All posts tagged "Death Penalty"

Reactions erupted online Friday after President Donald Trump's Department of Justice announced it would reintroduce execution by firing squad.

The death penalty method had been under moratorium since the Biden administration, but the announcement in a press release on Friday revealed the DOJ had decided to reverse the move in an aggressive pivot.

“The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”...

Lawyers for a Black man serving life in prison in Alabama are seeking to overturn his conviction for the murder of a white woman, citing evidence his state-provided attorney was active in the Ku Klux Klan.

“Was he well positioned to represent a Black man?” one investigator asked.

“I think the answer is no.”...

The conservative-majority Supreme Court could decide if IQ tests can rule out an intellectual disability — a move that could echo Project 2025 — and potentially change how states execute disabled people.

The high court will hear Alabama death penalty case Hamm v. Smith starting Wednesday and has prompted the question: "Will Trump’s justices care?" Mother Jones reported on Friday.

The case has focused on Joseph Clifton Smith, who was convicted of murder in 1997, and was previously educated for an intellectual disability. ...

Amid tremendous uproar on the left over President Donald Trump calling for the arrest of six Democratic lawmakers for “seditious behavior,” and even promoting a call for them to be hanged, the White House is walking back what has been described as Trump’s “violent rhetoric,” by saying he wants them to be held accountable.

The Democrats, all veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces or Intelligence Community, recorded a video reminding members of the military and the IC of their legal responsibility to not obey illegal orders.

Trump called their remarks “seditious behavior at the highest level,” and said that they should be “arrested and put on trial.” He also called the six lawmakers “traitors,” and wrote: “Seditious behavior, punishable by death!”...

Pope Leo XIV issued a rare comment, calling Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's speech to military brass "concerning" and the Trump administration's “inhuman treatment” of immigrants and the death penalty hypocritical for people who call themselves "pro-life" for opposing abortion.

The American-born pope was responding to questions from reporters outside his Castel Gandolfo residence late Tuesday, The Washington Post reported.

Leo apparently shook his head in response to questions about Hegseth's speech, delivering an unusual statement, as he has mainly stayed out of politics and the news. ...

Washington (AFP) - A Texas man is to be executed Wednesday for a double murder he insists he did not commit, in a case that has drawn the attention of the Catholic Church and celebrities Kim Kardashian and Martin Sheen. Ivan Cantu, 50, who was convicted of the 2000 murders of his cousin and his cousin's fiancee, is one of two inmates scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection in the United States on Wednesday. The other, convicted serial killer Thomas Creech, 73, is to be executed in Idaho. Creech has been on Death Row for nearly 50 years for killing another inmate. Cantu's case has draw......