Death Penalty Digest

Jared Lee Loughner, the young man facing a death sentence for the now infamous shootings in Tuscon, Arizona in the USA earlier this year, was ruled incompetent to stand trial earlier this week. There is a good discussion on the issue from NPR. Competency is a fascinating and disturbing issue in the US death penalty system. Here at Reprieve we are big fans of Slate and their US legal commentator Dahlia Lithwick and I recommend checking them out for stories on US judicial issues, including an article on Loughner earlier this year.

If you’ve been paying attention to the Reprieve blogs recently – what do you mean you check the Guardian website before ours? – you’ll remember this blog on Republican attempts to repeal the groundbreaking Racial Justice Act in the state. Their attempts may, sadly, be bolstered by news of this Civitas poll that 70% of people questioned in the state have ‘full support’ for the death penalty. I always wonder whether, if those questioned were given a short seminar on what the death penalty actually costs and involves for defendants and victims’ families alike, the results would be vastly different…

Bad news from India where the President Pratibha Patil has denied mercy to two men convicted of murder. Her rare decision paves the way for Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar and Mahendra Nath Das to be executed by the Indian government, which hasn’t been done since 2004 when Dhananjoy Chatterjee was hanged. The President’s decision is a severe blow to human rights worldwide as India looked to be following the global trend towards abolition.

The plight of Alan Shandrake in Singapore has been ongoing for some time now. This shocking tale of government censorship and oppression reached a sad conclusion this week as Shandrake was sentenced to a six-week prison term and a 20,000 Singapore dollars fine. Why? Because he wrote a book, Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, which criticises the Singapore government’s use of state-sponsored killing for certain crimes. The government justified their treatment of Shandrake, saying that his crime was 'still the worst case of scandalising contempt that has hitherto come before the Singapore courts.' Hmm, scandalous indeed.

In Malaysia nine men have been arrested for drug trafficking and all will face the death penalty if convicted.
However some relatively good news comes from Indonesia as Australian Scott Rush, convicted of drug trafficking as part of the so-called Bali nine, had his death sentence commuted to life.

Often when writing the digest I come across stories buried deep inside my google alerts, which I can’t believe haven’t been given greater press coverage across the world. This fascinating and worrying story about three Bangladeshi activists who face a possible death sentence if convicted of those most heinous of crimes, including being part of a union and causing public nuisance. The International Labor Rights Forum says that the charges against the men are completely falsified because they are all involved in the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity. All three men work in garment production for a company named Nassa, which is one of the main suppliers to US-based behemoth Walmart. Members of the general public are now urging Walmart to intervene and use their enormous buying power to prevent these trumped-up charges against the men being used to condemn them to possible death. Walmart, however, are attempting to silence the public protests by censoring their Facebook page. Find out details of the case here, where you can also find a link to sign the petition urging Walmart to help those who work for them.

The Department of Justice has declared that Arizona obtained drugs used to execute inmates illegally. The execution of Donald Beaty was hours away from going ahead when the DOJ stepped in. Reprieve has been working on preventing the supply of lethal injection drugs with huge successes of late.

Bad idea of the week award undoubtedly goes to the Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister of Kenya, Mutula Kilonzo, who has proposed that Kenya introduce the death penalty for people convicted of corruption.