Search Results for: death penalty

Barring the unlikely success of last-minute litigation, today, at 6 p.m. CST, Kenneth Eugene Smith is scheduled to become the first person in history to be executed by forced nitrogen gas inhalation. In Smith’s final minutes, personnel at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama will strap an industrial-grade mask to his face. Secured [...]

Iran executed Tuesday Mohammad Ghobadlou, a protester with a long-term psychosocial disability, for the alleged murder of a police officer during the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests. The Iranian judiciary’s news agency Mizan reported the execution. The Criminal Court of Tehran Province executed Ghobadlou after the Supreme Court of Iran confirmed Ghobadlou’s death sentence. Ghobadlou was [...]

A US district court on Wednesday dismissed concerns about Alabama death row inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith potentially choking on his own vomit during his planned execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a novel and untested method of capital punishment. Smith’s legal team is urgently trying to stop the execution, which is scheduled for Thursday. They argue that [...]

Amnesty International reiterated its calls to stop the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith in Alabama by nitrogen hypoxia. The date for execution has been set for January 25, 2024. In urging Alabama to cancel the execution, Justin Mazzola, a researcher at Amnesty International, stated: The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, [...]

United Nations human rights experts Monday hailed lawyers in Iran for their unwavering and courageous commitment to the rule of law ahead of the International Day of the Endangered Lawyer, which is observed January 24. The Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Margaret Satterthwaite, and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human [...]

The US government has again desecrated the memory of the late Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In the latest example of the Biden administration having broken its promise to work to end the death penalty, it announced its intention to seek a federal death sentence against Peyton Gendron, the 19-year-old who horrifically murdered 10 [...]

Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court invalidated on Wednesday, for the first time ever, a presidential pardon to former member of Parliament Duminda Silva. In a unanimous ruling, the court found that there was “no legal basis or even a factual basis to uphold the decision made by” former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to pardon Silva. Silva and [...]

“So far from it being unjust to punish him, it would be unjust if his wrongs were allowed to go unpunished.” Nuremberg Tribunal (1946) At the beginning of 2024, former President Donald J. Trump’s most conspicuously unsupportable legal claim has been his personal immunity from criminal prosecution. With this claim, Mr. Trump and his lead [...]

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called on Alabama state authorities Tuesday to cancel the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith, which is scheduled to take place next week by nitrogen hypoxia. Türk reemphasized human rights concerns regarding the potential consequences of the untested execution method. According to the statement, execution by nitrogen [...]

On Jan. 25, the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) plans to execute Kenneth Smith by forcing him to breathe pure nitrogen gas, an untested execution method with profound legal and ethical consequences. Death penalty abolitionists worldwide have railed against this form of capital punishment, but these efforts have thus far failed to alter the state’s [...]