Tag: capital punishment

JUST IN: Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Will Not Be Extradited to US for Now

A UK court ruled on Tuesday that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not be extradited to the United States for now.

The UK court is requesting assurances from the US around Assange’s First Amendment rights, and that he would not receive the death penalty by the US government for leaking classified documents.

This is strange, since the Biden family can hold and release classified material to business associates but not Julian Assange?

If the US fails to give assurances, Assange, an Australian citizen, will be able to appeal his extradition in May.

CBS News reported:

A U.K. court has ruled that Julian Assange will not be immediately extradited to face charges in the United States, giving the U.S. government three weeks to “offer assurances” that the American justice system will abide by several specific tenets in its handling of the WikiLeaks founder’s case.

The British court said Assange “has a real prospect of success on 3 of the 9 grounds of appeal” he has argued. Specifically, the court demanded that U.S. justice officials confirm he will be “permitted to rely on the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (which protects free speech), that he is not prejudiced at trial (including sentence) by reason of his nationality, that he is afforded the same First Amendment protections as a United States citizen and that the death penalty is not imposed.”

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Three top nitrogen gas manufacturers in US bar products from use in executions

Three of the largest manufacturers of medical-grade nitrogen gas in the US have barred their products from being used in executions, following Alabama’s recent killing of the death row inmate Kenneth Smith using a previously untested method known as nitrogen hypoxia.

The three companies have confirmed to the Guardian that they have put in place mechanisms that will prevent their nitrogen cylinders falling into the hands of departments of correction in death penalty states. The move by the trio marks the first signs of corporate action to stop medical nitrogen, which is designed to preserve life, being used for the exact opposite – killing people.

The green shoots of a corporate blockade for nitrogen echoes the almost total boycott that is now in place for medical drugs used in lethal injections. That boycott has made it so difficult for death penalty states to procure drugs such as pentobarbital and midazolam that a growing number are turning to nitrogen as an alternative killing technique.

Now, nitrogen producers are engaging in their own efforts to prevent the abuse of their products. The march has been led by Airgas, which is owned by the French multinational Air Liquide.

The company announced publicly in 2019 that supplying nitrogen for the purposes of execution was not consistent with its values. The move followed Oklahoma becoming the first state to adopt nitrogen hypoxia as a capital punishment protocol in 2015.

“Airgas has not, and will not, supply nitrogen or other inert gases to induce hypoxia for the purpose of human execution,” the company said in a statement.

Nitrogen hypoxia involves forcing a prisoner to breathe nitrogen, and nitrogen alone, through an airtight gas mask. The procedure leads to oxygen deprivation and death.

The four states that currently have nitrogen hypoxia on their books – Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma – claim it is a quick and humane death. But when Alabama became the first state to carry out an execution using this method in January, witnesses recounted how the prisoner, Smith, writhed and convulsed on the gurney for several minutes.

“His took deep breaths, his body shaking violently with his eyes rolling in the back of his head,” a reporter from the Montgomery Advertiser said.

Two other major nitrogen manufacturers have also confirmed to the Guardian that they are restricting sales of their gas. Air Products said that it had established “prohibited end uses for our products, which includes the use of any of our industrial gas products for the intentional killing of any person (including nitrogen hypoxia)”.

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Botched execution of serial killer in Idaho puts focus on capital punishment secrecy laws

In 2012, two Idaho prison officials chartered a private plane and flew to Washington state with thousands of dollars in cash.

They met with a pharmacist behind closed doors and bought the drug for a convicted murderer’s lethal injection.

Only a years-long public records lawsuit revealed the pharmacist’s name, the pharmacy and other details of the exchange. After prison officials said the pharmacist’s exposure had scared away other lethal drug suppliers, Idaho lawmakers barred such information from getting out again.

Idaho tried and failed Wednesday to execute Thomas Eugene Creech, a 73-year-old serial killer who had been in prison for 50 years. Neither his attorneys nor the public knew where the state obtained the drug or the exact qualifications of his executioners.

Opponents say secrecy laws are are a significant hurdle to accountability and make it hard to ensure that the procedures aren’t unconstitutionally painful, whether the deaths are carried out successfully — as Texas did Wednesday in the case of Ivan Cantu — or botched like Creech’s.

Idaho long kept the identities of execution team members and drug suppliers secret but judges were still able to force disclosure of the information if it was relevant to lawsuits or appeals. The new law prohibits state officials from disclosing the information, even if under court order.

The law also prevents professional licensing boards from taking disciplinary action against people for participating in executions.

Such secrecy is typical among states that impose capital punishment, including Texas, where lawmakers passed a similar measure in 2015 to ensure drug suppliers did not face retaliation or harassment for cooperating with executions.

“States are saying, ‘We don’t need to show you the information about … how we find or drugs or the training of the prison staff,’” said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that tracks executions. “And then, when things go wrong, they can’t be held accountable.”

Creech was convicted of five murders in three states and suspected of several more. He has been in custody since 1974 and was already serving a life term when he beat a fellow inmate, 22-year-old David Dale Jensen, to death in 1981 — the crime for which he was to be executed.

When his appointed hour came at 10 a.m. Wednesday, Creech was wheeled into the execution chamber and strapped to a table. Medical personnel poked and prodded at his arms, legs, hands and feet for nearly an hour, making eight attempts, but they couldn’t find a vein they thought would hold up long enough to deliver the fatal dose. He was returned to his cell.

It is unclear whether or when the state might try again, or how. Like other states concerned about the availability of lethal injection, Idaho recently passed a law allowing for firing squads as a backup, but the state has yet to write protocols for using that method or build a facility where it could shoot people to death. It has not approved the use of nitrogen gas, a method used for the first time early this year in Alabama.

Creech’s execution team comprised volunteers who, according to Idaho execution protocols, were required to have at least three years of medical experience, such as having been a paramedic, and to have “current venous access proficiency.” They were not necessarily doctors, who famously take an oath to “do no harm” — though Idaho Department of Correction Director Josh Tewalt later told lawmakers that the executioners regularly use their IV skills to save lives in their day jobs. They wore white balaclava-style coverings to conceal their faces.

Tewalt defended the state’s approach, saying the department ensures execution drugs are acquired lawfully, provides test results showing their authenticity, and ensures medical members of the execution team meet or exceed required qualifications.

“I would argue we are very transparent about any information that speaks to the integrity of the process,” said Tewalt. “What we won’t do is tell you their names.”

Tewalt also disagreed with characterizing the attempt as “botched” — stopping the execution after the failed IVs prevented the process from truly going awry, he said.

Creech, according to his attorneys, suffers from several conditions that could have made vein accessibility challenging: Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and edema. It can also be more difficult for older people to have IVs inserted, as their veins can be less stable.

“This is precisely the kind of mishap we warned the State and the Courts could happen when attempting to execute one of the country’s oldest death-row inmates in circumstances completely shielded in secrecy,” Creech’s attorneys, with the nonprofit Federal Defender Services of Idaho, said in a written statement.

Among the arguments they made in their unsuccessful last-minute petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court was that the secrecy violated Creech’s due-process rights and could constitute cruel and unusual punishment if the lethal drug, the sedative pentobarbital, was of poor quality and caused unnecessary pain or complications.

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Beheadings, crucifixions and heads on spikes: Inside Saudi Arabia’s ‘relentless killing spree’ of medieval-style executions – including 81 in one day – that has seen record numbers put to death under Crown Prince MBS

Brutal executions are on the rise in Saudi Arabia under the reign of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with human rights activists calling the score of beheadings and crucifixions a ‘relentless killing spree’.

The Saudi authorities have killed hundreds in capital punishments since the Crown Prince’s tenure started in 2015, hitting a new milestone that Amnesty International said reveals the kingdom’s ‘chilling disregard for the right to life’. 

Despite bin Salman promising he would limit the use of capital punishments, the number nearly doubled since he took the throne, according to NGO Reprieve. From 2010 to 2014 there was an average of 70.8 executions per year but from 2015 to 2022 there was an average of 129.5 executions per year – a rise of 82 per cent. 

Last year, the kingdom carried out at least 172 executions, despite renewed promises from bin Salman to limit the scope of capital punishment. 

Saudi Arabia even beheaded 81 people in a single day in March 2022 as part of the 193 executions Amnesty International said were carried out in the country – despite authorities saying it had been just 147.

The majority of state executions in Saudi Arabia are still carried out by sword decapitation – sometimes followed by the crucifixion of the body as the heads are displayed on a stick – but there have also been reports of prisoners sentenced to death by stoning.

Beheadings are only carried out by Saudi Arabia and the Taliban and can be used for a variety of crimes including murder, apostasy (abandoning Islam), homosexuality, witchcraft or sorcery, and ‘waging war on God’.

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Alabama Attorney General vows to use nitrogen gas executions AGAIN as he doubles down on ‘textbook’ controversial death with 43 Alabama death row inmates set to die just like Kenneth Eugene Smith

Alabama‘s Attorney General has vowed to keep using nitrogen gas to execute inmates despite harrowing reports from witnesses to Kenneth Eugene Smith’s execution.

Steve Marshall even offered to assist other states in procuring the previously-untested method, brushing off claims the killer writhed and shook in agony as he was slowly suffocated to death in a 22-minute ordeal on Thursday night. 

‘What occurred last night was textbook,’ Marshall said Friday, contrasting allegations from many, including Smith’s spiritual advisor who said it was ‘torture’ and the ‘worst thing’ he had ever seen. 

‘When they turned the nitrogen on, he began to convulse, he popped up on the gurney over and over again, he shook the whole gurney,’ spiritual advisor Jeff Hood, who was in the chamber, said immediately after the execution.  

In the face of the controversy, nitrogen hypoxia has opened a new avenue for US prisons to continue the practice of executions, with some states going years without amid a nationwide shortage of lethal injection drugs. 

Marshall cited this in his remarks Friday, praising how nitrogen gas executions are ‘no longer an untested method – it is a proven one.’ 

Officials insisted for months leading up to the execution that it would be humane and painless for Smith, who had a previous execution in 2022 called off after prison staff tried and failed to insert an IV line for several painful hours. 

Following the failed execution in 2022, Smith sought his subsequent execution to be carried out via nitrogen hypoxia – in an apparent gamble that officials wouldn’t follow through with the untested method.

However, Marshall said of the 165 inmates on Alabama’s death row, 43 prisoners have opted to be executed via nitrogen hypoxia over lethal injection when their time comes. 

‘We’ll definitely have more nitrogen hypoxia executions in Alabama,’ he concluded. 

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Minute by gruesome minute: From his last words to the final horrifying spasm on his gurney, how America’s first nitrogen gas execution saw killer Kenneth Smith thrash around while his wife wept during grisly 22-minute death in Alabama prison

A murderer was put to death in Alabama overnight with a previously unused and untested method, in what witnesses described as a horrifying 22-minute ordeal.

Kenneth Eugene Smith, 58, was paid $1,000 to kill an Alabama woman, 45-year-old Elizabeth Sennett, more than 30 years ago and was sentenced to death for the crime. He has been on death row ever since.

The state had previously attempted to execute Smith in 2022, but the lethal injection was called off at the last minute because authorities couldn’t connect an IV line.

On Thursday night, the state tried again to put him to death, this time successfully using ‘nitrogen hypoxia’ – suffocation by administering gas through a mask.

It marked the first time a new execution method was used in the US since 1982, when lethal injection was introduced and later became the most common method. 

Alabama had predicted the nitrogen gas would cause unconsciousness within seconds and death within minutes.

However, those who watched the execution at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama have said it was anything but simple.

Witnesses said Smith appeared to shake and convulse at the start, pulled against his restraints, and breathed for up to ten minutes before finally falling unconscious.

While executions are never filmed in the US, it is possible to piece together the events from witnesses testimony given by those who watched the scene unfold in the immediate aftermath of Smith’s death.

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The grisly history of America’s death row: Agonising three-hour death from botched lethal injection, notorious last meals and the real-life execution that has eerie parallels to Green Mile

The impending execution of killer Kenneth Eugene Smith with untested nitrogen has brought America’s controversial capital punishment system back into sharp focus.

Smith will be gassed to death with nitrogen hypoxia tomorrow at 6pm in Atmore, Alabama, after the US Supreme Court denied his appeal.

It will be the first execution of its kind in the US and first known nitrogen execution in the world. 

But Smith’s demise will be just the latest in a long line of officially sanctioned killings in the United States.

The 2000 hit film adaptation of Stephen King’s novel the Green Mile, which featured a horrifying electric chair execution scene, was loosely based on the real case of 14-year-old George Stinney, who was electrocuted for the murders of two girls in 1944.

In 1928, housewife Ruth Snyder was executed by the same method after murdering her husband with her lover. Incredibly, a photographer took a secret picture of the moment of her death using a camera strapped to his ankle.

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CRIME SCENE DNA DIDN’T MATCH MARCELLUS WILLIAMS. MISSOURI MAY FAST-TRACK HIS EXECUTION ANYWAY.

FELICIA ANNE GAYLE PICUS was found dead in her home, the victim of a vicious murder that devastated her family and rattled her neighbors in the gated community of University City, Missouri, just outside St. Louis. Police suspected a burglary gone wrong. The scene was replete with forensic evidence: There were bloody footprints and fingerprints, and the murder weapon — a kitchen knife used to stab Picus — was left lodged in her neck.

That detail caught the medical examiner’s attention. Weeks earlier, another woman had been stabbed to death just a couple of miles away, and the weapon was left in the victim’s body. Days after Picus’s murder, the University City police chief told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that investigators had identified a “prime suspect,” someone they said had been spotted in the area “in recent weeks,” whom they believed had killed before.

But whatever became of that lead is unclear. After Picus’s family posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer, a jailhouse informant named Henry Cole came forward with a story about how his former cellmate, Marcellus Williams, had confessed to murdering Picus. Soon, police secured a second informant: Laura Asaro, Williams’s former girlfriend, also told the cops that Williams was responsible for the killing. There were reasons to be wary of their stories. Both informants were facing prison time for unrelated crimes and stood to benefit. Many of the details they offered shifted over the course of questioning, while others did not match the crime. Nonetheless, Williams was charged with Picus’s murder, convicted, and sentenced to death.

Questions about the investigation and Williams’s guilt have only mounted in the years since the August 1998 crime. DNA testing on the murder weapon done years after his conviction revealed a partial male profile that could not have come from Williams. On the eve of Williams’s scheduled execution in 2017, then-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens intervened. He issued an executive order that triggered a rarely used provision of Missouri law, empaneling a board to review the evidence, including DNA, that jurors never heard about at trial.

While that review was ongoing for most of the last six years, the board never submitted a final report or recommendation to the governor, as the law requires. Instead, last June, Gov. Mike Parson announced that he was rescinding his predecessor’s order, effectively dissolving the panel that had been reinvestigating the case.

The question now is whether Missouri law allows the governor to simply disappear an ongoing investigation. Because the law has so rarely been used, its contours have never been fully litigated, prompting the Midwest Innocence Project, which represents Williams, to file a civil lawsuit seeking to invalidate Parson’s order. The state’s attorney general balked, arguing that Williams was trying to usurp the governor’s independent clemency powers. The AG has asked the Missouri Supreme Court to toss the lawsuit — and clear the way for Williams’s execution.

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Florida’s revival of death penalty fuels rise in US executions in 2023

The US saw a rise in executions in 2023 as a result of Florida’s revival of the death penalty, amid Ron DeSantis’s “tough on crime” campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

DeSantis scheduled six executions this year – the first time the state has judicially killed people since 2019 and the largest number in almost a decade. Florida also handed down five new death sentences this year, more than any other state.

Florida’s sudden return to the death business accounts for the increase in execution numbers nationwide, which rose to 24 in 2023 from 18 in 2022 – a startling reversal of the death penalty’s historical decline across the US.

The flurry of executions greenlit by DeSantis is highlighted in the annual review of capital punishment released on Friday by the authoritative Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). The report points to a sharp dichotomy that while the ultimate punishment is generally on the wane in the US – this year was the ninth in a row when fewer than 30 prisoners were put to death – there is rising concern about the visceral unfairness of the practice.

In Florida’s case, the number of executions carried out this year raises a disturbing ethical prospect: can the cost of DeSantis’s bid for the White House be counted not only in the millions of dollars spent on the campaign trail, but also in human lives?

This is not the first time that the death penalty has been injected into presidential posturing. Bill Clinton, keen to quash claims that he was soft on crime, memorably quit the campaign trail in 1992 to return to Arkansas, where he was then governor, for the execution of a mentally impaired prisoner, Rickey Ray Rector.

DeSantis has similarly made law and order a central pillar of his challenge to Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. In addition to increasing penalties for drug traffickers, DeSantis has passed two new death penalty laws this year designed to make it easier to send people to death row.

The first allows the death sentence to be meted out in cases of the non-fatal sexual assault of a child – a direct contravention of a 2008 US supreme court ruling that prohibits such penalties.

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Alabama’s next death penalty atrocity: The execution of Casey McWhorter

30 years after a murder committed by three teenage boys, Alabama plans to execute one of them, Casey McWhorter, who was just three months past his 18th birthday at the time of the crime. (McWhorter’s co-defendants were 15 and 16, respectively.)

Any argument in favor of executing McWhorter is undercut by the illogical, unbending brutality of a bright-line legal rule established by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the Court held the 8th and 14th Amendments prohibit the execution of defendants younger than age 18, but, not the execution of juveniles like McWhorter whom — mentally and emotionally — under any reasonable interpretation, were children at the time of their crime(s). This is because of Roper’s legal fiction that childhood rigidly ends at 18 years of age — on the nose — and not a day, or as in McWhorter’s case, 3 months, older. Describing that period in his life to a reporter recently, McWhorter said: “I had issues in my head that I didn’t know how to work out.”

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