Search Results for: California prisons

A federal grand jury indicted former Google employee Linwei Ding on Wednesday for allegedly stealing information from Google while secretly working for two Chinese technology companies. Ding has been charged with four counts of theft of trade secrets in relation to his alleged plan to steal artificial intelligence (AI) information from Google. The Department of [...]

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“It a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” —   Macbeth  When asked to imagine the stereotypes associated with Texas, one might conjure images of barbecue, big trucks, and cowboys. But perhaps a more apt image would be that of injustice undergirding execution. As it all too frequently has in the [...]

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On Feb. 11, much of the global community marked the International Day of Women and Girls in Science and Technology. But in Afghanistan, few felt like celebrating. After all, that day was the 874th since girls were banned from attending secondary school studies, and the 415th since universities shut their doors to women. The urgency [...]

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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 [...]

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Human Rights Watch (HRW)  released its 2024 World Report on Thursday detailing the state of global human rights. The report’s central theme was that “transactional diplomacy” undermined global human rights institutions and enabled autocrats to worsen violations. HRW Executive Director Tiran Hassan described “transactional diplomacy” as when “governments disregard the benefits of long-term relationships built [...]

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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 [...]

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As we prepare to usher in 2024, the outlook on Alabama’s administration of the death penalty holds many terrible knowns, and an even greater number of grim unknowns. At the top of any capital punishment-watcher’s list: Is Alabama really going to move forward with the first state-sanctioned nitrogen gassing execution in US history? If all goes according [...]

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A lawyer-turned-death penalty abolitionist and a Jewish cantor join forces for JURIST to argue that the Jewish community has a unique obligation to voice resistance to Alabama’s plans to begin using nitrogen gas as a means of executing death row convicts. In Part 1, Stephen Cooper reflects on his great-grandmother’s death in a Nazi death [...]

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In its euthanasia guidelines, the American Veterinary Medical Association advises against the use of nitrogen gas to kill rats. And yet Alabama is pushing ahead with plans to experiment with using the gas to execute its condemned. Even defendants convicted of the cruelest of murders cannot, except for cynically and spitefully, be said to be [...]

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