The death penalty is always inhumane, and the past few days in Texas have brought to light some of its most worrisome aspects.

On Wednesday, The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended that Robert Thompson’s death sentence for his role in a 1996 robbery and shooting be commuted to life imprisonment. The shooter, Sammy Butler, was convicted and received life in prison, which raises serious questions about the arbitrary nature of how the death penalty works in real life. Why wait until the last minute to discuss the disproportionality of sentencing the accomplice to death while the man who pulled the trigger is sentenced to life in prison?

Earlier this week a federal judge in Houston granted a last-minute stay to Gerald Eldridge, allowing 90 days for a review of his mental state and capacity. Executing the mentally ill is extremely problematic, and the time to deal with such a serious issue is not during a prisoner’s last meal. Such jarring, nerve-wracking changes at the last second are traumatic for everyone involved, including the victims’ families.

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Kenneth Mosley is scheduled for execution on September 24. He has been on death row for the past twelve years. Mr. Mosley was convicted of killing a police officer while attempting to rob a bank in Garland, Texas on February 15, 1997.

Kenneth Mosley

If and when he is executed, Mr. Mosley will be among the 200+ victims of the death penalty under a single Texas governor.

Mr. Mosley has committed a terrible crime, and things look grim for him. He overcame many adversities in his life, but finally a combination of addiction and difficult circumstances led to this tragedy. Still he says:

I’m staying positive and have hope that something good will happen …

Kenneth Mosley grew up in an abusive home. His family was very poor, and racial tensions ran high in the community.  In spite of it all, Kenneth managed to finish high school and a year of college. Unfortunately, he did not have the financial means to continue his education. He left college to work in a Coca Cola Bottling Company. Soon afterwards, he met and married his wife Carol.  They had a baby girl named Amber.

Life was going well for the Mosely family, but things started to fall apart when Ken became addicted to crack cocaine. He and his wife sought treatment from many different clinics, but after losing his job, he lost his health insurance and, with it, any hope of affording treatment for his addiction. His life went into a downward spiral.

One day, with a gun in his pocket, Ken walked into a bank. A police officer, who later paid with his own life, spotted him and attempted to stop him from robbing the bank. They struggled and crashed through a window. During the struggle,  the officer was shot and killed.

During Ken’s trial, the quality of the representation he received was so poor that he may as well have been deprived of his constitutional right to effective counsel.  The lawyers failed to present evidence of several mitigating factors that may have influenced the jury’s decision to impose the death penalty.  For example, despite the fact that Ken suffered a brain injury resulting in permanent damage, his attorneys did not even examine Ken’s medical records.  Nor did they address his debilitating addiction to crack cocaine.  No evidence of either impairment was presented to the jury.

If you wish to participate in efforts to obtain clemency for Kenneth Mosley, see Amnesty’s Urgent Action for Kenneth Mosley. For additional information, visit http://www.kennethmosley.org/.

Amnesty International has just released a report detailing the consistent human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia under the facade of combatting terrorism. Thousands of people have been arrested and detained in virtual secrecy, while others have been killed in uncertain circumstances. Hundreds more people face secret and summary trials and possible execution. Many are reported to have been tortured in order to extract confessions or as punishment after conviction.

Reported methods of torture and other ill-treatment include severe beatings with sticks, punching, and suspension from the ceiling, use of electric shocks and sleep deprivation. Flogging is also imposed as a legal punishment by itself or in addition to imprisonment, and sentences can include thousands of lashes.

Since the attacks of September 11th, Saudi Arabia has been under intense pressure by the West to take on terrorism as 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens. Abdulrahman Alhadlaq, a Saudi Interior Ministry official, told The Associated Press that Amnesty International’s assertions were “claims that have to be proven.”

Samah Choudhury contributed to this post

With the execution of Terry Lee Hankins last night, Texas Governor Rick Perry has reached a pretty apalling benchmark: 200 executions in his eight and a half years as governor.  As in other states, the death penalty in Texas has proven to be ineffective as a deterrent, racist in its application, and extremely costly. Not to mention that Texas does not have a strong reputation for considering all of the evidence before going forth with an executuion: there have been at least eight executions in the last twenty years where there was strong evidence of the defendant’s innocence – five of them were from Texas. This overzealous approach to justice means that Texas sometimes fails to punish the true perpetrators of some pretty horrific crimes.  Texas has been responsible for 439 executions since the death penalty was re-applied in 1976. That’s 38% of all executions in the United States since that time.

Terry Hankins was executed by lethal injection around 6:19pm for shooting his two step children and his wife. He had also confessed to killing his father and half-sister around 2000, though he was only tried for the first three deaths.

The state of Texas is likely to continue its reckless spree of executions. Hankins was the 16th execution this year, and the state still has four more executions scheduled over the next four months, the next of which is Kenneth Mosley on July 16.

On Friday, a ghastly execution took place in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh, involving the decapitation and subsequent public crucifixion of Ahmed bin ‘Adhaib bin ‘Askar al-Shamlani al-’Anzi, who was executed on a number of charges, including murder, abduction and homosexual intercourse.   This comes right before President Barack Obama’s trip to the Middle East and Europe, set to begin in Saudi Arabia tomorrow.   While the main goal of the President’s visit to Riyadh may be to garner King Abdullah’s support for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to discuss regional policy towards Iran, Obama’s trip COULD also be an excellent opportunity for the President to bring attention to Saudi Arabia’s human rights abuses, including the country’s frequent executions administered for a large variety of offenses, including many non-violent ones (see the Amnesty International UK report on Obama’s trip to the Middle East). 

The vicious nature of Ahmed bin ‘Adhaib bin ‘Askar al-Shamlani al-’Anzi’s execution showcases the excessive cruelty of capital punishment in Saudi Arabia and also brings up important questions regarding human rights violations related to the detention and mistreatment of prisoners in the Kingdom.   President Obama COULD use this recent execution to highlight concerns regarding the brutality of Saudi Arabia’s death penalty, its widespread use and the secretive nature of trial proceedings in that country.  He COULD point to the fact that executions in Saudi Arabia are often disproportionately directed towards non-Saudi citizens. 

But, given how arbitrary and disproportionate the US death penalty is, the gruesome execution that took place in Saudi Arabia Friday will probably go unmentioned.

Amnesty International learned today about the tragic and very unexpected execution of Delara Darabi this morning in Iran.

Delara had been given a two month stay of execution by Ayatollah Shahroudi, the head of the Iranian Judiciary, just two weeks ago.  Her lawyer and her family had not been informed of the execution, despite the law requiring that.

Any execution is unacceptable, but Delara Darabi was convicted of a crime she allegedly committed when she was a juvenile.  Iran is the only country in the world that still executes juvenile offenders.  Delara Darabi had been arrested in 2003 and charged with the murder of a relative during a burglary.  Delara Darabi originally confessed to the crime, but later recanted, saying she had been hoping to protect her boyfriend who she identified as the perpetrator; she had mistakenly believed that the death penalty would not be applied to her because she was only seventeen at the time.  She has been imprisoned in Rasht Prison since 2003 and had developed into a talented artist.

Please write to the Iranian authorities to protest this and all executions of child offenders.

Amnesty International in the UK will be doing a flower laying ceremony at the Iranian embassy in London on Wednesday, May 6th between 4-6pm and encourages activists around the world to organize solidarity actions on the same day.  We are very sorry to have to bear this horrible news to you and can only hope that it will reaffirm our commitment to finally end juvenile executions in Iran.

The Caribbean.  Beautiful sun-drenched beaches. Palm trees swaying in ocean breezes. Snorkeling.  Scuba diving.  Fruity rum drinks.  Etc.  Those who see the Caribbean as a fabulous tourist destination aren’t inclined to spend much time dwelling on the criminal justice systems of these island nations.  They might have a sense that there is a crime problem, but probably wouldn’t know that the Caribbean in fact has one of the highest murder rates in the world.  Or that this is generating a political movement to bring back executions, which have been rare to non-existent in the region in recent years.

On St. Kitts and Nevis, executions have come back.  On December 19, Charles Elroy Laplace was put to death by hanging, and it is not clear whether his right to be provided with legal assistance to apply for clemency or to file a final appeal was honored.  Denial of this kind of assistance would be a violation of international law and UN standards on the death penalty.

There are seven other men on death row in St. Kitts and Nevis, which has a total population of around 46,000, a death row incarceration rate of about 15 per 100,000.  (By contrast the US rate is a little more than 1 per 100,000.)  St. Kitts and Nevis had 23 murders last year — an appalling rate of about 50 per 100,000 (The 2007 U.S. murder rate was around 5.6 per 100,000.) 

But while the violent crime problems in many Caribbean nations are severe, executions will not solve them; three people were shot the day after Charles Laplace was executed.

Amnesty International is calling for St. Kitts and Nevis to implement a moratorium on executions, so that the public will no longer be distracted by the spectacle of hangings, and will be able to focus on less dramatic but infinitely more effective crime prevention measures (improved policing, better social services, mental health care, drug treatment).

Execution witness viewing room (c) Scott Langley

Starting tomorrow (Jan. 14), Texas will embark on a three-month spree of executions in which 14 men (one of them white) will be put to death.  Later this year, perhaps as early as late April, Texas will probably carry out the 200th execution under Governor Rick Perry.  This is an appalling number, particularly given what we have learned about the flawed nature of our criminal justice and capital punishment systems.  Texas accounts for 9 of the 130 death row exonerees, the third highest total of any state, and another 5 men have been executed in Texas despite compelling evidence that they were innocent.

The 19 exonerations from DNA evidence in Dallas County don’t include anyone from death row, but it’s the highest total of any county in America, and is yet another piece of evidence that Texas justice doesn’t always get it right.

Of course, sadly, none of this is really big news, and it all fits in neatly with the violent, shoot-first-ask-questions-later stereotype that Texans often embrace – but it’s at odds with what’s going on in the real Texas.  Real Texans are usually genuinely concerned about justice, and about avoiding uncorrectable, fatal mistakes.  Governor Perry should take his cue from these real Texans, who in 2008 handed down the fewest death sentences (11) of any year since the death penalty was reinstated.  Now is not the time for a shameful and reckless pursuit of executions; now is the time for Texas politicians to finally acknowledge what everybody else already knows:  their death penalty has serious problems.

Recently, lawmakers in Mexico have proposed reinstating the death penalty to deal with rising kidnapping and murder rates.  According to the LA Times, lawmakers will hear arguments regarding this amendment to the constitution next week.  Talk of executing criminals in Mexico has become more frequent by some politicians as the number of unsolved kidnappings, many resulting in murder, soars.  One such lawmaker said, “In Coahuila the death penalty is not the issue, it’s how we should kill (the criminals); by firing squad, slashing their throats, hanging or something lighter, like lethal injection.”

But let’s step back for a minute.  The reality of the situation in parts of Mexico is that the vast majority of these crimes, many the consequence of a violent drug war, go unsolved and some believe that corrupt police are benefitting by bribing drug cartels in exchange for insider information.  And protecting innocent victims becomes impossible when victims’ families refuse to report the crime to a police force they feel can’t be trusted.

Because the current administration under President Calderon is unlikely to pass any amendment to legalize state-sanctioned executions, the lawmakers pushing for such a measure need to address the real problems in the region.  Before they jump to threatening “throat slashing”, legislators need to target the causes of the organized crime wave and the police force, charged with protecting its citizens, needs to regain credibility.  How can the citizens of Mexico trust authorities to carry out justice on death row when they can’t trust them to carry out justice on their streets?

A jury in New Hampshire has just sentenced a white millionaire businessman named John Brooks to life without parole for the capital murder of Jack Reid in 2005. This was New Hampshire’s first death penalty trial in 49 years; New Hampshire has no one on death row and has not carried out an execution since 1939, and the refusal of this jury to vote for a sentence of death begs the question:  why does New Hampshire have the death penalty?

A second death penalty trial is also underway in New Hampshire, where African American Michael Addison is charged with killing Manchester police officer Michael Briggs.  If Addison is convicted, it will be interesting to see what the jury will decide … a failure to vote for death would add to the argument that the death penalty in New Hampshire has little point, while a vote for death might raise eyebrows, given that today a white millionaire was spared execution.