Expert says capital punishment dying out in Asia

Capital punishment is declining in most Asian countries and will likely disappear from the region, an expert said Wednesday.

He was the spitting image of the killer, had the same first name and was near the scene of the crime at the fateful hour: Carlos DeLuna paid the ultimate price and was executed in place of someone else in Texas in 1989, a report out Tuesday found.

In Connecticut, a powerful, comprehensive study provided evidence that state death sentences are haphazardly meted out, with virtually no connection to the heinousness of the crime. In California, two former death penalty proponents — a prosecutor who drafted the 1978 ballot …

The Connecticut Senate voted 20-16 early Thursday morning on a bill that would do away with the death penalty and make the state the fifth in five years to abolish capital punishment. The bill now goes to the House of Representatives, where it is also expected to pass. In the  …

Texas, America's most prolific practitioner of the death penalty, has launched an extraordinary attack on the international anti-death penalty charity Reprieve, accusing it of intimidating and harassing drug companies and likening the group to violent prison gangs responsible f …

"If you look at the company the United States is inglobally, it's not the company we want to be in: China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq," Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA, told The Associated Press.

PHOENIX - All known requests to stop the execution of an Arizona death row inmate have been denied, so the plan to carry out a second death sentence in eight days moved ahead Thursday.

40 Years and $4 Billion After People v. Anderson Struck Down California's Death Penalty

Originally posted on Fair and Unbalanced "We cannot assume that capital punishment is not so cruel as to offend contemporary standards of decency . . .  It degrades and dehumanizes all who participate in its processes.

One could commend the bishops' commitment to principle if it were based on any sincerity. Unfortunately, that seems not to be the case.

The right wing Republican politicians who have been denouncing the requirement that female employees have access to birth control as part of their health benefits as an attack on religious freedom completely ignore the church teachings they don’t agree with.

Death Penalty: Justice or Revenge?

I was recently in a discussion with a fellow Viner about the death penalty, and criminals in general. I was unable to finish said discussion, because we realized that we were getting rather off topic from the original thread.

Death penalty lawyers gather to hone their skills while also hoping to make their jobs obsolete by supporting the SAFE California campaign to replace the death penalty.

The Right Wing evangelical community has been willing to say just about anything to bash same-sex marriage.

On Saturday’s edition of “Up With Chris Hayes,” Gary Johnson brought up an old Newt Gingrich idea I hadn’t heard before: Putting individuals who brought more than two ounces of marijuana into the United States to death.

ROWLAND HEIGHTS, LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- A woman was sentenced to death for the murder of her husband and their two sons. The victims' family members are against the death penalty.

Do Pro-Choice Advocates Really Want To Discuss Capital Punishment?

I had originally considered titling this article “Discussing the Fallacious Linkage of Abortion and Capital Punishment” with my first sentence suggesting we not discuss it, and say we did.  Aside from the clumsiness of the original title, I thought it best to add …

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - A killer convicted of murdering a woman and throwing her body into Tampa Bay more than 30 years ago is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Feb. 15.

PHOENIX - The state has filed motions asking the Arizona Supreme Court to set execution dates for two more death row inmates.

ACLU: an organization that claims to, and often does, act upon principles, causing people of all political persuasions to revile it as insane          Balloon: mankind's first device to lend him attributes of a god; a child's  …

While large numbers of pro-lifers are okay with capital punishment and today's empire, Ron Paul's pro-life inclination brings him to opposite conclusions in both cases.

Poster Child For California's Broken Death Penalty

Originally published at Fair and Unbalanced Death row inmate David Murtishaw died Tuesday of a heart attack.  He was sentenced to death 32 years ago for the 1978 murder of three USC film students.  Had the crime occurred just nine months earlier, before the re-insti …

LOS ANGELES — The governor of Oregon announced a halt to executions in the northwestern US state, the latest to drop capital punishment as a penal option. Governor John Kitzhaber issued a temporary reprieve for a prisoner due to die next month, and said he would allow no …

GOP Debate Hall of Shame: Audiences cheer torture, executions, and letting people go without health care; boo gay soldier serving in Iraq and statement that whole Muslim world not responsible for 9/11 (Video)

  Last night's GOP presidential candidate debate followed the 2011 tradition of applause and boos at rather bizarre moments, when members of the audience wildly cheered Michele Bachmann's pledge that if elected President she would allow waterboarding, which she described as …

saw this posted elsewhere earlier today, and found it interesting.

DNA Testing for Hank Skinner

There is no reason NOT to do a test; execution is final, there must be no uncertainty whatsoever.  Economics must not play a part; testing costs are nothing compared to a human life.  The record of Texas is not 100% error-free in its use of the death penalty—not t …

That's a central question in the debate over the death penalty that David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew Grossman did not address in their Oct.