marine who has been sentenced to death for espionage; visit occurs as Hekmati's lawyers begin an appeal of his conviction.MORE »
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Jan. 31, 2012
Federal judge in Nigeria sentences Maj Hamza al-Mustapha to death over the 1996 killing of Moshood Abiola, wife of a businessman widely believed to have won an annulled 1993 presidential election.MORE »
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Jan. 19, 2012
Supreme Court rules, 7-2, that Alabama death row inmate Cory Maples must be given a second chance after missing a filing deadline due to a mailroom mix-up; decision allows lower federal courts to consider Maple's claim that his trial court lawyers were negligent and ineffective.MORE »
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Jan. 18, 2012
Delaware Gov Jack Markell commutes death sentence of Robert Gattis, convicted in 1990 murder of his longtime girlfriend Shirley Slay, to one of life in prison without possibility of parole.MORE »
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Jan. 18, 2012
Fourteen people are arrested at the Supreme Court for protesting the use of the death penalty in the United States.MORE »
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Jan. 10, 2012
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Iranian court imposes the death sentence on imprisoned American Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, a former Marine who was convicted on charges of spying for the Central Intelligence Agency sentence is likely to become a new point of contention, and possible bargaining leverage, in Iran's struggle with the West over its nuclear program.MORE »
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Dec. 30, 2011
Xinhua News Agency reports that China executed 12 people in a single day, including Liu Zhuiheng, who was convicted and sentenced to death for detonating a bomb outside a tax office in Chagsha, the capital of Hunan Province in July, 2010.MORE »
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Dec. 21, 2011
European Union strengthens export controls on drugs that can be used to administer the death penalty, like the sedative sodium thiopental.MORE »
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Dec. 17, 2011
Superior Court Judge Faye D'Opal of Marin County, Calif, rules that state had failed to justify the decision to put in place a three-drug lethal injection method, which some experts say carries a risk of 'excruciating pain'; decision effectively tosses out newly adopted protocol and throws state's execution system into further upheaval.MORE »
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Dec. 13, 2011
Saudi woman in northern province of Jawf is beheaded after being convicted of practicing witchcraft.MORE »
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