While Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) maintains a firm stance on the effectiveness of the death penalty in managing drug trafficking in Singapore, the article presents evidence suggesting that the methodologies and interpretations of these studies might not be as substantial as portrayed.
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Death row executioners discuss life on the other side of the needle
IN Missouri, one of a handful of US states where the death penalty still applies, executioners are handed an envelope filled with hundred-dollar bills.
On the envelopes are instructions not to open until services have been completed. The envelopes vary in weight, depending on the nature of the assignment.
The nurse, for example, gets less than the anaesthesiologist. The anaesthesiologist gets less than the drug supplier.
Until this week, that information was kept a closely-guarded secret. It was revealed when Buzzfeed audited payments and cash withdrawals from Missouri Director of Adult Institutions David Dormire.
They found almost $US300,000 had been paid in cash to a small group of individuals since November 2013. Those individuals were responsible for ending the lives of America’s condemned.
It’s easy to understand why the money is paid in cash. It’s part of a culture of secrecy that helps maintain the executioners’ anonymity, but not every executioner wants to remain anonymous.
Over the years, those brave enough to pull back the curtain have spoken about a job that few people want and even fewer escape without some form of trauma. This is the other side of the story on death row.
‘DADDY HAS TO WORK LATE TONIGHT’
It’s not your normal 9-5 job. In fact, nothing about it is normal.
Kenneth Dean, 52, described in 2000 his role on the “tie-down team” in the busiest death row chamber in Texas. He said his colleagues described him as a “teddy bear” and he had been a part of more than 130 executions.
Dean told The New York Times he survived in the job by embracing the routine. That routine meant including his family — Dean had a daughter, 7, and a son, 13, at the time — in the process.
“I told (my kids) ‘Daddy has to work late tonight, he has an execution’,” he said. His daughter followed up by asking him to explain what he did in detail.
“It’s hard explaining to a seven-year-old,’’ he said. “She asked me, ‘Why do you do it?’ I told her, ‘Sweetie, it’s part of my job’.”
Jerry Givens executed 62 inmates in Virginia between 1982-1999. Sometimes he used lethal injection. At other times he carried out the executions by electrocution.
In an interview with The Guardian in 2013, Givens described his role in detail. He explained how long he waited in the room as 3000 volts rushed through a prisoner’s body and what happened on the day of an execution.
“We would test the equipment frequently, whether we had an execution or not. But on the day of an execution or during that week, we would have all sorts of training. We train for the worst. We train for the man to put up resistance. Most would not, but sometimes it would get rough.
“Most of the time, during the actual execution, I’m back behind the partition, behind a curtain with my equipment. I’m alone as the executioner, but we had a crew that would go and escort the inmate and place him on the gurney or in the chair and strap him down and a doctor who would confirm the heart had stopped after.”
He said he preferred electrocution because it’s simpler and “more humane”.
“That’s more like cutting your lights off and on. It’s a button you push once and then the machine runs by itself. It relieves you from being attached to it in some ways. You can’t see the current go through the body. But with chemicals, it takes a while because you’re dealing with three separate chemicals.
“You are on the other end with a needle in your hand. You can see the reaction of the body. You can see it going down the clear tube. So you can actually see the chemical going down the line and into the arm and see the effects of it. You are more attached to it. I know because I have done it. Death by electrocution in some ways seems more humane.”
Givens said the role affected him in ways he didn’t foresee. He “never enjoyed it” but after 25 years he said he wished he never started.
Executioner Fred Allen said he “snapped” several years after leaving his role in a Texas prison. In 2000, he told documentary makers his role on the tie-down team came back to haunt him.
“I was just working in the shop and all of a sudden something just triggered in me and I started shaking … And tears, uncontrollable tears, were coming out of my eyes. And what it was, was something triggered within and it just — everybody — all of these executions all of a sudden all sprung forward.”
His boss, prison warden Jim Willett, said no person can never prepare themselves for their first execution.
California is transferring everyone on death row at San Quentin prison to other places, as it tries to reinvent the state's most notorious facility as a rehabilitation centre. Many in this group will now have new freedoms. But they are also asking why they've been excluded from the reform - and whether they'll be safe in new prisons. Keith Doolin still remembers the day in 2019 when workers came to dismantle one of the United States' most infamous death chambers.
While Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) maintains a firm stance on the effectiveness of the death penalty in managing drug trafficking in Singapore, the article presents evidence suggesting that the methodologies and interpretations of these studies might not be as substantial as portrayed.
The Missouri Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to halt the execution of Brian Dorsey, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection next month for killing his cousin and her husband 18 years ago. Judge W. Brent Powell wrote in the unanimous decision that Dorsey "has not demonstrated he is actually innocent" of the first-degree murder convictions that brought him to death row, despite previously pleading guilty to those charges and failing to deny that he committed the crimes.
Death row inmate Michael DeWayne Smith on Monday lost his request for a stay of his execution. Smith, 41, asked for the stay because of a proposed moratorium on the death penalty that is before the state Legislature. He is set to be executed by lethal injection April 4 at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals voted 5-0 to deny his request.
The Indonesian criminal justice system allows appeals by defendants and prosecutors when the convicted party considers the sentence handed down in a trial too harsh or when prosecutors feel the punishment handed down by the Court is too lenient. After the appeal process, sentences initially meted out by the Court can be affirmed, abolished, enhanced, or reduced.
A former executive at Yoozoo Games was sentenced to death on Friday in the 2020 poisoning of the founder of the high-profile Chinese gaming company, which has links to Game of Thrones and the new Netflix series, "The Three-Body Problem." Xu Yao poisoned the food of company founder Lin Qi in December 2020 because of a dispute over the running of the business, the Shanghai First Intermediate People's Court said. The Hollywood Reporter, citing local media, reported at the time Lin was allegedly sickened by a cup of poisoned pu-erh tea.
Chad Doerman was charged with murdering his sons, ages 3, 4 and 7 Even after a judge tossed the alleged confession of an Ohio dad accused of executing his three sons and shooting their mother's hand, he could still face the death penalty, experts say. Ohio law makes capital punishment a possibility in certain murder cases – including when there is a child victim. "The confession isn’t a mitigating or aggravating factor, so it doesn’t affect the death penalty one way or another," said Neama Rahmani, a Los Angeles-based attorney and former federal prosecutor.
There’s an utterly new feeling at San Quentin’s death row these days, and it’s not just for the people running the place. You can feel it like electricity all up and down the grim, time-worn cell blocks housing the worst criminals in the state. It’s hope.
Georgia carries out first execution in more than 4 years A Georgia man convicted of killing his former girlfriend 3 decades ago has been put to death in the state's first execution in more than 4 years. Authorities say 59-year-old Willie James Pye was pronounced dead at 11:03 p.m. Wednesday evening following an injection of the sedative pentobarbital. Pye was convicted of murder and other crimes in the November 1993 abduction, rape and shooting death of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough.
The Taliban’s Supreme Leader has vowed to start stoning women to death in public as he declared the fight against Western democracy will continue. “You say it’s a violation of women’s rights when we stone them to death,” said Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada in a voice message, aired on state television over the weekend, addressing Western officials.