The US government would resume its use of capital punishment after a 16-year hiatus and has set execution dates for five convicted murderers, US Attorney General Bill Barr announced on Thursday.
Acting on US President Donald Trump’s call for tougher penalties on violent crimes, Barr directed the US Federal Bureau of Prisons to adopt a new lethal injection protocol to clear the way to carry out death sentences.
“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system,” Barr said in a statement.
Photo: Reuters
There were 25 executions in the US last year, all carried out by state authorities on people convicted on state charges.
However, debate about the methods of execution and controversy over the drugs used, as well as reticence from former US president Barack Obama, means that no federal prisoner has been put to death since 2003.
Barr ordered the bureau to carry out executions using a single lethal injection of the barbiturate pentobarbital, replacing the previous three-drug cocktails using thiopental.
“Since 2010, 14 states have used pentobarbital in over 200 executions, and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have repeatedly upheld the use of pentobarbital in executions as consistent with the Eighth Amendment” of the US constitution, which bars cruel and unusual punishment, the US Department of Justice said.
There are 62 federal death row prisoners in the US, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, including Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people.
The list also includes Dylann Roof, who murdered nine African-Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015.
On Barr’s order, the bureau has scheduled executions for five people, all convicted 15 years ago or longer in brutal murders that involved children.
They include Daniel Lewis Lee, who in 1996 robbed and killed a family of three, including an eight-year-old girl, and Alfred Bourgeois, who tortured and sexually molested his two-year-old daughter before killing her in 2002.
Federal executions were on hold for nearly four decades until 2001, when Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed.
Two more people were put to death in federal prisons over the subsequent two years, and then were halted again.
Death penalty opponents blasted the policy change and called for a court-ordered delay in the executions, the first of which is scheduled for early December.
“The federal death penalty is arbitrary, racially biased, and rife with poor lawyering and junk science,” Federal Capital Habeas Project director Ruth Friedman said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique