Capital Punishment // Current

To DIE or not to DIE?

A look at San Quentin California & its infamous Death Row ..

ChokeonThis
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Push to end death penalty

Australia will press for an international moratorium on capital punishment following the execution of the Bali bombers. Foreign... more

TravG73
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Stay for death row inmate Troy Davis

Troy Davis, a black American who has spent 17 years on death row for the murder of a white policeman, was today granted a stay of... more

Apocalipstick
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Ohio Executes Inmate Who Argued Was Too Fat to Die

LUCASVILLE, Ohio - Ohio executed a 5-foot-7, 267-pound double murderer Tuesday who argued his obesity made death by lethal... more

mariposablanca
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Ahmadinejad on Iran's gays

Larry King interviewed Iranian President Ahmadinejad and questioned him about his statement last year that, "There are no... more

uroborus8
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Supreme Court issues stay of execution for Davis

Troy Jones was scheduled to die at 7:00 PM EST today. The case was internationally controversial because several eye witnesses... more

uroborus8
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Political Viewpoints Linked To Fear

Researchers writing in Science report that the political orientation of test subjects who have strong views is linked to how easy... more

TheRealEdwin
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Any last requests? Yes, says death row inmate. Turn me into fish food

The final requests of death- row prisoners facing execution have often included large orders of pork chops, fried chicken and... more

lecoke
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The high cost of the death penalty

Having noticed that, following several different articles, comments made in response expressed the ardent wish to have criminals... more

Vierotchka
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Texas executes Mexican-born killer in defiance of world court

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- A Mexican-born condemned prisoner was executed Tuesday night for the rape and murder of two teenage... more

ivxx
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Ohio Inmate Claims He's Too Fat to Be Executed

Lawyers for Richard Cooey argue in a federal lawsuit that Cooey had poor veins when he faced execution five years ago and that the... more

joshzimmerman
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Iran to Execute 30 convicts on Sunday

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Thirty people convicted of drug and other criminal charges will be hanged on Sunday, Iran's... more

hollowman218
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Supreme Court rejects death penality for raping a child

The Supreme Court on Wednesday outlawed executions of people convicted of raping a child. In a 5-4 vote, the court said the... more

thedismembermentplan
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Supreme Court Rejects Death Penalty for Child Rape

By DAVID STOUT - NY Times

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, on Wednesday that sentencing someone to death for raping a child is unconstitutional, assuming that the victim is not killed.

“The death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court. He was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

The court overturned a ruling by the Louisiana Supreme Court, which had held that child rape is unique in the harm it inflicts not just upon the victim but on society and that, short of first-degree murder, no crime is more deserving of the death penalty.

Justice Kennedy, while in no way minimizing the heinous nature of child rape, wrote that executing someone for that crime, assuming that the victim was not killed, violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Moreover, Justice Kennedy wrote, sentencing someone to death for raping a child could have terrible, unintended consequences, given the years that typically go by between a crime and the execution of the defendant.

“Society’s desire to inflict death for child rape by enlisting the child victim to assist it over the course of years in asking for capital punishment forces a moral choice on the child, who is not of mature age to make that choice,” Justice Kennedy wrote.

The dissenters were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., generally regarded as the conservative wing of the tribunal."
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"As for the case at hand, Juliet L. Clark, an assistant district attorney from Gretna, La., countered that Mr. Kennedy, who weighs 300 pounds, had committed “a very savage rape” that caused serious injuries to his victim. And R. Ted Cruz, the Solicitor General for the State of Texas, who argued as a “friend of the court” on the side of Louisiana, said that Mr. Kennedy (like Mr. Davis, the other child-rape defendant on Louisiana’s death row) had “committed crimes that are just unspeakable.”"By DAVID STOUT - NY Times WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled, 5 to 4, on Wednesday that sentencing someone to death for... more