Tag: capital punishment

Ukrainian secret police shot the man who ‘saved’ Kiev – Zelensky aide

The extrajudicial execution of Denis Kireev in March 2022 was due to a lack of coordination between security services, a top aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said on Thursday. Mikhail Podoliak was responding to a Wall Street Journal feature describing the 45-year-old banker as an asset of Ukrainian military intelligence, who supposedly helped save Kiev from Russian attack.

Kireev was killed on March 2 last year. His body was dumped on a Kiev sidewalk “with a bullet hole in the back of the skull,” according to the WSJ. Ukrainian media reported at the time that the country’s security service, the SBU, had “clear” evidence Kireev had committed high treason. The military intelligence, however, said he “died protecting Ukraine.” 

The 45-year-old banker’s violent end was brought into the spotlight again by the WSJ, which interviewed Kireev’s relatives and associates, as well as the man he died working for – General Kirill Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence (GUR).

The banker was loyal to Kiev, raising funds for Ukrainian “volunteer brigades” fighting in Donbass after 2014, and “enjoyed playing the 007 role,” according to his friends and associates. Budanov said he had recruited Kireev in 2021 because of his business contacts with Russia, and received useful information from him for months before the conflict escalated. 

“If it were not for Mr. Kireev, most likely Kiev would have been taken,” Budanov told the WSJ.

Kireev came to Budanov on February 23 and said Russia would “invade” the following day, with the primary objective to seize the Antonov Airport in Gostomel, near Kiev. The tip “gave Ukraine a precious few hours to shift troops to counter the Russian assault” and ultimately disabled the airport, saving the capital, according to the general. 

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2022 Was a Year of Bad, Botched Death Row Executions

The good news for opponents of the death penalty is that its use in the United States continued to decline in 2022. The bad news is that many of the executions that did take place appear to have been botched by officials who subjected prisoners to cruel torment.

Those are the main takeaways from the Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPIC) annual year-end report. It shows that American states are increasingly turning away from executions, but that in those states where capital punishment still happens, there’s been a turn toward cruelty and secrecy in the relevant government agencies.

Six states—Oklahoma, Alabama, Texas, Missouri, Arizona, and Mississippi—executed 18 people in 2022. That’s an increase over the 11 people executed in 2021, but both numbers are low relative to the last decade. For eight consecutive years, states have performed fewer than 30 executions annually and issued fewer than 50 new death penalty sentences annually. Federal executions were halted entirely when President Joe Biden took office.

The downturn may not be permanent. Oklahoma halted executions in 2015 temporarily after a series of problems with the drugs that led to one man groaning and struggling as the drugs took hold in 2014 and a case in 2015 where they received the wrong drug entirely. In 2020, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt announced Oklahoma would restart executions using those very same drugs. In 2021, Oklahoma executed its first two inmates in years. During the first of those executions, John Marion Grant reportedly convulsed and vomited before he died. In 2022, Oklahoma executed five inmates, making the state responsible for nearly a third of all executions.

And if the state gets its way, there will be many more to come in 2023. In June, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor started planning 25 executions over the next few years. According to DPIC, the state has 11 planned for next year and 10 in 2024.

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Saudi Arabia Executes 15 People in 12 Days For Non-Violent Drug Offences

Saudi Arabia has executed 15 people for non-violent drug offences – some thought to be beheaded by sword – in the last 12 days, despite promising to end them. 

In January 2021 the country announced a moratorium on drug-related executions. It came in the wake of the gruesome murder and dismembering of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey in 2018 by a Saudi death squad, a hit the CIA said was ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  

But legal NGO Reprieve said that in the last fortnight the regime had quietly resumed secret executions for drug offences. Ten of those executed are foreign nationals, from Pakistan, Syria and Jordan. Five of them – including a man executed on Monday morning – are Saudi nationals. Because executions are carried out behind closed doors and bodies are not returned to families, methods of execution cannot be confirmed. However experts believe people are killed by a mixture of beheading by sword and by shooting.  

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Trump Calls for Death Penalty for Drug Dealers in 2024 Announcement

While announcing his presidential bid in 2024, former President, Donald J. Trump called for death sentences for drug dealers. Drug overdoses have skyrocketed and accelerated over the past decade. A record-high 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, with fentanyl overdoses accounting for a large percentage of those deaths.

Trump spoke in a subdued, professional tone and largely focused on policy. A number of conservative pundits have commented that Tuesday’s speech was Trump’s ‘most presidential sounding speech,’ which happen to be his formal announcement of his 2024 Presidential campaign.

Trump hit in many important issues during Tuesday’s presidential announcement, though he placed significant emphasis on drug overdoses and the border crisis which has only exasperated the flow of deadly drugs into the United States.

The president argued that drug dealers who sell hard drugs like fentanyl will be responsible for dozens, potentially hundreds of deaths. Thus, the punishment for being caught dealing such drugs should carry the same penalty as a first-degree homicide charge.

“We are going to be asking that everyone who sells drugs/who gets caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” announced former President Trump. “I don’t like to say it, and I’m not sure if the American public is ready for it.”

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College students turn more liberal, OK speech death penalty

Calls for diversity on campuses and in Main Street businesses and banning hate speech, even that protected by the First Amendment , are no longer issues to fight over for college students.

Now, it’s a reason for the electric chair .

In a remarkable shift showing how students, many lining up for President Joe Biden’s loan forgiveness plan, have turned left since the 2020 election, a new Yale survey suggests that America’s best and brightest are giving up on key constitutional freedoms and even embracing socialism.

In the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale University national student survey, conducted by McLaughlin & Associates and provided to Secrets, big majorities want companies to require employees to declare support for workplace diversity just to get a job.

And when it comes to speech, nearly half believe the death penalty is OK to shoot down hate speech.

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President Trump Calls for Death Penalty for Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers During Ohio Rally

On Saturday night, President Trump gave a speech at a Save America rally held in Youngstown, Ohio. He was there to campaign for U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance. Additional speakers include Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Bill Johnson (R-OH) and congressional candidates Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, J.R. Majewski and Max Miller.

Trump’s Save America Super PAC said in a statement that the rally continues an “unprecedented effort to advance the MAGA agenda by energizing voters and highlighting America First candidates and causes.”

At the rally, President Trump advocated for the death sentence for drug dealers and human traffickers, which will reduce drug distribution and crime in our country.

“Congratulations Democrats! What a rotten job you’re doing! You’re destroying our country,” said Trump.

According to President Trump, “carjackings in the city are up 57%. Much of the crime wave is caused by drug dealers who, during the course of their lives, will kill an average of 500 American citizens.”

“It’s an invasion of crime. And remember, much of the crime that we talk about is caused by drugs,” he added.

According to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), trafficking of illegal drugs and human trafficking often happen together.

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Former CIA Director Appears To Suggest Trump Be Executed Over Nuclear Documents

A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director and an MSNBC contributor appeared to suggest late Thursday that former President Donald Trump be executed over nuclear documents.

MSNBC contributor Michael Beschloss tweeted a photograph of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, two Americans who were convicted of conspiring to hand over U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviet Union and were executed in 1953, according to History. The tweet read, “Rosenbergs were convicted for giving U.S. nuclear secrets to Moscow, and were executed in June 1953.”

“Sounds about right,” former CIA director and four-star Air Force General Michael Hayden responded in a quote tweet.

The post followed reports that Trump held onto nuclear documents in his private residence, Mar-a-Lago. The Washington Post reporter Shane Harris first broke the story about the alleged nuclear documents taken to Mar-a-Lago from the White House when Trump left office. The report lacked specific details on these nuclear documents other than reporting that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sought them in the Monday raid on the former president’s home. Harris did not delve into any details regarding the alleged nuclear document in an interview with CNN Friday.

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Donald Trump Calls for Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers to Get Death Penalty 

Former President Donald Trump called on drug dealers, human traffickers, and those who kill police to get the death penalty during a Save America rally held in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Friday night.

Trump said:

So this is a little controversial. And I will either get a standing ovation – and I don’t care about the ovation, I care about the country – or people are going to walk out of the room for what I’m about to say. But it’s time finally to say it. If you look at countries all throughout the world…The only ones that don’t have a drug problem are those that institute the death penalty for drug dealers. They’re the only ones, they don’t have any problem.

Trump also added that human traffickers and those who kill police should face the death penalty.

“Those who kill police officers as well as those who kill through human trafficking,” he continued.

“So we can be streetwise tough and smart and end our problem or we can be politically correct, weak and frankly, extremely stupid,” Trump said. “Which is probably the way we will continue to be and lose millions and millions more people to a scourge the likes of which our country and most other countries have never seen before.”

“So do something about it. It’s The only way you’re going to win the only way you’re going to win all right,” the former president added.

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Chinese surgeons removed the hearts and lungs of death row inmates while they were still ALIVE, study claims

China enlisted surgeons to execute prisoners by cutting out their hearts, new Australian research has revealed.  

The Australian National University study, which examined thousands of medical papers from the communist nation, uncovered shocking secrets about China’s clandestine organ harvesting trade.

The research, published in the American Journal of Transplantation, found the certified causes of death did not align with the medical procedures listed in 56 hospitals across the country. 

Instead, prisoners’ hearts were harvested from their chests before they were brain dead to be given to transplant recipients. 

Concerned human rights advocates said the new mounting evidence ‘tells a terrible tale of murder and mutilation in China’ and the stories coming out of the Chinese Communist Party are ‘almost too dreadful to believe’.

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As America Slips Deeper Into Authoritarianism, State Brings Back Executions Via Firing Squad

As TFTP reported, the Justice Department quietly amended its execution protocols in December 2020, no longer requiring federal death sentences to be carried out by lethal injection and clearing the way to use other methods like firing squads and poisonous gas. The following year Arizona followed suit and began preparing to execute death row inmates with the same gas used by the Nazis at Auschwitz — Zyklon B. This month, South Carolina raised their hand at the execution table and asked for firing squads and have approved just that.

According to a report from Reuters, the state Department of Corrections said it alerted the Attorney General’s office that it has developed protocols and completed renovations at a correctional facility in Columbia, the capital city, which allows for the execution of inmates via a three-man firing squad. According to the report:

A state law passed in May 2021 authorized the death penalty policy changes, giving condemned persons the option to choose death by rifles or lethal injection when available. It also made the electric chair the state’s primary mode of execution.

South Carolina joins Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah in allowing firing squad executions. Those states use lethal injection as their primary method. Three executions, all in Utah, have been carried out by firing squad since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Ronnie Lee Gardner, a 49-year-old convicted killer, was the last person in the United States to be executed by firing squad in 2010.

The move is touted by officials as a good thing because it now gives inmates a choice of three different ways to die but they are missing the elephant in the room.

While the various methods of death are certainly shocking, the idea of capital punishment seems to be taking a back seat to all of this. For the state to claim the responsibility of justly ending life, it means that the state must never be wrong. Even the most ardent of statists will have to concede that an infallible state is but a terribly written fiction.

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