The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview 2010
PDF document from Harm Reduction International Website
03 June 2010
Harm Reduction International released a study on the death penalty for drug offences today on the opening day of the 19th session of the UN Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice , taking place in Vienna. The report, titled ‘The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview 2010’, finds that hundreds of people are executed for drug offences each year around the world, a figure that very likely exceeds one thousand when taking into account those countries that keep their death penalty statistics secret.
The report is the first detailed country by country overview of the death penalty for drugs, monitoring both national legislation and state practice of enforcement. Of the states worldwide that retain the death penalty, 32 jurisdictions maintain laws that prescribe the death penalty for drug offences. The study also found that in some states, drug offenders make up a significant portion – if not the outright majority – of those sentenced to death and/or executed each year.
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Bryan Stevenson’s TED talk on injustice and the Death Penalty
“The opposite of poverty is not wealth. … In too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.” (Bryan Stevenson)”
Bryan Stevenson is a public-interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned.
This is his TED speech from March
The whole talk’s worth listening to, but he begins talking about the death penalty around the 8.00 mark.
The wrong Carlos: how Texas sent an innocent man to his death – from The Guardian
A few years ago, Antonin Scalia, one of the nine justices on the US supreme court, made a bold statement. There has not been, he said, “a single case – not one – in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred … the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.”
Scalia may have to eat his words. It is now clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit, and his name – Carlos DeLuna – is being shouted from the rooftops of the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. The august journal has cleared its entire spring edition, doubling its normal size to 436 pages, to carry an extraordinary investigation by a Columbia law school professor and his students.
Full story here.
Death-row innocents trapped in a living hell – From Port Macquarie News
04 Mar, 2012
In his 12 years on death row, Larry Swearingen’s execution date has been set three times. Three times he has known when he would be strapped to a stretcher and put down with drugs: sodium thiobarbital to anaesthetise him, pancuronium bromide to paralyse his muscles and potassium chloride to stop his heart.
In January 2009, he had written his goodbyes and was on his way to the chamber when the stay of execution came through. ”The way I had to look at it was, ‘I’m just gonna lay down and go to sleep,”’ he says. ”I wasn’t gonna grovel. I wasn’t gonna sit there and cry. I can’t be remorseful for a crime that I didn’t commit.”
Swearingen lives at the Allan B. Polunsky unit, an hour or so north of Houston. Along with another 292 men and 10 women awaiting execution for capital crimes committed in Texas, he is kept in solitary confinement. His cell is not quite four metres long and a little more than two metres wide, with a slit above head height, more a vent than a window. He has a toilet, a typewriter, a radio and a hotplate. His daily hour of recreation is spent alone, although he can talk and play chess, through gaps between the cells. Most of his companions are here because they have committed horrendous acts of violence.
Full story here.
Oregon’s Governor halts execution calling the death penalty morally wrong and unjustly administered
Gov. John Kitzhaber stops executions in Oregon, calls system ‘compromised and inequitable’
SALEM — Gov. John Kitzhaber announced today he will not allow the execution of Gary Haugen — or any death row inmate — to take place while he is in office.
The death penalty is morally wrong and unjustly administered, Kitzhaber said.
“In my mind it is a perversion of justice,” he said at an emotional news conference in Salem.
The governor cited his constitutional authority to grant a temporary reprieve for Haugen, in effect canceling the planned Dec. 6 lethal injection of the twice-convicted murderer. Haugen waived his legal appeals and has been preparing for the execution, which would have been Oregon’s first in 14 years.
Full story here.
Stop the Execution of Mark Stroman – from Amnesty International
Mark Stroman is scheduled to be executed on July 20 for killing Indian immigrant Vasudev Patel in a series of shootings of people he believed to be Middle Eastern after the attacks of September 11, 2001.
One of his intended victims, Rais Bhuiyan, survived and opposes the execution.
Join Rais in taking a stand against the perpetuation of the cycle of violence by taking action to stop the execution. Read More »
Chan holding up after failed appeal – from the ABC
By Helen Brown in Bali and staff
Friends of Bali Nine inmate Andrew Chan say he is holding up well after learning his bid for a reprieve from the death penalty has been rejected.
Chan’s girlfriend was one of several shocked visitors to see the Australian this morning.
Chan has been on death row in Bali’s Kerobokan jail for more than five years now.
His girlfriend was too distressed to talk, but Melbourne-based friend Sally Warhaft, who spent three hours with him in the prison’s cramped visitor’s facility, says Chan’s biggest concern is for his family.
“I know his parents and I know how incredibly painful [it is] for Andrew… what they’re going through,” she said.
Full story here.
US Court overrules a death sentence as “unconstitutional” – listen online at Democracy Now!
Court Rules Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Death Sentence is Unconstitutional, Grants New Sentencing Hearing
The case of Pennsylvania death row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal took a surprising turn Tuesday when the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously declared his death sentence unconstitutional. It is the second time the court has agreed with a lower court judge who set aside Abu-Jamal’s death sentence after finding jurors were given confusing instructions that encouraged them to choose death rather than a life sentence. Now Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther and journalist, could get a new sentencing hearing in court. We speak with his co-counsel, Judith Ritter, and Linn Washington, an award-winning journalist who has followed Abu-Jamal’s case for almost three decades. [includes rush transcript]
Full story and audio here.
America Losing The Urge To Kill – from The Age
Simon Mann, Washington
February 12, 2011
Last year, 46 people were executed in America, less than half the number in 1999, the peak year since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.
”The death penalty is putting millions [of dollars] into getting one execution per state per year, if that,” says Richard Dieter, of the Death Penalty Information Centre. ”It’s just totally symbolic, totally political and that’s an expensive thing to keep operating just because it plays well in sound bites.”
Full story here.
Kenyan Court Ruling on Death Penalty
Landmark ruling on death penalty
Three judges of appeal on Friday declared the mandatory death sentence for murder unconstitutional.
In a landmark decision, the three upheld a constitutional provision on protection against inhuman treatment and declared section 204 of the Penal Code, which stipulates death as the only sentence for murder, as inconsistent with the Constitution.
But the death penalty will remain lawful until such a time when Kenyans decide to do away with it, the three judges said.
Full story here.
