Tag: capital punishment

Garbage Human Joy Behar Wonders if There Will be a ‘Backlash’ Against Republicans Over Death Sentence for Luigi Mangione

Attorney General Pam Bondi has recommended that prosecutors should seek the death penalty in the case of accused murderer Luigi Mangione.

Over on ‘The View,’ Joy Behar recently wondered if this decision would cause a ‘backlash’ against Republicans. This betrays Behar’s entire worldview.

It doesn’t matter to her what happened, or the fact that a completely innocent man was murdered in cold blood. All that matters to Behar is that there is a possibility that something might go badly for Republicans. That is all Behar thinks about, that is all she cares about. Ever.

FOX News reports:

Joy Behar wonders if Trump DOJ seeking death penalty for Luigi Mangione will cause ‘backlash’ against GOP

“The View” co-host Joy Behar said Wednesday that there could be “backlash” against the Republican Party as the Trump Justice Department has ordered prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

“He’s very popular, this guy, there could be a backlash,” she said. “All I’m saying is, politically, it could be a backlash against Republicans to give him the death penalty.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Tuesday that Thompson’s murder was “a premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”

Co-host Sunny Hostin suggested that Bondi’s efforts were “an assault on the process.”

“It just seems like the attorney general is acting, really, against our institutional standards, which is what this administration is doing,” Hostin added.

Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said she believed in the death penalty, but questioned the administration’s push to apply it in this case.

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Canada outraged after four citizens executed by China over drug charges: ‘Inconsistent with basic human dignity’

China executed four Canadian nationals over drug charges earlier this year, prompting strong rebukes from the Western country amidst an already rocky relationship.

It is unclear exactly when this year the executions took place, but Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said Wednesday she and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to stop them — and are seeking leniency “for other Canadians that are facing a similar situation,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

The victims were described as “Canadian nationals” who held dual citizenship with China, though China does not recognize dual citizenship.

China treats drug charges with a notoriously heavy hand, issuing lifetime prison sentences for smuggling and sometimes even meting out executions — though they are rarely carried out against Westerners.

“Canada strongly condemns China’s use of the death penalty, which is irreversible and inconsistent with basic human dignity,” a spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada said.

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Trump Says He’s ‘Ready’ To Impose Death Penalty On People Who Sell Illicit Drugs, Calling Policy ‘Very Humane’

President Donald Trump is again promoting his support for executing people who sell currently illicit drugs, calling it a “very humane” policy to prevent overdose deaths that he’s “ready” to implement.

He also ambitiously projected that his administration will cut drug use in the U.S. by 50 percent during his new term by launching an aggressive advertising campaign to warn Americans about the harms of substance misuse.

During a White House event with governors from across the U.S. on Friday, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) told Trump about his concerns with fentanyl trafficking, to which the president responded by offering his extreme capital punishment proposal of following the lead of countries like China that impose the death penalty on people involved in selling illegal drugs.

While he said he’s unsure whether the U.S. as a whole is similarly “ready” to move forward with the policy, Trump encouraged governors to push for it at the state-level.

“If you notice that every country that has the death penalty has no drug problem. They execute drug dealers,” Trump said. “And when you think about it, it’s very humane, because every drug dealer, on average they say, kills at least 500 people—not to mention the damage they do so many others. But they kill large numbers of people.”

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Iranian Regime Sentences Artist to Death for Advocating Freedom and Insulting Muhammad

The Iranian regime has issued a death sentence against pop singer Amir Hossein Maghsoudloo, known professionally as Tataloo, for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad.

This has sparked a wave of reactions both within and outside the country, highlighting the severity of Iran’s blasphemy laws.

Tataloo, whose fame has spread beyond Iran’s borders, has been a controversial figure in the underground music scene.

According to sources, the singer has been detained in Iran since his extradition from Turkey in December 2023.

He now faces a sentence that not only threatens his life but also underscores the tensions between artistic freedom and the strict interpretation of Islamic law in Iran.

Tataloo’s case is not an isolated incident.

The Islamic Republic is known for its harsh policies against expressions deemed offensive to religion. “The singer was sentenced to death for insulting the Prophet,” stated a report from Europa Press, emphasizing the gravity of the accusation and the penalty imposed.

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Biden Commutes Sentences of Nearly All Prisoners on Federal Death Row

President Joe Biden on Monday announced he is commuting the sentences of nearly all those on federal death row in a move aimed at preventing the incoming Trump administration from restarting federal executions. 

The sentences for 37 individuals facing execution will now be reclassified to life without the possibility of parole.  

Only three men behind bars for “terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder” will remain on federal death row: “Robert D. Bowers, 52, who in 2018 gunned down 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dylann Roof, 30, the white supremacist who in 2015 opened fire on Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31, one of the two brothers who carried out the bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013 that killed three and maimed more than a dozen others,” according to The New York Times.

This historic clemency action builds on the President’s record of criminal justice reform. The President has issued more commutations at this point in his presidency than any of his recent predecessors at the same point in their first terms. Earlier this month, the President announced clemency for approximately 1,500 Americans – the most ever in a single day – who have shown successful rehabilitation and a commitment to making communities safer. This included sentence commutations for nearly 1,500 individuals who were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and who have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities, as well as 39 pardons for individuals who were convicted of non-violent crimes. President Biden is also the first President ever to issue categorical pardons to individuals convicted of simple use and possession of marijuana, and to former LGBTQI+ service members convicted of private conduct because of their sexual orientation. (White House)

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Executions in Saudi Arabia hit record high under MBS as UN prepares to vote the country onto Human Rights Council this week

Saudi Arabia has carried out a record number of executions this year even as the UN gets set to vote on whether to grant the Kingdom a seat on the Human Rights council.

At least 208 people have been put to death in the Middle Eastern nation so far this year, outstripping the most recent high of 196 in 2022 with almost three months still remaining on the calendar. 

The shocking figure, which rights groups claim is still underreported, puts the Arab Gulf state firmly in the top five nations where the death penalty is most frequently used, despite Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) pledging to reduce the rate of executions.

Since taking on the role of Crown Prince in 2015, MBS has overseen at least 1,447 executions and, despite a mortarium on the use of the death penalty for minor offences in 2020, the instances of capital punishment reached a monthly record high of 41 in August and 32 last month. 

The harrowing figures comes as the UN gets ready to vote in two days on whether the Gulf state should be granted membership of the Human Rights council.

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Democrats Abandoned Their Anti-Death Penalty Stance. Those on Federal Death Row May Pay the Price.

When the Rev. Al Sharpton took the stage to introduce members of the Exonerated Five on the last night of the Democratic National Convention, it was, for the briefest moment, a nod toward a reality that the DNC had otherwise aggressively avoided: the myriad injustices of our criminal legal system.

“Thirty-five years ago my friends and I were in prison for crimes we didn’t commit,” Korey Wise said. As teenagers, Wise, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Antron McCray were wrongly arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned for the brutal rape of a jogger in Central Park. Donald Trump notoriously spent tens of thousands of dollars on full-page ads in the New York Times calling to bring back the death penalty. “Our youth was stolen from us,” Wise said. “Every day as we walked into courtroom, people screamed at us, threatened us because of Donald Trump.”

“He wanted us dead,” Salaam, now a New York City Council member, said. Now in their late 40s and early 50s, the men once known as the Central Park Five stood as a living testament both to Trump’s cruelty and the futures he sought to crush.

The moment was powerful. But it also exposed a tension that had been present throughout the entire convention. All week, the criminal justice system — and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s role in it — had been cast as a force for good: a source of protection and justice for society’s vulnerable. Harris was praised by a parade of sheriffs, state attorneys general, and members of the U.S. security state as the leader who will keep Americans safe. “Crime will keep going down when we put a prosecutor in the White House instead of a convicted felon,” President Joe Biden said in his speech on Monday.

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Reality Check for ‘Queers for Palestine’ Delivered Directly From Palestinian Leaders-“Homosexuals Should Be Thrown Head First From The Rooftop Of The Tallest Building”

Since the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks against civilians, groups like “Gays for Palestine” and “Queers for Palestine” have become a vocal and visible part of pro-Hamas rallies on American college campuses and in protests in the streets of American cities.

Recently, “Queers for Palestine” blocked the exit to Disney World in Orlando, Florida, while chanting“Free, free Palestine!” and holding up banners.

And while these groups may passionately and enthusiastically yell anti-Semitic genocidal chats like “From the River to the Sea,” perhaps they should take a beat and really listen to what prominent Palestinian Islamic, political, and cultural figures really think about them.

MEMRI shared a collection of statements from Palestinian leaders, which state, in the strongest terms, that the Palestinian people “will not accept a single homosexual” on the land of Palestine and that homosexuals “should be thrown head first from the rooftop of the tallest building.”

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Trump says death sentences for dealers will solve U.S. drug problem

Former President Donald Trump said soft sentences for drug dealers have helped fuel fentanyl overdose deaths in the U.S.

Trump, 77, is running against President Joe Biden in the presidential election this November.

“So many are dying where they think they’re getting something and going to have a little fun on a Friday night and all of sudden their dead,” Trump said on Fox News.

“You’ll never really solve the drug problem unless you do what other countries do – and that’s the death penalty for drug dealers,” Trump said during the interview. “A drug dealer on average will kill, during that person’s life, 500 people. Unless you have a death penalty. Right now, they don’t even get charged with anything.”

Thirty-four countries apply the death for some drug crimes, according to a 2023 report from Harm Reduction International. The report noted that Pakistan removed the death penalty as a possible punishment for certain violations of its Control of Narcotics Substances Act.

Illicit fentanyl killed nearly 38,000 Americans in the first six months of 2023, according to a 2024 DEA report. Synthetic opioids were involved in 74,225 deaths in 2022 – 68% of the total 111,036 deaths that year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Condemned inmate could face ‘surgery without anesthesia’ if good vein is elusive, lawyers say

Missouri’s execution protocol allows for “surgery without anesthesia” if the typical process of finding a suitable vein to inject the lethal drug doesn’t work, lawyers for a death row inmate say in an appeal aimed at sparing his life.

Brian Dorsey, 52, is scheduled for execution Tuesday for killing his cousin and her husband at their central Missouri home in 2006. His attorneys are seeking clemency from Gov. Mike Parson and have several appeals pending.

A federal court appeal focuses on how Missouri injects the fatal dose of pentobarbital. The written protocol calls for insertion of primary and secondary intravenous lines. But it offers no guidance on how far the execution team can go to find a suitable vein, leaving open the possibility of an invasive “cutdown procedure,” Dorsey’s attorneys say.

The procedure involves an incision that could be several inches wide and several inches deep. Forceps are used to tear tissue away from a vein that becomes the injection point.

“It’s surgery,” said Arin Brenner, a federal public defender and one of the attorneys representing Dorsey. “It would be surgery without anesthesia.”

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