Catch Up on the News & Pending Executions (Various Issues & Controversy)

See and Click on Dr. Rick Halperin's Daily UPdates (Lower Right Column on this the JOH blogsite or mark as favorite: http://people.smu.edu/rhalperi/ )

Here's a sample from Dr. Rick's site with excerpts from TODAY'S News and Updates (several complicated items have been collapsed and excertped here for space & time -- be sure to see his site for the indepth coverage there.
WARNING...many of these articles are not at all prett -- nor do they provide an easy sell for abolishing the DP in every case. But Rick seeks to present all sides & opinions.)

Not in the same order as Rick's site:

NEVADA (ACLU Study: Study lays out costs associated with death penalty in Nevada--The ACLU of Nevada recently highlighted a study conducted by a UNLV professor who found that defending the death penalty in Clark County costs at least $170,000 more than defending cases where life in prison is sought.

Terance Miethe, of UNLV's department of criminal justice, began the study in January and determined that the 80 pending capital murder cases in Clark County will cost approximately $20 million...Miethe's research estimates that public defense attorneys have spent double the time, about 2,300 hours, on capital murder cases as opposed to non-capital murder cases, the report says.

According to the study, 35 cases resulting in the death sentence between 2009 and 2011 took, on average, more than 3 years to complete. The study concluded that life with parole and life without parole cases took 2 to 2 1/2 years...In a Friday media release, the ACLU called for further study on the issue. The group plans to advocate for a moratorium on the state's death penalty during the 2013 Legislature.(source: Las Vegas Sun)

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APRIL 10, 2012:
ALABAMA----stay of impending execution -- The scheduled Thursday execution of Alabama death row inmate Cary Dale Grayson has been delayed by the Alabama Supreme Court.
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NORTH CAROLINA (Note that NC has also been having heated debates over retaining the Racial Justice Act) Taft murder case is rare capital trial
It has been 2 years since a murder that shocked Raleigh; a seemingly random beating of a state school board member. Monday, jury selection began in the trial of Jason Williford. Police say he raped and killed 62-year-old Kathy Taft as she was recovering from surgery at a friend's house in Raleigh in March of 2010. One of the big breaks in the case, was a DNA link between a cigarette at the scene and Williford. His attorneys unsuccessfully tried to get that piece of evidence thrown out. The murder of Taft lingers in the minds of family and friends like Pat Dunn, a former Greenville mayor who knew Taft well. "Whether it's the death penalty or life in prison without parole, this is what you don't want this person to be out on the street ever with the opportunity to do this again," said Dunn...Though people might think that the death penalty would save taxpayer dollars by taking the criminals out of the prison system, a two-year study out of Duke University found the opposite was true. Death penalty cases actually cost a lot more public money.

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Collapsed Excerpt...
Guilty plea expected in threat case----Ex-death-row inmate accused of retaliating against Putnam Co. judge -- Former Ohio death-row inmate Kenneth Richey is to plead guilty Friday to a charge related to threatening a Putnam County judge who was a prosecutor on the 1986 case that landed him on death row. Richey, 47, of Tupelo, Miss., is expected to enter a guilty plea to an unspecified felony that could land him in prison for "no more than" 3 years, said Todd Schroeder, an assistant Putnam County prosecutor. Sentencing is set for May 7. Richey was indicted in January by a Putnam County grand jury on charges of retaliation and violating a protection order. -- Richey was convicted in 1987 of setting a fire at a Columbus Grove, Ohio, apartment that killed 2-year-old Cynthia Collins. He was sentenced to death, but in 2008 -- after 2 decades on death row -- a federal appeals court overturned Richey's conviction because of problems with the arson evidence that led to his conviction.Richey, a dual U.S. and Scottish citizen who returned for a time to his native Scotland in 2008, is being held in the Putnam County jail. (source: Toledo Blade)
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USA: Media Groups File Challenge to Keep Guantanamo Court Open--Several U.S. news organizations have asked a judge in the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals to keep the court open to the media this week if an alleged al Qaeda chieftain is allowed to testify about his mistreatment in secret CIA prisons--(CIA has admitted to water-boarding here) There are many other complications in this article you may want to read on Dr. Rick's DP News & UPdates in full...Maybe one of the most interesting news according to this item is that "Prosecutors have not commented publicly about whether they want the hearing closed. They have filed what is titled "Motion for Hearing to Identify and Minimize Amount of Closure of Proceedings" in the shackling matter, however it remained sealed on Monday --media groups joining the request were Fox News Network, National Public Radio, The New York Times, The New Yorker magazine, the Tribune Company, The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. (source: Reuters)

Special NOTE: if you'd like to follow more on GITMO -- Go to bordc.org ; nomoregitmos.org ; cageprisoners.org and CCR.org as well as The International Committee of the Red Cross/Red Crescent - ICRC/RC - and often the Amnesty and ACLU blogs This note from The JOH blogger, Connie

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BELARUS: The authorities of Belarus do not recognize the validity of the decisions of the UN Human Rights Committee on complaints of Belarusian public activists...Belarus is among the top 5 countries in terms of the number of individual complaints to UN Human Rights Committee: from 1992, in the Committee there were 126 “Belarusian affairs” and the 83 of them had not yet been completed. (The Death Penalty is a top issue in this dynamic.)

SRI LANKA: Female applicants for the vacant executioner position in Sri Lanka...Sri Lanka's prisons have vacancies for 2 executioners...The government reinstated the death penalty in 2004 for murder, rape and drug trafficking following the murder of a high court judge -- since 2000 there are 1,164 death row inmates languishing in jails waiting for execution or a final decision for commutation for execution. -- Last execution was carried out in Sri Lanka in 1976...(source: Colombo Page)

END excerpts from Death Penalty News & Updates

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