Tag: capital punishment

Florida Executes 18th Death Row Inmate This Year, Setting Record Pace for US

Dozens gathered along a small two-way highway outside Florida State Prison Tuesday evening in rural Raiford, Florida, to protest the execution of convicted killer Mark Geralds, which brought the state’s record executions in a single year to 18.

Florida leads the nation in executions for 2025 and has surpassed its previous amount of eight within a year—another execution is scheduled in the state next week. The states with the second-most executions this year include Texas, Alabama, and South Carolina, with five each, according to state records. South Carolina executed three out of five by firing squad this year.

More than three decades ago, a jury unanimously recommended the death penalty for Mark Geralds after he was found guilty in the burglary, robbery, and stabbing death of a woman in her home in Panama City, Florida.

At a press conference after the execution, spokesman for the Florida Department of Corrections Jordan Kirkland said Geralds did not request a final meal and did not meet with a spiritual adviser before his execution.

The execution by lethal injection was carried out without incident and Geralds died at 6:15 p.m., Kirkland said.

Geralds worked as a carpenter and had previously helped remodel the home. The victim’s 8-year-old son found her body on the kitchen floor, according to court documents.

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Iran’s Executions Reach Decade High

Iranian authorities have executed over 1,000 people between January and September 2025, the highest number of yearly death penalties conducted in Iran that Amnesty International has recorded in at least 15 years.

As Statista’s Tristan Gaudiat shows in the chart below, within less than nine months, the number of people executed by the regime has already surpassed last year’s grim total of 972 executions.

These figures are likely low estimates due to the Iranian authorities not publishing such data publicly.

According to Amnesty, the Iranian regime has increased its use of the death penalty since the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement uprising, as a tool of state repression and to crush dissent.

In 2025, the authorities have further intensified executions in the aftermath of the escalating hostilities between Israel and Iran, under the guise of national security.

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Murder for Christmas?

When Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth posted a meme of Franklin the Turtle, the amiable child’s cartoon character, in a helicopter using a military weapon to kill people in a small boat below him, and captioned it “For your Christmas wish list,” it understandably caused an uproar.

Should the secretary of defense be mocking the people his troops have killed? Should he engage a child’s cartoon character to produce this mockery? Should anyone in his right mind, who professes to understand Christianity, suggest that this killing should be on a child’s Christmas wish list? Should he be killing nonviolent boatpeople?

Here is the back story.

President Donald Trump has ordered the Department of Defense to annihilate persons in speedboats in the Caribbean Sea, 1,500 miles from the United States and elsewhere. The true targets of these killings are not the boats but the persons in the boats. We know this because the president has stated so, and because in a particularly gruesome event, two survivors of an initial attack on Sept. 2, 2025, who were clinging to the broken remains of their boat hoping to be rescued, were hit with a second attack, which obliterated them.

Based on evidence he says he has and chooses not to share, Trump has designated these folks in the speedboats as “narco-terrorists” and argued that his designation offers him legal authority to kill them. But “narco-terrorist” is a political phrase, not a legal one. There is no such designation or defined term in American law. Labeling them confers no additional legal authority.

Lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice who advise the attorney general on the meaning of the law have apparently authored a legal opinion informing her that she can tell the president what he wants to hear; that it is lawful to kill these boatpeople. This is the same office that told President George W. Bush that he could legally torture prisoners and President Barack Obama that he could legally kill unindicted Americans — including a child — overseas.

Neither the president nor the attorney general will produce this legal opinion for public scrutiny.

These killings constitute murder under federal law and under international law, and persons who use the force of government to commit murder may themselves be prosecuted for it in U.S. courts, courts of the countries from which their victims came, and in international courts. These killings constitute murder because none of the 81 dead boatpeople was engaged in any violence at the times of their deaths.

It doesn’t matter, Trump has claimed, just look at the numbers of drug deaths in the U.S., they are “way down.” Does the president believe that murder is justified by a diminution in drug deaths? Drug distribution is not a capital offence. If the police see a nonviolent person distributing dangerous drugs in an American city, can they summarily kill that person? Of course not.

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Israel wants to implement the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners. Here’s what you need to know. 

Israel is one step closer to passing a law that would allow Israeli courts to sentence Palestinian prisoners to death. On Monday, the Israeli Knesset passed the bill in a first reading with a majority of 39 votes in favor against 16 in opposition. The bill was presented as “exceptional” law, under a special status that allows it to be passed only with the majority of votes cast, and not the majority of the Knesset members, which is why absentees and abstentions were not counted. It still needs to pass two more readings before entering into force.

The law applies to individuals who are convicted for acts that led to the death of Israelis, if the acts were motivated by “racism or hostility towards the public” and “committed with the objective of harming the state of Israel or the rebirth of the Jewish people,” making it applicable exclusively to Palestinians. It was introduced by Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech from the ultra-nationalist “Jewish Power” party with a strong support base by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, like Har-Melech herself.

The party is led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government coalition. The death penalty for Palestinian prisoners has been a main political demand of Ben-Gvir, who has been behind the worsening of detention conditions of Palestinian prisoners in recent years.

Israel does have the death penalty in its law, but has only been considered applicable in rare situations of grave crimes, like genocide, and was applied once in 1962 against former Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann. The new law introduces three new stipulations which indicate the intention is to use the death penalty on Palestinians.

First, the bill’s wording allows the death penalty on individuals convicted of killing Israelis on “nationalistic or racist” grounds. This limits its application to non-Israelis and employs the euphamism of “nationalistic” crimes which is commonly used to describe Palestinian attacks against Israelis. Second, since it applies to Palestinians in the occupied territory, it gives Israeli military courts, who are the ones who issue penal sentences against Palestinians under occupation the power to put Palestinians to death. Third, it allows the death sentence to be given with a simple majority of judges, and not by consensus.

Even still, Ben-Gvir continues to push to loosen the law’s application even more to give Israeli forces the authority to execute Palestinians in the field. The law has several opponents, including Yair Lapid’s opposition “There is future” party, and the orthodox Haridi representatives. The opponents to the law abstained from voting, and many lawmakers were absent. But since it was introduced as an exceptional bill, requiring only a majority of votes cast, it passed.

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Netanyahu greenlights death penalty bill for Palestinian prisoners

The National Security Committee in Israel’s Knesset is moving forward with a bill to impose the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks and operations that killed Israelis. 

According to the Israeli government’s top official on captives’ affairs, Gal Hirsch, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports the move. 

Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has long called for the execution of Palestinian prisoners, thanked Netanyahu for supporting the bill in a post on social media. 

“I thank the prime minister for his support for Otzma Yehudit’s bill for the death penalty for terrorists, but the court must not have any discretion – every terrorist who goes out to murder must know that the death penalty will be imposed on him. It’s time for justice!” Ben Gvir said. 

Israeli media reports said the bill could have its first reading as soon as Wednesday. 

“The extremist and terrorist Israeli government once again proves, through this decision, that it feeds off the blood and suffering of prisoners in its jails,” said the Palestinian Center for Prisoners’ Defense. “The repercussions of this fascist step will be even more bloody and will drag the entire region into a new cycle of uncertainty whose consequences no one can predict.”

Lawmakers in the Knesset National Security Committee already voted 4-1 in favor of the bill on 28 September.

The bill – which does not apply to Israelis who kill Palestinians – requires another three votes in a full Knesset session before it is passed into law. 

At the time of the vote, Ben Gvir came under fire within Israel for pushing the execution bill at a time when Israeli captives were still held in Gaza. 

The National Security Minister threatened on 20 October to stop voting with the ruling coalition if the death penalty bill did not pass its first reading within three weeks. 

Prior to the formation of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, Ben Gvir had been demanding the death penalty for Palestinians and, at one point, even made the demand as a condition for his joining the government.

Since assuming the role of national security minister, Ben Gvir has tightened the already repressive measures against Palestinians in the Israeli prison system.

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Wall Street Journal Weeps for Murderers Trump Sent to Supermax

Shortly before he left office, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 convicted murderers. Those convicts, all on death row, were now facing life behind bars.

Two of those convicts, Norris Holder and Billie Allen, killed bank guard and former police officer Richard Heflin in a 1997 bank robbery. Other family members of murder victims were outraged and hurt by Biden’s move.

Alex Snell, the brother of Amanda Snell, was one of those people. Amanda, 20, was strangled by Jorge Avila-Torrez in 2009. “I’d rather see it go back to the way it was, where he was sentenced to death,” Snell said. “He should have gotten that penalty.”

President Biden said he commuted the sentences (save for three convicted of terrorism or hate crimes) because he had a change of heart on the death penalty, and the Wall Street Journal says he found it “needlessly cruel, as well as impossible to administer fairly.”

It seems the Wall Street Journal believes those commutations somehow absolve the convicted murderers from facing consequences for their actions, and they’re appalled that President Trump hasn’t made their lives behind bars easier.

Here’s more:

Among the last actions by former President Joe Biden before leaving the Oval Office was commuting the death sentences of 37 convicted murderers.

Hours after President Trump took over, he ordered the life sentences of these men be made, in effect, a living hell.

With that guidance, officials canceled plans to transfer most of the inmates to mainline prisons. Instead, Emil Bove III, the acting deputy attorney general at the time, ordered all but a handful requiring specialized medical treatment be housed in the U.S. Penitentiary at Florence, Colo., the harshest institution in the federal system.

Inmates at the Colorado prison—intended for the nation’s most violent—typically spend 23 hours a day alone in their cells. At a meeting in May with Attorney General Pam Bondi for families of loved ones killed by the 37 convicts, some officials said they wished conditions at the prison, known as ADX, were even worse.

Aaron Reitz, a former assistant attorney general, held a roundtable with victims’ families. “If you’re not going to be killed lawfully at the hands of the state, well, your prison sentence is going to be hard as hell,” Reitz said in an interview.

There is little sympathy for these convicts outside of the Wall Street Journal editorial room.

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Tunisian Man Sentenced to Death for Facebook Posts Critical of President Kais Saied

A Tunisian court has handed down a death sentence to a man accused of posting critical remarks about President Kais Saied on Facebook, a decision that has sent shockwaves through the country’s already tense political climate.

Lawyer Oussama Bouthalja confirmed that 56-year-old day laborer Saber Chouchane was convicted over social media posts that mocked and denounced the president.

“The judge in the Nabeul court sentenced the man to death over Facebook posts. It is a shocking and unprecedented ruling,” Bouthalja said, describing the decision as both extraordinary and alarming.

Chouchane, who has little formal education, was arrested last year after running a Facebook page titled “Kaïs le misérable” (“Kaïs the Miserable”), a name openly deriding President Saied.

Reuters reported his online activity included satirical cartoons, posts urging protests, and messages that prosecutors described as attempts to “overthrow the state.”

Authorities accused him of spreading “false news” and “insulting the president,” charges that rights advocates argue are being used to silence dissent.

An appeal has been filed, according to Bouthalja, but Tunisia’s justice ministry has not commented on the case.

Although courts in Tunisia sometimes issue death sentences, no executions have been carried out for over 30 years.

Family members expressed disbelief and anguish following the ruling. “We can’t believe it,” said Jamal Chouchane, Saber’s brother. “We are a family suffering from poverty, and now oppression and injustice have been added to poverty.”

The verdict ignited a wave of outrage online, as Tunisians flooded social media with messages of disbelief and defiance.

Many see the ruling as a blatant attempt to intimidate government opponents and restrict free expression even further.

Opposition figures have been jailed on a range of charges, while rights organizations, including the Tunisian League for Human Rights and the CRLDHT, warn that the justice system is being weaponized to punish dissent.

The absence of transparency surrounding Chouchane’s posts has also drawn attention. Authorities have not released screenshots or transcripts, a move many view as an attempt to suppress the very content that challenged the government.

For Tunisians who once celebrated the country’s post-revolution commitment to free speech, this is a chilling new chapter.

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Israeli Knesset Advances Bill To Execute Palestinian Prisoners Who Killed Jews

In yet another development which will certainly complicate current Trump administration efforts to find peace in Gaza, the National Security Committee in the Israeli Knesset is advancing a bill to impose the death penalty on Palestinian prisoners detained for killing Israelis.

Killings which are deemed motivated by “racism or hostility to the public” or aimed at harming the “State of Israel” or seeking to thwart the “revival of the Jewish people” would be a capital offensive, according to the legislation. Interestingly, the wording highlights Jewish citizens of Israel are the priority – and not for example Christian, Muslim, or Druze citizens.

It has unleashed immediate controversy both within and outside of Israel. For starters, some Israeli officials as well as families of Oct.7 victims fear that this puts the remaining hostages in Gaza at immediate risk. Notably, the bill does not apply the opposite direction – that is, it would not apply to Israelis who kill Palestinians.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s coordinator for negotiations on the captives, Gal Hirsch, has gone on record as vehemently opposing the bill.

“It’s not for nothing that we are asking not to hold this discussion. I completely disagree with your assessment of the situation, Minister [Itamar] Ben Gvir,” he said in a communication protesting the initiative. “Especially when we are engaged in a combined military and diplomatic effort to bring back the hostages, this discussion does not help us.”

An initial Sunday Knesset committee vote was 4-1 in favor, while more of rounds of votes needed for the bill to become law, according to protocol. 

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been leading the charge, resisting calls to postpone the vote due to the precariousness of the hostage situation. 

One Palestinian rights group had this to say:

The Israeli bill was denounced by the Palestinian Commission for Detainees’ Affairs and the Palestinian Prisoner Society as an “unprecedented savagery,” warning that it would entrench what they described as “systematic crimes” against detainees through legislation.

Increasingly, there have been shootings and terroristic attacks by Palestinians in places like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, related to ongoing events in Gaza and the West Bank.

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Supreme Court Stays Ruling That Could Lead to Retrial of Death Row Prisoner

The Supreme Court on Sept. 26 temporarily stayed a federal appeals court ruling requiring that Alabama death row inmate Michael Sockwell be retried for murder.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had ruled on June 30 that Sockwell’s conviction was unconstitutional because prosecutors engaged in racial discrimination during jury selection.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who oversees emergency appeals from Alabama, issued an administrative stay of the 11th Circuit ruling. An administrative stay gives the justices more time to consider an emergency appeal.

A divided three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit had ruled that Alabama prosecutors violated Sockwell’s constitutional rights by excluding blacks from the jury at his trial.

The ruling made Sockwell eligible for retrial. He was convicted in the 1988 killing of Montgomery County Deputy Sheriff Isaiah Harris. Although Sockwell was sentenced to death, his lawyers said their client’s IQ is low enough to make him ineligible for the death penalty.

The panel majority specifically found that prosecutors violated Sockwell’s 14th Amendment rights when they “repeatedly and purposefully” turned away potential black jurors who were deemed more sympathetic to him because of their shared race.

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Fox News host on mentally ill people who commit crimes: “Just kill them”

LAWRENCE JONES (FOX HOST):  We don’t have to — we feel so compassionate because you see the mental health crisis happening.

AINSLEY EARHARDT (FOX HOST): You just get — exactly.

JONES  But it’s not our job — we shouldn’t have to live in fear while they figure out what is going on right there.

EARHARDT: Right, right.

JONES: Put him in a mental institution, put him in a jail, and you guys figure it out. But people having to duck and dive on the trains and the buses, walking through the street, this is one case, but this is happening all across the country, and it’s not a money issue. They have given billions of dollars to mental health and the homeless population. A lot of them don’t want to take the programs, a lot of them don’t want to get the help that is necessary. You can’t give them a choice. Either you take the resources that we’re going to give you and — or you decide that you are going to be locked up in jail. That’s the way it has to be now.

BRIAN KILMEADE (FOX HOST): Or involuntary lethal injection.

JONES: Yeah.

KILMEADE : Or something. Just kill them.

EARHARDT: Yeah, Brian, why did it have to get to this point?

KILMEADE: Right, I would say this, we are not voting for the right people. In North Carolina, wake up. You can’t put — keep putting these people in power. They woke up in Los Angeles, they got a stronger D.A. They woke up and they got rid of Chesa Boudin in San Francisco. Hopefully they will get rid of this terrible guy Alvin Bragg in New York. And now it’s up to the people in the election which is whoever is up in November and that Senate seat that belongs to Thom Tillis who by the way yesterday said I don’t want any help from the federal government to bring crime under control in cities like Charlotte. That’s your decision. But Michael Whatley or you could have Governor Cooper. Governor Cooper gave you these terrible laws. Mike Whatley wouldn’t. And he ran the RNC. These are the people in North Carolina. Purple leaning red state. They got a big choice. On this element, it is political. Because it’s political because politics has to change this.

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