death penalty

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Report Details Botched US Executions

Amnesty: Injection doesn't yield painless death as advertised

(Newser) - Despite advocates' claims, lethal injection isn’t humane or painless, and it should be stopped in the US, Amnesty International asserts in a new report. Since the practice was instituted in 37 states in 2000, at least nine lethal injections have been bungled, including one in which the condemned took...

Texas Won't Halt Executions, Despite Stay

State will stick to schedule after Supreme Court ruling

(Newser) - Texas officials plan to go forward with death-row executions, even as other states put them on hold in the wake of the Supreme Court's last-minute stay for Carlton Turner earlier this week. More stays like Turner's are expected in Texas as the court deliberates on the legality of lethal injections,...

Supreme Court Will Take Up Lethal Injection

Constitutionality at issue; docket also includes voting rights

(Newser) - The Supreme Court will take up the constitutionality of lethal injections in what a public defender called one of the most critical death penalty cases “in decades.” The challenge stems from a 2004 suit by two Kentucky inmates on death row who charged that the method constitutes cruel...

China Will Scale Back Executions
China Will Scale Back Executions
Sep 14, 2007 9:50 AM CDT

China Will Scale Back Executions

Supreme Court orders judges to go easy on the death penalty

(Newser) - China's Supreme Court has ordered judges to stop being so execution-happy. China carries out more capital punishment than the rest of the world combined, but the Supreme People's Court posted an order on its website today that the death penalty should be used only for "an extremely small number...

Americans Losing Taste for Death Penalty

Capital sentences and executions slow as public attitudes change

(Newser) - Capital punishment seems to be dying a slow death in the US. As public sentiment shifts toward life sentences, the number of death sentences has dropped 60% since the mid-'90s and the number of executions has fallen 46% since 1999, reports the Economist. Then there’s Texas, which has carried...

Texas Gov. Spares Prisoner Hours Before Execution

Kenneth Foster was sentenced to death as accomplice to 1996 murder

(Newser) - Texas Gov. Rick Perry commuted a death-row prisoner's sentence to life imprisonment today, six hours before he was to die for his role in a 1996 murder. Kenneth Foster drove the getaway car in a robbery gone awry, and under Texas law was eligible for the death penalty. Perry, in...

Texas Executes 400th Inmate
Texas Executes 400th Inmate
Aug 23, 2007 8:25 AM CDT

Texas Executes 400th Inmate

More set to die next week as capital punishment opponents call for moratorium

(Newser) - Texas has executed its 400th inmate since reinstating the death penalty 25 years ago, putting a convicted murderer to death by lethal injection last night. Johnny Ray Conner is the 21st prisoner to be sent to death this year, with three more slated to follow next week. Capital punishment opponents...

Georgia Man Faces Death Despite Collapsed Case

Since 1996, feds rarely step in on capital cases

(Newser) - A Georgia man is scheduled to be executed tomorrow even though the case against him has largely collapsed. Witnesses have recanted their statements and one confessed to lying in the trial of Troy Davis, convicted of murdering an off-duty cop in 1989. Prosecutors say the recanted testimony is not significant...

SD Carries Out 1st Execution in 60 Years

Man convicted in 2000 torture murder refused appeals, last words

(Newser) - South Dakota executed a prisoner last night for the first time since 1947. Officials administered a lethal injection to convicted murderer Elijah Page, who had pleaded guilty in 2001 to torturing and killing a 19-year-old acquaintance the year before, the Argus Leader reports. One of his two co-defendants remains on...

Supremes Halt Execution of Insane Inmate

Kennedy is swing vote against punishment for schizophrenic killer

(Newser) - The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to block the execution of a schizophrenic condemned killer because Texas criminal courts had not taken his mental health into account. Anthony Kennedy joined the court's liberals and wrote the decision, which reaffirmed previous injunctions against executing the insane; Kennedy wrote that the "punishment...

No Last Laugh for Killer
No Last Laugh for Killer
Jun 27, 2007 4:53 AM CDT

No Last Laugh for Killer

Con drops the jokes and tells witnesses instead: 'I deserve this'

(Newser) - Condemned killer Patrick Knight backed off on his boast that he'd tell a joke before execution, even after receiving over 1300 suggestions for one-liners through mail and a web site. Knight was executed late yesterday for murdering a married couple who lived in the trailer next to his just outside...

Courts Debate Definition of 'Retarded'

Ruling on death penalty's constitutionality generates more questions than answers

(Newser) - Sentencing the mentally retarded to death is unconstitutional, and individual states set the cut-off between disabled and competent—sounds simple, but in practice, the Supreme Court's 2002 ruling has proven nearly impossible to enforce. At issue, the LA Times reports, is the gray area between low IQ and retardation, a...

China Curbs Executions as Olympics Loom

Executions down 40% in runup to 2008

(Newser) - Capital punishment is on the decline in China, a country responsible for more than half of the world's executions. Beijing doesn't release figures, but human rights watchers say death penalty cases are down as much as 40% over the last six years. Sinologists reckon much of that drop represents an...

China Sentences Ex-Drug Chief to Death

Bribery conviction signals pharmaceutical industry crackdown

(Newser) - China's former top food and drug watchdog was sentenced to death today after being convicted of corruption and dereliction of duty. In the midst of an international uproar over food and pharmaceutical standards, the government found that Zheng Xiaoyu, 63, who was forced out in 2005, accepted more than $850,...

Botched Execution Takes 2 Hours
Botched Execution
Takes 2 Hours
May 26, 2007 7:14 PM CDT

Botched Execution Takes 2 Hours

Condemned killer took bathroom break during lethal injection

(Newser) - Prison staff at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility spent two hours administering lethal injection to condemned killer Christopher Newton—inserting needles ten times before finding a suitable vein to inject the deadly chemicals. Newton had been sentenced to die for killing his cellmate during an argument after a chess game.

Ant Farm Con Man Gets Death
Ant Farm
Con Man
Gets Death
Mar 21, 2007 3:13 PM CDT

Ant Farm Con Man Gets Death

Fraudulent sales of "medicinal ants" earned him $400 million

(Newser) - A pyramid scheme built on an ant farm earned a Chinese entrepreneur over $400 million—and a death sentence. The sentence meted out to Wang Zhendong by a Chinese court last month is part of a nationwide crackdown on fraud. Wang swindled thousands of people by misrepresenting his wares as...

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