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New Amnesty Report: Increase In Executions Worldwide, Decrease In Countries With Death Penalty

New Amnesty Report: Increase In Executions Worldwide, Decrease In Countries With Death Penalty

Amnesty International released its 2015 report on the global state of the death penalty and executions on Wednesday morning in London. The year was marked by an unprecedented increase in executions, but also by an smaller number of countries pursuing the death penalty.

Despite the 54 percent spike in executions versus 2014, the majority of executions took place in three countries, excluding China: Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Those countries not only lead the world in executions, but also experienced large respective increases in executions: Iran by 31 percent, resulting in 977 executions during 2015; Saudi Arabia by 76 percent, with 158 executions last year; and Pakistan, whose government had imposed a moratorium on the death penalty since 2008, but reinstated it following the December 2014 Peshawar school attack that left 132 children dead. Since lifting the ban, the country has executed 326 people.

The report noted that the death penalty was often used to get rid of political opponents, rather than as a tool of justice.

In almost all regions of the world, the death penalty continued to be used as a tool by governments to respond to real or perceived threats to state security and public safety posed by “terrorism”, crime or political instability, despite the lack of evidence that the death penalty is any more of a deterrent to violent crime than a term of imprisonment.

The report also singled out United States for being the only country in the Americas to continue to use the death penalty over the past seven years. Amnesty also expressed concern over the execution of people with mental or intellectual disabilities. In many cases, the report said, the U.S. continued to “use the death penalty in ways that contravene international law and standards.” Nevertheless, only 28 executions were carried out last year, compared to 35 in 2014.

The report noticeably excluded China. Since 2009, the organization hasn’t printed China’s execution statistics, due to a lack of transparency from the Chinese government. While it’s estimated that more than 1,000 people were executed in China in 2015, the numbers could not be verified because statistics on executions are a state secret.

Despite the increase in executions globally, Amnesty said 2015 had more countries abolish the death penalty than ever before. In its report, it noted:

When Amnesty International began campaigning for abolition in 1977, only 16 countries had fully abolished the death penalty. Today the majority of the world’s countries are fully abolitionist, and dozens more have not implemented death sentences for more than a decade, or have given clear indications that they are moving towards full abolition. The starkly opposing developments that mark 2015 underscore the extent to which the countries that use the death penalty are becoming the isolated minority.

Photo: The “death house” at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio. Photo: Caroline Groussain via AFP
Missouri Carries Out Eighth Execution This Year

Missouri Carries Out Eighth Execution This Year

Washington (AFP) — Missouri put to death a convicted murderer early Wednesday, the eighth death-row inmate executed there so far this year in a grim record among U.S. states.

Earl Ringo, a 40-year-old African American sentenced to death for a 1998 murder during an armed robbery at the restaurant where he worked, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 1231 (0531 GMT) in the town of Bonne Terre, said Mike O’Connell of the state corrections department.

Ringo died nine minutes after he was injected, the spokesman said.

O’Connell did not specify if a controversial sedative, Midazolam, was used before the execution.

Ringo’s lawyers had mentioned it in last-minute appeals to the Supreme Court that were rejected.

Midazolam was used in three executions this year — in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona — that were criticized because the condemned took longer than usual to die and apparently suffered.

Missouri has long denied using it. But it recently admitted using a sedative to ease inmates’ anxiety before execution.

“The only lethal chemical the department uses is pentobarbital,” said communications director David Owen in an email to AFP.

Death penalty opponents allege that the three lengthy recent executions — which left inmates suffering for over an hour at times instead of 10 minutes — amount to a form of torture or the “cruel and unusual” punishment forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.

Ringo is the eighth person executed by Missouri this year, out of a total of 28 in the entire United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The number is the highest ever recorded by a U.S. state at this point in the year.

Texas, which habitually claims that grisly record, is also scheduled to execute an eighth person, a convicted murderer, late Wednesday.

Eighteen U.S. states have abolished the death penalty, but 32 others — and the federal government — maintain the practice, and polls suggest it retains majority support among the U.S. public.

AFP Photo/Nicholas Kamm

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Media, ACLU Sue Oklahoma Over Right To Watch Executions

Media, ACLU Sue Oklahoma Over Right To Watch Executions

By Matt Pearce, Los Angeles Times

Oklahoma prison officials violated the First Amendment when they closed the blinds to witnesses during a botched execution in April, media and civil liberties advocates allege in a federal lawsuit filed Monday.

The American Civil Liberties Union and its Oklahoma affiliate teamed up with the Guardian U.S. and the Oklahoma Observer to file the lawsuit, which springs from the April 29 execution of Clayton Lockett.

Lockett’s death reinvigorated the national debate over the death penalty after he writhed and groaned and died of a heart attack 43 minutes after receiving a lethal injection. After Lockett began to groan, execution officials lowered the blinds to reporters, blocking their view.

Lockett had been convicted of kidnapping and murdering Stephanie Neiman in 1999.

“At an execution, the press serves as the public’s eyes and ears,” Katie Fretland, a freelance journalist representing the Guardian and the Observer at the execution, said in a statement; she is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “The government shouldn’t be allowed to effectively blindfold us when things go wrong. The public has a right to the whole story, not a version edited by government officials.”

The lawsuit names Robert Patton, the director of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, and Anita Trammell, warden of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary, as defendants.

“We’re not going to comment on the pending lawsuit or anything else about it (the execution) until after the investigation comes out and is completed,” Jerry Massie, spokesman for the department of corrections, told the Los Angeles Times, referring to the internal investigation ordered by Gov. Mary Fallin after the execution.

Currently Oklahoma keeps the blinds closed while intravenous lines are inserted into the prisoner. The lawsuit seeks to have the blinds open at the onset of this procedure and remain open until the body is removed. The suit also asks that state officials videotape all executions.

“The death penalty represents the most powerful exercise of government authority,” ACLU attorney Lee Rowland said in a statement. “The need for public oversight is as critical at the execution stage as it is during trial.”

David Schulz, an attorney and co-director of the Yale University media clinic, told the Times that when prison officials closed the blinds during Lockett’s execution it was “a violation of the public’s constitutional rights.”

“In this country, the public has always had a right to view executions, historically,” Schulz said, adding that in more recent times, the media have served as the public’s surrogate in witnessing executions.

Schulz said it was within a judge’s power to order Oklahoma to videotape executions as “a safeguard of the public’s rights, if there’s an effort in the future to deny access as there was here.”

Monday’s lawsuit was not the first time that the Guardian — a British publication that has recently expanded its coverage of the United States with Guardian U.S. — has sued American public officials over First Amendment rights.

In May, the Guardian, The Associated Press, and Missouri’s three-largest newspapers sued state officials over the state’s execution secrecy laws, which have helped conceal the source of the state’s lethal injection drugs and the identities of execution personnel. Schulz helped design the Missouri lawsuit.

AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski

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Missouri Man Executed Wednesday Morning

Missouri Man Executed Wednesday Morning

By James Queally and Ryan Parker, Los Angeles Times

A Missouri man convicted in the rape and murder of a 24-year-old woman was executed at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay and Gov. Jay Nixon rejected his plea for clemency, according to statements.

Michael Worthington, who was convicted in the 1995 slaying of Melinda Griffin, was pronounced dead by lethal injection at 12:11 a.m., according to Mike O’Connell, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Corrections.

“Mindy Griffin’s parents waited for nearly two decades for justice for their daughter,” state Attorney General Chris Koster said in a statement after the execution. “She was just 24-years old, finishing the final year of her studies at UMSL (University of Missouri, St. Louis) when her promising life was cut short. Tonight, Michael Worthington paid the price for his callous brutality.”

Nixon denied Worthington’s request for clemency Tuesday night, shortly after the Supreme Court denied his request for a stay of execution in a 5-4 decision.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan would have stayed his execution, court filings show.

“There is no question about the brutality of this crime — or doubt of Michael Worthington’s guilt. Melinda ‘Mindy’ Griffin, only 24 years old, was viciously raped and killed in her own home by Worthington,” Nixon wrote in a statement. “DNA evidence and his possession of items stolen from her home reinforced his confession and guilty pleas to murder, rape and burglary.”

But the razor-thin denial from the Supreme Court suggests a growing divide over the use of lethal injection to kill death row inmates. In recent years, it has become harder for states to acquire phenobarbital, the paralytic used in lethal injections.

That trend has forced states to turn to a new cocktail of drugs, and several executions have been stayed in recent months as inmates sue to receive more information about the chemicals that will be used in executions.

Last month, convicted murderer Joseph Wood had to receive 15 doses of a lethal cocktail in Arizona, gasping and struggling several times during an execution that lasted nearly two hours.

The execution of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma also lasted an unusual amount of time, and there were reports he writhed and gasped for air. Lockett also had to receive multiple injections.

Photo: Ken Piorkowski via Flickr