Eideard

Muslim women on their way to the symbolic stoning of Satan

Saudi authorities have executed a woman convicted of practising magic and sorcery.

The Saudi interior ministry said in a statement that the execution had taken place on Monday, but gave no details of the woman’s crime.

The London-based al-Hayat daily, however, quoted Abdullah al-Mohsen, the chief of the religious police who arrested the woman, as saying she had tricked people into thinking she could treat illnesses, charging them $800 a session.

The paper said a female investigator followed up the case, and the woman was arrested in April 2009 and later convicted in a Saudi court.

It did not give the woman’s name, but said she was in her 60s.

So far 76 people have been executed this year in Saudi Arabia, according to an Associated Press count. At least three have been women.

In the GOUSA – with appropriate political connections – she might have been elected governor, say, of Florida. Although her profit margins were obviously not sufficient to impress Saudi princes much less Big Pharma.

Why Texas? Well, if the topic is political rule based on ignorance, allegiance to superstition and bigotry – stimulated by the occasional execution to excite fervor – there’s hardly a better comparison.

Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, or about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then, according to a comprehensive analysis of the death penalty’s costs.

The examination of state, federal and local expenditures for capital cases, conducted over three years by a senior federal judge and a law professor, estimated that the additional costs of capital trials, enhanced security on death row and legal representation for the condemned adds $184 million to the budget each year.

The study’s authors, U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur L. Alarcon and Loyola Law School professor Paula M. Mitchell, also forecast that the tab for maintaining the death penalty will climb to $9 billion by 2030, when San Quentin’s death row will have swollen to well over 1,000…

Their report traces the legislative and initiative history of the death penalty in California, identifying costs imposed by the expansion of the types of crimes that can lead to a death sentence and the exhaustive appeals guaranteed condemned prisoners…

Alarcon four years ago issued an urgent appeal for overhaul of capital punishment in the state, noting that the average lag between conviction and execution was more than 17 years, twice the national figure. Now it is more than 25 years, with no executions since 2006 and none likely in the near future because of legal challenges to the state’s lethal injection procedures…

Unless profound reforms are made by lawmakers who have failed to adopt previous recommendations for rescuing the system, Alarcon and Mitchell say, capital punishment will continue to exist mostly in theory while exacting an untenable cost…

As with the recommendations in Alarcon’s 2007 report, none of the remedies outlined by the commission chaired by former Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp has been adopted by lawmakers or put to the public for a vote.

As on so many issues, California leads the way to problems as often as solutions. Personally, I have no problem with economics overruling biblical morality. I may have strong feelings about the justice of execution on a case-by-case basis; but, securely warehousing some demented killer until he dies of old age at a savings of $1.1 million [as the report describes] makes fiscal, social and political sense.

Take the rocks outta his pockets, boys – make it slow!

A federal judge Saturday night ordered that the state of Arizona “immediately and publicly disclose” where it obtained a drug it intends to use to execute condemned murderer Jeffrey Landrigan on Tuesday.

The drama has played out for weeks as defense attorneys have tried to discern where the state found sodium thiopental, a barbiturate that is in short supply. Executions nationwide have been postponed because of the shortage…

On Sept. 30, the Arizona Department of Corrections announced that it had obtained thiopental, though court hearings revealed it had not come from its only apparent source approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA representatives have repeatedly said they are not aware of any other approved source of the drug in the U.S. or abroad.

The state has nonetheless declined to say where it got the drug, with Assistant Arizona Attorney General Kent Cattani citing a state law concealing the identity of executioners.

The Arizona Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to delay the execution because of the debate, and so attorneys at the Federal Public Defender’s Office, which represents Landrigan, took the case to federal court. They maintain the drug may have been illegally imported.

1st – did anyone expect the state of Arizona to comply with federal law? They are a nation unto themselves – just like Texas. Remember, the Constitution is only a convenience for rightwing nutballs when they use it as a defensive weapon.

For state officials and federal officers having at each other – politeness rules. After all, they’re probably playing golf at the country club together, next week.

An Ohio prisoner whose execution was halted after two hours…because technicians were unable to find a usable vein that could be injected with lethal drugs won a stay Friday against another attempt to put him to death next week.

The stay, issued by Judge Gregory L. Frost of the Federal District Court in Columbus, expires on Sept. 28.

A hearing on a further stay has been scheduled for that day, but the one that Judge Frost granted Friday could mean a substantial delay at the very least. Defense lawyers and the office of Gov. Ted Strickland said Ohio required that a new execution date be approved by the State Supreme Court once a stay of execution is issued, whether by the state courts or the federal.

That process, said lawyers for the condemned prisoner, Romell Broom, 53, is likely to take months…

That was the first time an execution by lethal injection in the United States had failed and been rescheduled for another day.

The effort to execute Mr. Broom, convicted of the rape, abduction and murder of a 14-year-old girl, has drawn wide attention to Ohio’s death chamber…

“The problem is there’s no Plan B,” said Dr. Groner, an outspoken opponent of the death penalty. “They have a group of individuals who have a certain skill set for inserting IVs. It’s a very low skill level, and some of the inmates are extremely challenging.”

I admit I’m as self-contradicting as any other thoughtful American. On one hand, mandatory appeals which our legal system mandates means that any death penalty takes decades to happen. Broom has been on Death Row for 25 years. Convicted murderers sentenced to life without parole cost the state less in time and money.

There’s a certain existential calculation that has to be balanced here. If you do the crime, you do the time. If it is supposed to be the end of time – make it short.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A senior Texas judge who refused to hear a last-minute appeal from a prisoner facing execution because her office “closed at five” was herself put on trial today in one of the most high-profile cases of alleged judicial misconduct in the state’s history.

Sharon Keller, dubbed Sharon Killer by her detractors, was the subject of a hearing at the Texas commission on judicial conduct that could ultimately see her removed from the bench.

The case relates to her handling of the imminent execution of a convicted rapist and murderer, Michael Richard, on 25 September 2007. That morning the US supreme court had cast doubt on the constitutionality of using lethal injection – the form of death administered by Texas – by agreeing to rule on whether it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

Lawyers for Richard raced to file an appeal that would put a stay on his execution, which was due to take place that evening, but they were delayed by computer glitches.

They contacted Keller, who by then had gone home to deal with a worker doing repairs to her house. When, at 4.45pm, they requested a postponement of the execution, her reply was: “We close at five.”

At 8.23pm Richard was put to death…

Keller faces charges including denying the rights of a condemned man. She is the highest-ranking judge to face misconduct proceedings.

She’s a Texas Republican. You were expecting respect for human life or constitutional rights?

A Taliban firing squad killed a young couple in southwestern Afghanistan for trying to elope, shooting them with AK-47s in front of a crowd in a lawless, militant-controlled region, officials said Tuesday.

The woman, 19-year-old Gul Pecha, and the man, 21-year-old Abdul Aziz, were accused by the militants of immoral acts, and a council of conservative clerics decided that the two should be killed, officials said.

The two had hoped to travel to Iran, which borders their home province of Nimroz, but their parents sent villagers to bring them home, said Sadiq Chakhansori, the chief of the provincial council. Once back home, the pair was either turned over to the Taliban by their parents or the militants took them by force, the officials said, providing slightly varying accounts….

In remote and dangerous regions of Afghanistan, Taliban fighters operate what are sometimes referred to as shadow governments, where militant leaders serve as government officials and run their own police units and pseudo court systems.

What can you say? There’s no end to such stories. But the victims deserve to have their story shouted from the rooftops.

When an ex-con killed his father during a bizarre robbery 20 years ago, Brad Humphreys thought he would never again feel such pain.

“We thought the ultimate bad had happened,” Brad said. “Boy, it sure wasn’t. There is something worse.”

Twelve years after his father’s death, Brad received a frantic, heart-wrenching phone call from his ex-wife, Lois Humphreys, about their youngest son:

Mike’s friend just called to offer his condolences. He said Mike was killed last night.

Desperate to find out if the news was true, Brad called hospitals and police departments and, finally, the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office. A worker there confirmed that the office had his 20-year-old son’s body.

“The pain of your child dying is so severe I can’t describe it,” Brad said. “I can’t begin to put it into words.”

Sitting in his Arlington home with his wife, Carol, Brad talked about how two random acts of violence have reshaped his life. Brad buried his father and his son, sat through two death penalty trials and watched the execution of the man who killed his father.

On Tuesday, if all goes as scheduled, Brad will watch the execution of James Edward Martinez, the man who killed his son in 2000.

Prison officials said they cannot recall an incident in which a victim has witnessed two executions for two unrelated murders.

A long sad journey. Worse than anything most of us will ever endure. RTFA.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

On Saturday, something typical happened in eastern Afghanistan: Two Taliban guerrillas assassinated a top local politician.

But on Sunday, something very unusual occurred, say witnesses and Afghan intelligence officials. Hundreds of people from around the district of Dara-e-Noor joined with the local police to corner the Taliban assassins. A firefight broke out. Eventually the wounded Taliban were captured. But instead of turning them over to the authorities, the villagers trussed the men to a tree and punched and kicked them to death.

Revenge killings are not unusual in Afghanistan; when the Taliban executed accused murderers in Kabul before the U.S. invasion they would shout, “In revenge, there is life!” But such killings against the feared Taliban are relatively rare.

The episode in Dara-e-Noor represented an uncommon response from local villagers, one motivated at least in part by an angry fear that Afghanistan’s deeply corrupt judicial system would turn the killers loose…

Moreover, it was not only villagers who appeared to rejoice in the killing of the assassins. The intelligence service issued a statement Sunday that almost seemed to endorse the revenge killing. “Such action, and the rapid decision by people against the criminals, shows the hatred and anger against the Taliban and terrorists,” the statement said.

Certainly smacks of more divisions appearing within the “official” government of Afghanistan.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

An Islamist militia has executed a Somali politician who they accused of betraying his religion by working with non-Muslim Ethiopian forces.

An Islamist spokesman in the port of Kismayo told the BBC that Abdirahman Ahmed was shot dead on Thursday. Mr Ahmed was also accused of spying for Ethiopian forces, said to be backing the forces of warlord Barre Hiraale in trying to recapture Kismayo.

Ethiopian forces are pulling out of Somalia, two years after they intervened to try to oust Islamists from the capital Mogadishu. But their mission to prop up the interim government is widely regarded as a failure as various Islamist group have recently advanced and once more control much of the country.

Relatives of Abdirahman Ahmed – also known as Waldiire – told the BBC he did not have a lawyer present during his trial in a Sharia court. They say he was arrested about a week ago and they were informed of his death sentence on Thursday morning.

The relatives said they had asked the authorities to allow Mr Ahmed to go into exile. But he was executed after afternoon prayers on Thursday.

Warlords and gangsters shrouded in the death cloud of religion. What a delightful – and traditional – combination.

Only recently, however, have economists turned their attention to vengeance and tried to measure it in the real world. In a working paper published last month, Naci Mocan, an economist, gathered information on 89,000 people in 53 countries to draw a map of vengefulness. What he found was that among the most vengeful are women, older people, the poor and residents of high-crime areas.

“There was a question of whether or not we can quantify vengeful feelings in a scientific fashion,” Mocan said. “It’s the first analysis of the issue looking at actual data.”

It turns out that personal attributes — age, income, gender — as well as the characteristics of one’s culture and country contribute to a person’s desire for revenge, Mocan said. “A feeling such as vengeance,” he said, “which can be considered primal, is nonetheless influenced by the economic and social circumstances of the person and the country he or she lives in.”
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