Regime’s effort to exploit US campus crackdown damaged by treatment of Toomaj Salehi An Iranian court’s decision to pass the death sentence against Toomaj Salehi, a popular Iranian rapper and regime opponent, has led to international protests and damaged Iran’s fledgling efforts to exploit crackdowns on unrest in US university campuses over Gaza as an abuse of human rights. Crowds gathered in the US, Europe and Canada on Sunday to support Salehi, while dozens of political prisoners in Iran’s Ghezel Hesar prison issued a statement condemning the death sentence, calling it “the culmination of gr ..read more

Pursuit of ‘non-stop executions’ causing psychological distress to corrections staff as states urged to widen gap between executions The relentless pursuit of “non-stop executions” by a rump of US death penalty states is exposing prison staff to extreme levels of psychological and physical stress, according to traumatized corrections officers who are appealing for help. Though capital punishment is generally on the wane in America, with only five states carrying out executions last year, those states that remain active are showing a renewed determination. In some states, the pace of judicial k ..read more

A glaring racial disparity is evident in the 73 botched procedures involving lethal injections since 1976, report by Reprieve finds Black incarcerated people have been subjected to prolonged and painful botched executions in the US at more than twice the rate of white death row inmates, a new study has found. While glaring racial disparities have long been visible in US capital punishment, the report from the international human rights group Reprieve finds that the inequities exist even inside the death chamber. It reveals a shocking racial disparity in the rate of botched executions in which ..read more

Some of the 27 states that have the death penalty have not executed anyone in years but others still do – and the divide is rooted in history The execution of Brian Dorsey in Missouri on Tuesday, despite an extraordinary campaign asking for his sentence to be commuted, brought into focus the issue of the death penalty in the US – one of the few countries in the western world that still uses corporal punishment. Dorsey, 52, was executed for the 2006 murders of his cousin and her husband, after the number of people executed in the US rose to 24 in 2023, from 18 in 2022 ..read more

Brian Dorsey, convicted of murdering his cousin and her husband, put to death amid efforts by many to have his sentence commuted Brian Dorsey, who was convicted of murdering his cousin and her husband in 2006, was executed in Missouri’s Bonne Terre state prison Tuesday despite an extraordinary effort by corrections officials and his appeals judge to have his capital sentence commuted. Prison officials confirmed that Dorsey had been put to death by lethal injection. They said he had been pronounced dead at 6.11pm ..read more

Petition argues that Brian Dorsey is fully rehabilitated and that execution would violate eighth amendment Attorneys for a Missouri death row inmate have asked the US supreme court to block an execution sentence from going ahead on Tuesday, following a petition for clemency from more than 70 correctional officers and a letter from the inmate’s appeals court judge. The petition – a writ of certiorari – asks the court to spare Brian Dorsey’s life in favor of a life-without-parole sentence based on grounds that he is fully rehabilitated and therefore execution would be counter to the eighth amend ..read more

Prison guards, judges, jurors and prison workers have beseeched Mike Parson to commute capital punishment to life without parole With less than a week until Brian Dorsey is scheduled to be executed at Potosi correctional center in Missouri for the 2006 killings of his cousin and her husband, an extraordinary effort is underway to have the 52-year-old’s capital sentence commuted to life without parole. More than 150 people have called on the Missouri governor Mike Parson to commute Dorsey’s punishment – including more than 70 current and former prison workers, many of whom got to know Doresy be ..read more

State plans to kill 25 prisoners in less than three years but officials had sought to increase gap between executions from 60 to 90 days An appeals court judge in Oklahoma reportedly told state execution schedulers to “suck it up” and “man up” after they requested a 90-day period between executions in an effort to combat trauma, accommodate staff shortages and reduce the potential for errors. The state plans to execute 25 prisoners whose appeals are exhausted in less than three years, about 58% of the inmates on death row in Oklahoma. At a hearing last Tuesday, Judge Gary Lumpkin responded to ..read more

Afghan regime’s return to public stoning and flogging is because there is ‘no one to hold them accountable’ for abuses, say activists The Taliban’s announcement that it is resuming publicly stoning women to death has been enabled by the international community’s silence, human rights groups have said. Safia Arefi, a lawyer and head of the Afghan human rights organisation Women’s Window of Hope, said the announcement had condemned Afghan women to return to the darkest days of Taliban rule in the 1990s ..read more

Willie James Pye was convicted in 1996 for the shooting murder of his ex-girlfriend Alicia Lynn Yarbrough three years earlier Georgia executed a man on Wednesday night, the first time the state has used the death penalty in over four years. Willie James Pye, 59, was killed by an injection of pentobarbital, a sedative, and was pronounced dead at 11.03pm at the state prison in Jackson ..read more