A woman is going to be wrongfully executed next month for a crime she did not commit. Her case was used as a political ploy, and a false confession was produced by gross police misconduct.
Her name is Melissa Lucio and she’s going to die this April.
“Parking Lot Pimpin| On the Wrongful Conviction of Julius Jones
This Friday we get into the wrongful conviction of Julius Jones, a Black man who has been on death row in Oklahoma for 19 years for a 1999 murder that he’s always denied taking part in.
Julius will be wrongfully be put to death in SIX DAYS if we don’t take action now.
Reach out to the Governor’s office at 405-521-2342 and urge Governor Stitt to stand by the recommendation of the Pardon and Parole Board and grant Julius Jones clemency. Time is of the essence.
What you can say or speak from the heart: I would like to urge Governor Stitt to stand by his own word to follow the recommendation of the Pardon and Parole Board and grant Julis Jones clemency. Please save Julius from wrongful execution.
- Let’s also discuss how the judge is literally messing over the Kyle Ritttendon trial. His overly chatty disposition can lead directly to an appeal if Kyle is in fact found Guilty.” - @lyneezy
TAKE ACTION NOW:
➡️Call the Oklahoma City Governor’s office at 405-521-2342 and urge Governor Stitt to stand by the recommendation of the Pardon and Parole Board and grant Julius Jones clemency
In response to The San Francisco Chronicle’s recent editorial “Fight crime, not futility: Abolish the death penalty,” a thorough evisceration of Proposition 66 – the Grim Reaper ballot initiative seeking to speed-up state-sponsored executions – Sacramento D.A. Anne Marie Schubert promised California voters that, “[t]he overall changes” needed to repair the state’s discriminatory and horribly dysfunctional death penalty are, “easy fixes.”
To anybody who believes that: Not only do I have a snazzy bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, I’ll throw in a bridge to nowhere too.
The Chronicle, which published Schubert’s glib and disjointed talking points under the header “dissenting view,” was also clearly unimpressed. It excerpted just one devastating paragraph from its prior full-length blistering editorial to run beneath Schubert’s superficial response.
The Chronicle reminded Californians it urges a “No” vote on Proposition 66, and a “Yes” vote on the counter-initiative, Proposition 62, which would end capital punishment forever in California: “Prop. 62 offers a straightforward and certain solution: abolish the death penalty, and replace it with a punishment of life without the possibility of parole. The other [ballot initiative], Prop. 66, proposes a highly complex, probably very expensive and constitutionally questionable scheme for streamlining the appeals process in hopes of shaving years off the timeline between conviction and execution. Even the most ardent advocates of capital punishment should be wary of the promises in Prop. 66.”
Perhaps the biggest of the false promises made by Prop. 66 that The Chronicle alludes to – one that all Californians should be wary of – is Prop. 66 proponents’ claim (led by Schubert), that “Prop. 66 would expand the pool of qualified lawyers to deal with [capital] cases.” Again and again, this mantra has been repeated in their op-eds and public statements campaigning for more and quicker state-sanctioned death. I guess they figure if they keep repeating this claim – without a shred of evidence to back it up – that this canard of Prop. 66 will be plum overlooked by California voters. It won’t be.
As explained in “Proposition 66, The ‘Death Penalty Reform and Savings Act of 2016,’ is Fool’s Gold for Californians” qualified death penalty lawyers don’t grow on trees. Nor will a gigantic stork suddenly deliver them on November 9. There simply“are not enough willing and qualified lawyers in California to take these kinds of cases – the most difficult, emotional, time-sensitive, resource-draining cases our legal system has.”
Prop. 66’s “easy fix” for this catastrophic flaw in the death penalty system is, by its express language, to: (1) pressure defense attorneys who don’t currently handle death penalty cases to start doing so, or risk their livelihood, because if they refuse, they won’t be eligible for court appointments at all, and (2) handicap the quality of capital defense representation in California by decimating the independence and the leadership of California’s Habeas Corpus Resource Center (an agency which has been zealously and competently representing death row inmates in the state for decades).
Beyond windy platitudes and rehearsed talking points, not a single Prop. 66 proponent has articulated to voters just how, in practice, Prop. 66’s proposed shotgun-style-appointment of defense attorneys in capital cases, or its ruination of the Habeas Corpus Resource Center, will “expand the pool of qualified lawyers to deal with [capital] cases.”
There have been something like 6 murders in my town in the last year and a half. At one point we went a decade without a homicide. The cop killer just got LWOP, I hope the other two fry.
Observed every 10 October, the World Day Against the Death Penalty unifies the global abolitionist movement and mobilizes civil society, political leaders, lawyers, public opinion and more to support the call for universal abolition of capital punishment. The day encourages and consolidates the political and general awareness of the world-wide movement against the death penalty.
On 10 October 2021, the World Day will be dedicated to women who risk being sentenced to death, who have received a death sentence, who have been executed, and to those who have had their death sentences commuted, exonerated, or pardoned.
Extensive discrimination based on sex and gender, often coupled with other elements of identity, such as age, sexual orientation, disability, and race expose women to intersecting forms of structural inequalities. Such prejudices can weigh heavily on sentencing, including when women are stereotyped as an evil mother, a witch, or a femme fatale. This discrimination can also lead to critical mitigating factors not being considered during arrest and trial, such as being subjected to gender-based violence and abuse.
While working towards the complete abolition of the death penalty worldwide for all crimes and for all genders, it is crucial to sound the alarm on the discrimination women face and the consequences such discrimination can have on a death sentence.
THE DEATH PENALTY IN PRACTICE:
(Statistics from Amnesty International unless otherwise specified)
Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide estimates that there are at least 800 women sentenced to death around the world.
At least 7 countries are confirmed to have a woman under the sentence of death in 2020: Ghana, Japan, Maldives, Taiwan, Thailand, USA, Zambia. The number of countries is, in reality much higher, like in Saudi Arabia and Iran, but where there is no accurate breakdown of death-row statistics by gender.
In 2020, amongst the 483 individuals who were executed, 16 were women located in Egypt, Iran, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
108 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes.
28 countries are abolitionist in practice
55 countries are retentionist.
In 2020, the 5 countries that carried out the most executions were: China, Iran, Egypt, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.
Firstly, I would like to express my sympathy towards everyone affected by this event. This includes those killed and injured, their families, the citizens of Boston and America as a whole, moderate Muslims in America and worldwide who are trying to break free of being seen as extremists, Muslims who have been led astray by extremist teachings, and the Tsarnaev brothers.
Now that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is to be prosecuted under federal law, he could receive the death penalty. Although this seems very likely, I am hoping he does not. I am against the death penalty altogether. No person or group have the right to decide whether someone else deserves to die. There is no qualification that should permit you to choose whether a human lives or dies. For these and the reasons below, I feel very strongly that killing Dzhokher Tsarnaev would be the wrong thing to do.
I do not think there are any purely terrible people, there are just people who end up doing terrible things because of the environment they live in. We cannot place all the responsibility for this event on these two people and especially not just on one now that the older brother is dead. People are incredibly susceptible to the environment they live in especially when they are young. Dzhokher Tsarnaev is nineteen years old. It is not hard to lead someone so young down the wrong path, especially since it was his older brother and members of his religion leading him. They are not responsible for the fact that they live in country where many citizens fear and hate the religion they are part of, or that some of the followers of their religion encourage violence and hate. If Dzhokher Tsarnaev is killed, he can never learn to know and think anything other than what he does now. His death will wrapped in hatred, the hatred that led him and his brother to do this, the hatred many Americans are now feeling towards them, and the magnitude of hatred between Muslims and Americans as a whole. His life has much more potential to lessen this hatred than his death does. I really believe that killing him will do nothing to stop terrorism. Death is not a deterrent for people ready to do something so extreme. What makes people capable of committing this kind of act is that they stop thinking of the people they are aiming to hurt as human beings. If we stop thinking of them as human beings that is the same thing, and we are only bringing about more separation between us. Although many people think that before the separation can end, these kinds of events need to stop happening; really it can only happen the other way around. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were victims of this separation. They were outsiders here in America, living in a place where their fellow citizens are often fearful of and angry towards Muslims. When you are distanced from others, it become very easy to forget that they are just as human as you are. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Americans, Muslims, and the world have a long way to go in breaking down this distance, and killing Tsarnaev or anyone else will not lead us in the right direction.
One of the greatest attractions at the National Radio Show, held at the Coliseum this week will be Saturday night when Bernays Johnson sits in the death chair for the second time in his life. There will be three times as much electrical current passed through his body as is required to run an ordinary street car. Photo shows left to right, Officer William McCullough, Bernays Johnson in chair, and Adolph Girsch, testing the switch
#ISA is still a far greater threat to world peace and human well-being – and responsible for far more death and destruction in recent years, let alone decades – than #ISIS.
Kenneth Williams was executed on Thursday, April 27th 2017 at Cummins Unit, Arkansas for the murder of Cecil Boren. In 1998, Williams abducted Dominique Hurd and her friend at gunpoint, then drove them to several ATMs to make cash withdrawals before shooting them both and leaving them to die. The friend survived, but Dominique died of her injuries, and Williams was sentenced to life in prison for her abduction and murder. In 1999, Williams escaped from Cummins unit and came upon the home of 57 year old Cecil Boren, who lived two miles away from the prison with his wife Genie, who was at church. Williams broke into the home and fatally shot Boren, stole his truck and several of his guns, then drove to Missouri, where he engaged in a high-speed chase with police. During the pursuit, Williams crashed the stolen truck into a water delivery truck driven by a 24 year old man who died of his injuries. Williams was sentenced to death for the murder of Cecil Boren in 2000, and has been sitting on death row at Cummins unit ever since.
Williams was one of eight men who were scheduled to be executed in Arkansas in the month of April. Governor Asa Hutchinson made the nearly unprecedented move to schedule the eight executions because the state’s supply of Midazolam, a controversial drug linked to several botched executions, was due to expire. Four of the eight men received stays of execution. Ledell Lee, Jack Jones and Marcel Williams were executed after delays while their requests were considered and ultimately denied by the Supreme Court.
Williams received Holy Communion for his last meal. When asked for his last words, he stated:
“You won’t even understand them because they will be spoken in my spiritual language, in “Tongues”. Tongues are made mention of in the Bible: 1 Corinthians Chapter 14. If it be my fate to die on an execution table shaped like a crucifixion cross, my last words here on earth will be spoken to God above while the ADC and the State of Arkansas work to put my body to death beneath.”
Williams’ time of death was recorded as 11:05pm (CST). He was the fourth man to be executed in Arkansas in 2017, and the tenth in the U.S.
You can read Williams’ submission to The Marshall Project {here.}
The incredible part of his execution’s story is that Michael Greenwood’s (the truck driver who was killed in the accident) family pleaded for his life to be spared. Greenwood’s wife was pregnant with twins the time of his death and they already had a daughter the same age of… William’s daughter, Jasmine. When Williams received his execution’s date the Greenwoods reached out to Jasmine and realized she had not seen her dad in 18 years, and Williams even had a granddaughter he never met. The Greenwoods bought Jasmine and her daughter plane tickets so they could have a final visit with Williams. As if it wasn’t amazing enough, they also drove from Missouri to Little Rock to pick them up at the airport and drove them all the way to the prison because "If I was Jasmine, I would want somebody there for me. We are all humans, we are all here together, we have to be here for each other,“ said Kayla Greenwood (Michael Greenwood’s daughter). They wanted to make sure Williams would be able to see his family one last time because they know how it feels to lose a father and "It’s just not right. It’s just not right. She didn’t do anything ever and now she is going to be a victim”.
Reblogging again because I forgot that my dear friend @voicefromdeathrow had such a great addition to it!
Lingchi, translated variously as death by a thousand cuts, is the slow process, the lingering death, or slow slicing, was a form of torture and execution used in China from roughly AD 900 until it was banned in 1905. In this form of execution, a knife was used to methodically remove portions of the body over an extended period of time, eventually resulting in death. The term “língchí” is derived from a classical description of ascending a mountain slowly. Lingchi was reserved for crimes viewed as especially severe, such as treason, or killing one’s parents. The process involved tying the condemned prisoner to a wooden frame, usually in a public place. The flesh was then cut from the body in multiple slices in a process that was not specified in detail in Chinese law, and therefore most likely varied. In later times, opium was sometimes administered either as an act of mercy or as a way of preventing fainting. The punishment worked on three levels: as a form of public humiliation, as a slow and lingering death, and as a punishment after death.
According to the Confucian principle of filial piety or xiào, to alter one’s body or to cut the body are considered unfilial practices. Lingchi therefore contravenes the demands of xiao. In addition, to be cut to pieces meant that the body of the victim would not be “whole” in a spiritual life after death. This method of execution became a fixture in the image of China among some Westerners.
“In Colonial Times a hanging was a major social event. People came from miles around with picnic lunches and wine to watch the guilty be punished. The mood was festive and the hanging was an all day affair.”
On May 26, the authorities in Gaza announced a plan to execute 13 people convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances, because it is inherently cruel and irreversible, and has documented serious abuses in criminal justice in Gaza that make the May 31 executions particularly egregious.
