NO to the Death
Penalty
The "Moratorium 2000" - International Campaign
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NO to the Death
Penalty |
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The symbol indicates a news item relative to an execution; if possible we will report the name of the person executed.
SOUTH KOREA – Ecclesiastical campaign against death penalty - Mar 16th '99 CHINA - The execution of a man on a charge of fraud - Mar 12th '99 RUSSIA/CECENIA – The execution of two men. - Mar 12th '99 U.S.A./Missouri - Mar 10th '99 U.S.A./ Virginia - Mar 10th '99 IRAN - Four people convicted to death, charged on illegal export of carpets - Mar 9th '99 U.S.A. / Arizona – THE OTHER GERMAN EXECUTED – 18 MINUTES AGONY - Mar 4th '99 U.S.A. /ARIZONA - Feb. 25th '99 INDONESIA - Feb 25th '99 U.S.A. /OHIO - RETURNS TO KILLING-Feb 20th '99 CUBA - Feb 16th '99 EX-BUDDHIST MONK EXECUTED - Feb 9th- U.S.A. /Arkansas PHILIPPINES - Feb. 5th CHINA - Feb 5th U.S.A. /Illinois - PORTER IS FREE -Feb 4th U.S.A./Oklahoma - SELLERS; SENTENCE CARRIED OUT - Feb 4th U.S.A. /Arizona - Jan '99 EXECUTIONS OF MINORS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD CHINA - 35 PERSONS EXECUTED - Jan 31th '99 U.S.A. -Missouri - Jan 28th '99 U.S.A. /Louisiana - The execution of Dobie Williams- Jan 8th '99) U.S.A. /South Carolina - 500th Execution since 1976. PAKISTAN - DIC ‘98
SOUTH KOREA – Ecclesiastical campaign against death penalty
Mar 16th '99 – The goal is to awaken the public opinion about the unjustifiability and ineffectiveness of death penalty, as a deterrent against the crime.
Fr. Anthony Seong Wan-Hai, the Executive Secretary of the ecclesiastical committee promoted by the Catholic Episcopal Conference, presenting the initiative said that in May there will be also: a seminar, a message from the bishops, a gathering of signatures for a petition, appealing to the Parliament for the abolition of death penalty and another to the U.N.
Since 1948 in South Korea there have been 902 executions, the last one it was in 1997.
Mar 12th '99 – The first execution in the history of China, for a man charged with a fraud. In the province of Shandong, Cao Yasha, a former business-man has been charged of defrauding some banks and investment trusts, stealing about 3 millions $.
The Supreme Court of People, delivering the death-verdict, has meant to stress upon "the importance that the nation gives to the maintenance of law and order, also in the financial field."
Mar 12th '99 – Two persons accused of murder have been shot in Cecenia by a firing squad. According to a Russian news agency the execution was passed onTV, just after the reading of the sentence. Grigori Kriuchkovski, 48 years and Lema Bakaiev, 43 years, were executed at dawn at Grozny. That’s the first execution after the proclamation of the independence from Russia and the introduction of sharia and the islamic courts.
Mar 10th '99 – Roy Roberts has been executed with a lethal injection in the death chamber of Potosi. He was convicted for collaborating to kill a warder in 1983. Before being killed he has whispered: "You are killing an innocent man."
Mar 10th '99 - George Adrian Quesinberry, a man of 37, has been executed with a lethal injection in the death chamber of Greensville, Virginia. He was convicted of killing in 1989 the owner of a shop, during a robbery. The Supreme Court had refused the clemency, requested by the lawyers for mental illness. According to the attorneys for defence Quesinberry had been shocked several times: his mother had committed suicide when he was 2 years old and then his grandfather abused him and raped, when he was 4 years old. Virginia is the second state in the U.S., by the number of executions.
IRAN - Four people convicted to death, charged on illegal export of carpets
Mar 9th '99 – Four people, convicted of exporting illegally carpets abroad, without declaring the real value, have been convicted to death. The smuggler were arrested 3 years ago, with other 80 people, including a high-level-customs officer.
Every year in Iran about 200 people are executed. The situation there is dramatic, both for methods of execution, and for the crimes punished with capital punishment: adultery, apostasy, prostitution, drug trafficking, production of pornographic materials, whereas the methods of execution are: hanging, shooting, stoning. Since 1998 the executions by stoning have become more and more frequent, according to the opposition. This is a cruel practice: the stones are to be chosen, nor too big (because the persona has not to die too early), either too small (because they wouldn’t be so painful. In September 1988 the Iranian Government announced they are going to execute other drug-traffickers (about 38% of the prisoners).
In 1998 the capital punishment was used also against the followers of the Bahai-sect.
U.S.A. / Arizona – THE OTHER GERMAN EXECUTED IN ARIZONA – 18 MINUTES AGONY
Mar 4th '99 – In the gas chamber of Florence, Arizona, Walter Lagrand has been executed, after his brother’s execution, just one week before.After 18 minutes of agony: he coughed, shaked his head again and again, trying not to breathe; then after a last effort, his head fell ahead. So Walter LaGrand, 37, died in the gas chamber, after an eleven-hours. The Governor Hull has completely ignored the requests of pardon and suspension presented by the International Courts of Aya, by the German Government, and personally by the German Chancellor and the Ministers of Justice and of Foreign Affairs. On the U.S. death row there are other 3 German citizens. The brothers Rudy and Michael Apelt, in Arizona like the LaGrands, and Dieter Reichmann, in Florida
Feb. 25th '99 - Karl LeGrand, 35, has been executed in Arizona, after several suspensions. He was the first German citizen to be executed in the U.S., after the end of the Second World War. LeGrand had been condemned to death with his brother Walter in 1984, for a robbery and a murder.
The German Government and even the Chancellor Schroeder had tried to convince the American authorities, to commute the penalty, or at least to suspend the execution.
The foreigners on death row in the U.S. are now 70, coming from 26 countries. 9 are from Europe, (3 are German), 1 French, 2 British, 1 Spanish. Most of the 35 from Mexico are on death row in Texas (South) or in California (West). From other countries: Canada (2), Estonia (1), Cuba (4), Salvador (2), Honduras (2), Laos (1), Thai (1), Vitenam (1), Cambodia (1), Argentina (1), Peru (1), Yugoslavia (1), Lebanon (1), Hong Kong (1), Bangladesh (1), Pakistan (1), Iraq (1), Iran (1), Poland (1), Trinidad (1), Guyana (1). Amnesty International claims that the most of the foreigners who are on death row was never informed during the trial, about the right to consult their Embassy.
INDONESIA
Feb 25th '99, Abdurrahman Wahid, the Head of Nadhlatul Ulama, the biggest Islamic organisation in Indonesia, has officially signed the appeal for the moratorium by the year 2000.
Feb 20th '99 - After 36 years, the executioner of Ohio has returned to kill. Notwithstanding the heavy appeals from the Holy Father through the Papal Nuncio, Wilford Berry, 35, was put to death for the homicide of his ex-employer during a robbery in 1989. Berry, noted the ACLU, one of the most important American organizations for the defense of civil rights, is mentally ill and even the psychiatrists called to testify during the 1990 process confirmed the diagnosis : the condemned man has had suicidal tendencies from the age of 9 and he suffers from two forms of schizophrenia. Notwithstanding his objections (Berry has frequently said that he wants to die, a position which has earned him the name of ôthe volunteerö in the local press) the ACLU and other activists against the death penalty have maintained an evening vigil before the residence of Governor Robert Taft, the only person who can save him from lethal injection, to be carried out at 10 p.m. on Friday, February 19 ( 2 a.m. of Saturday in Italy).
CUBA
Feb 16th '99-The dialogue between Church and State began positively and rejoices in the pastoral visit by the Holy Father John Paul II in 1998, but it is still necessary to work so that this may be definitively consolidated. The Catholic Church, however, cannot give in on one point: the defense of life in every circumstance. Thus, referring to the decision of the Cuban Parliament to introduce the death sentence into law for drug traffickers , Cardinal Ortega today declared that the choice was ôpreoccupying, not only in respect to the future, but also in relation to the spirit which the visit of the Holy Father had left in Cuba
Feb 9th '99- Jaturun Siripongs, a Thai national condemned to death in 1983 for double homicide, was executed by lethal injection last night in the prison of San Quentin, California. An ex-Buddhist monk, Siripongs was the second person condemned to death and executed in the United States in less than a week, and the sixth in California since capital punishment had been re-instated in 1977. The new governor of California, Democrat Gray Davis, had denied clemency to the Thailand citizen last Saturday. ôRemorse is not sufficient to cancel out the death sentence imposed for a double homicide,ö declared Gray. SiripongsÆ execution had been halted last November just six hours from being carried out when a federal judge ordered the suspension because of an irregularity in the handling of the last appeal of the then governor, Republican Pete Wilson. Siripongs was contemned to death for the 1981 murder of two persons during a supermarket hold up. He later admitted that he had participated in the theft, but said that the murders were committed by an accomplice whom he refused to name. Even the foreign minister of Thailand, Surin Pitsuwan intervened, asking the governor of California to reduce the death sentence to life imprisonment, but all was in vain.
U.S.A. /Arkansas
"I PREFER TO FACE THE ANGER OF THE PEOPLE RATHER THAN THE WRATH OF GOD" said the Governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee (Baptist preacher and Republican elected in 1996 to the post previously occupied by President Bill Clinton), who changed the sentence of Bobby Ray Fretwell from execution to life imprisonment. Fretwell , who was to die on February 14, thus escaped being part of a double execution scheduled for that day. HuckabeeÆs decision was taken upon the appeal of one of the jurors in the Fretwell case who said that he had had a crisis of conscience because of the outcome of the trial. The juror, Gene Stinnet ,turned to Huckabee declaring that he had serious doubts about the FretwellÆs 1989 trial
for the previous four year murder of a laborer . The juror said that the accused was not well defended and that he finally gave in to pressure, going along with the decision of the other 11 jurors. ôI prefer to face the anger of the people rather than the wrath of God,ö said Huckabee, but later he was not moved for the fate of the other condemned man destined for execution on February 14, and Johnnie Michael Cox, 42, was put to death for a triple homicide committed in 1989.
Feb 5th '99 - Leo Echegary, 38, painter, was put to death in the Philippines by lethal injection in the New Bilibid penitentiary of Manila. He was accused of having repeatedly violated his 10 year old stepdaughter. Death was ascertained to have taken place at 15:19 local time (8:19 Italian time). The execution of Echegaray was the first in 23 years in the Philippines, the only Asiatic nation which is predominately Catholic. The death penalty had been abolished in 1987 and restored in 1994. There are actually 800 prisoners on death row, guilty for the most part of carnal violence. The execution took place in the death cell, a cubicle with walls illumined by powerful reflectors, under the eyes of 24 persons, among whom were journalists and relatives of the condemned man, including his wife. Appeals for clemency from various countries and humanitarian associations to the president, Joseph Estrada, did not prevail. Before the execution he said that he would also have rejected the intercession of the Pope and added: ôI feel only pity for you. Think how you would feel if it were your daughter.ö Echegaray, who proclaimed himself innocent until the end, had sought to appeal to the Pontiff, but given EstradaÆs position, the Catholic Church in the Philippines held that such intercession would have been useless. Between 1924 and 1976 84 persons were executed in the Philippines. In 1997 a new constitution had abolished capital punishment, giving Congress the possibility of re-instating it for serious crimes such as homicide, kidnapping, rape and drug trafficking. In 1994, therefore, Congress had decided to re-introduce it, waiting, however, to use the method of lethal injection, imported last year directly from the United States.
Feb 5th '99- Two men accused of "separatist terrorism" were put to death on January 28 at Yining, the city of Xinjiang on the border of the far western corner of China in 1997 during the serious ethnic encounter between China and the Turkish speaking independents. The sentence against Yibulayn Simayi and Abudureyimu Aisha were pronounced on January 28 in a public trial against 11 persons, ten "terrorists" and a drug dealer who were also put to death.
U.S.A. /Illinois- PORTER IS FREE -
Feb 4th '99 – After 16 years on death row Anthony Porter, 43, has been freed, only a few hours before the already scheduled execution. Porter had been condemned to death 16 years ago, for the murder of two teenagers on the South Side, a Chicago ghetto. The case of the prisoner of Chicago was taken to heart by a team of the School of Journalism of Northwestern University which had, in the past, succeeded in having 10 other wrongly accused prisoners freed in Illinois. David Protess, professor of Northwestern University who took the case to heart. Protess’ team had begun to work months ago on the case of the condemned man. They had discovered other elements which involved Simon in the double homicide, including the testimony of a nephew who had heard the man boast of the two assassinations and in the sworn testimony in which a witness was said to have implicated Porter under pressure on the part of the police.
Feb 4th '99 – SELLERS’ SENTENCE CARRIED OUT
Sean Sellers, 29, was put to death this morning by lethal injection in the American prison at McAlester, Oklahoma for three homicides committed when he was thirteen and suffered from mental disturbances. All attempts on the part of lawyers to obtain the suspension of the sentence were in vain, as was the support of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, and other political exponents from thought the world, from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Bianca Jagger, ex-wife of singer Mick Jagger.
Jan '99 -A 38 year old American India, Darick Gerlaugh, proven guilty of having killed a disabled person who had picked him up while he was hitchhiking, was executed today in the penitentiary at Phoenix in Arizona. Before the lethal injection was administered, Gerlaugh participated in a gathering with other two Indians, smoking an Indian peace pipe and intoning selections for peace and hope.
EXECUTIONS OF MINORS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
UNICEF: DEATH PENALTY DECREASES IN THE WORLD. The number of Nations in favor of abolishing the death penalty is increasing. Comforting data emerges from the annual report of ôNo one shall touch Cainö on the death penalty in the world. Of the 185 member States of the united Nation, 59 have abolished the condemnation to death, 16 have abolished it for ordinary crimes and 27 no longer practice it, even though it is still on the books (among these, Turkey). There are, instead 27 Nations committed to abolish it insofar as they are members of the European Council (among these are Albania, Armenia, Russia and the Ukraine). Executions continue in 76 Nations, especially in China, Iran, Arab Emirates and Vietnam. In 1998, minors under 18 were sentenced in Congo and the USA, while Afghanistan, China, Iran, Korea, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen held public executions. There were five particularly brutal executions in Afghanistan this year. In 1996, in China there were 4,367 persons executed, in 1997 there were 1,876 and in 1998 there were even fewer. From the beginning of the year there have been about 1,500 executions in Iraq while 24 persons were condemned to death and executed in Sierra Leone. There are 3,517 prisoners awaiting death in the USA, 800 in the Philippines and 18 children in India.
Jan 31st '99 - The Chinese government put 35 persons to death in the course of the anti-crime campaign that was unleashed throughout the country in view of the New YearÆs festivities at mid February. Chinese TV announced this today. Those who received the death penalty were guilty of crimes ranging from homicide to conspiracy, from drug trafficking to theft. On Friday six persons were executed at Shenzen; on the same day, another 21, guilty of homicide and theft, were put to death at Chongquing after a public trial which attracted a crowd of 300 people. At Taiwan, 8 Chinese were executed for drug trafficking, homicide and theft. China, which is first for capital punishment throughout the world because it puts to death a number of persons higher than the total of the rest of the world every year, executed 1,876 persons in 1997.
U.S.A. / Missouri
Jan 28th '99 (After the) - Stop to the executin of Mease - The Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano has said he himself has been the bearer of the request from the Holy Father to the Governor for clemency on Mease’s behalf. After that request, with an exceptional act, Governor Mel Carnahan, granted an act of clemency, saving Mease’s life, only a few hours before the execution.
The execution of Dobie Williams (see the letter of Sr. Helen P.)
Jan 8th '99 - After 11 postponements, Dobie Williams a 38 year old physically, mentally handicapped black man, was executed in the death house of the prison at Angola, in Louisiana, by lethal injection. Sr. Helen Prejean was by his side till the end.
December, 1998- At Karachi, Ashraf Irani, accused of having murdered a policeman was condemned to be hung after President Rafiq Tarar had rejected a request for clemency.
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