Hearing postscript: threats and hate mail

 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Ces2TXfv2-4

 

Is Jadon MacCormack the most extreme Republican candidate in the country?

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT70M0mKaDQ

‘Discriminatory’ Israeli death penalty law would be war crime, says UN rights chief

Volker Türk says bill, which applies to Palestinians convicted of terror charges but not Jewish extremists, must be repealed…

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/31/israel-death-penalty-law-international-criticism

 

Richard Glossip's death sentence: A case of prosecutorial misconduct

Alito suggested that under the so-called "harmless error rule," knowing about Sneed's mental issues and perjury would not have changed the result in Glossip's case. "The facts," Alito suggested, "are not sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that, but for the alleged error, no reasonable fact-finder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense or would have rendered the penalty of death." 

It is hard to see how anyone could think that securing a death sentence by illegal means is "harmless error." But, at the end of the day, Alito used his time and questions to send a message to Glossip: Even if you win your argument about the prosecutors, you will lose anyway…

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/4934133-richard-glossip-case-supreme-court/

Marcellus Williams executed despite prosecutors’ push to overturn conviction

"We must all question any system that would allow this to occur. The execution of an innocent person is the most extreme manifestation of Missouri's obsession with 'finality' over truth, justice, and humanity, at any cost," Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Williams's attorney, said in a statement just before the execution. "Tonight, we all bear witness to Missouri's grotesque exercise of state power. Let it not be in vain. This should never happen, and we must not let it continue."…

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/24/missouri-executes-marcellus-williams

‘He didn’t do it’: days before execution in South Carolina, key witness says he lied

Two days before South Carolina is scheduled to execute a man on death row, the key witness for the prosecution has come forward to say that he lied at trial and the state was putting to death an innocent man. 

Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, 46, is due to be killed by lethal injection on Friday. His attorneys filed emergency motions to halt the execution, citing new testimony asserting that Allah was wrongfully convicted, but the state supreme court denied the requests late Thursday, saying the execution should proceed...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/19/south-carolina-execution-freddie-owens

Richard Dawkins Confronts a Christian Extremist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktApkYCVI6o

Death Penalty For Abortion Patients Added To Texas GOP 2024 Plans | HuffPost Latest News

"The state of Texas is a leader in controlling people with their penal system," said Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel and legal director at Lawyering for Reproductive Justice: If/When/How. "If a fetus is considered a person, then it's considered a child, which is a vulnerable population. … Homicide of identified vulnerable persons escalates penalties." 

As Valenti points out, South Carolina and Georgia recently tried to pass legislation called the Prenatal Equal Protection Act, which aimed to punish abortion as murder under the states' criminal codes. Texas lawmakers have also proposed legislation — often referred to as "abolish abortion bills" — to erase a distinction between abortion and homicide…

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-gop-appears-to-put-death-penalty-for-abortion-patients-on-2024-wish-list_n_665765b4e4b05212274abd0b

The GOP Plan For Executions If Trump Wins | HuffPost Latest News

Trump, the GOP's presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, has openly fantasized about executing drug dealers and human traffickers. He reportedly suggested that officials who leak information to the press should be executed, too. And behind the scenes, there's a team of pro-Trump conservatives who are pushing for a second Trump term that involves even more state-sponsored killing than the first.

Last year, a coalition effort by conservative groups known as Project 2025 released an 887-page document that lays out policy goals and recommendations for each part of the federal government. Buried on page 554 is a directive to execute every remaining federal death row prisoner — and to persuade the Supreme Court to expand the types of crimes that can be punished with death sentences…
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gop-plan-for-executions-if-trump-wins_n_663b97a7e4b0bcaefbf76812

Trump ROCKED By Incriminating Drug Revelations As Staffers Turn On Him

Donald Trump's hypocrisy exposed as new staffer interviews tell all on devastating truth against Trump's role in massive drug frenzy, revealed by Defense Department’s inspector general report, in response to trying to cope with administration chaos. John Iadarola breaks it down on The Damage Report.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-8YPL7Jjww

An Atheist Chaplain (Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Freethought Radio podcast)

FFRF Director of Communications Amit Pal describes how India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a Hindu temple on the site of a demolished mosque in a political effort to establish Hindu nationalism in that country. Then we speak with Devin Moss, the humanist chaplain who was called in to support an atheist death-row inmate executed in Oklahoma.

Interview: 

https://ffrf.org/news/radio/show-items/item/43345-freethought-radio-january-25-2024

Marjorie Taylor Greene faces challenges

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FyhtJJ9Qik

Ugandan president signs one of the world's harshest anti-LGBTQ bills into law | CNN

The bill includes the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality' which includes sex with a minor, having sex while HIV positive and incest. 

The bill criminalizes sex education for the gay community and makes it illegal not to expose what it calls perpetrators of aggravated homosexuality to the police. It calls for "rehabilitation"-- widely discredited conversion therapy -- for gay offenders...

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/29/africa/museveni-assents-homosexuality-bill-intl/index.html

Opinion | Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign could be brief - The Washington Post

Using GOP control of the Florida legislature as though it were a campaign billboard, DeSantis has loosened the state's gun laws; lowered the threshold for imposing the death penalty; expanded school vouchers; and imposed "anti-woke" restrictions on teachers and administrators at every level of public education, including in the state's universities. He has made it illegal for doctors to provide gender-transition care for minors. To top it off, he signed a bill establishing a six-week abortion ban, which — if allowed to take effect by the Florida Supreme Court — would be one of the most draconian in the nation. 

Ta-da! Yet his poll numbers keep going down, not up…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/22/desantis-republican-presidential-campaign-brief/

Supreme Court’s GOP majority refuses to fix ‘indefensible’ death penalty ruling

The Supreme Court's Republican-appointed majority has effectively decided to allow a man's execution despite the jury that voted for his death potentially being misinformed...

https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/deadline-legal-blog/sotomayor-death-penalty-supreme-court-rcna81225  

Ron DeSantis is luring Supreme Court conservatives to overturn major precedent.

Specifically, the bills seek to broaden the death penalty to sexual battery crimes against children…

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/04/ron-desantis-supreme-court-conservatives-attack-precedent.html

Ugandan president calls on Africa to ‘save the world from homosexuality’ | Global development | The Guardian

The bill, which imposes the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" and life imprisonment for "recruitment, promotion and funding" of same-sex "activities", has been widely criticised internationally, with the UN high commissioner for human rights urging the president not to sign it...

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/apr/03/ugandan-president-calls-on-africa-to-save-the-world-from-homosexuality

DeSantis calls to end jury unanimity for Florida death penalty cases | Ron DeSantis | The Guardian

"Maybe eight out of 12 or something," he added.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/24/ron-desantis-florida-death-penalty-unanimous-jury

Ketanji Brown Jackson, in dissent, issues first Supreme Court opinion | PBS NewsHour

In her dissent, Jackson wrote that she would have ordered a new look at Chinn's case "because his life is on the line and given the substantial likelihood that the suppressed records would have changed the outcome at trial." The evidence at issue indicated that a key witness against Chinn has an intellectual disability that might have affected his memory and ability to testify accurately, she wrote...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ketanji-brown-jackson-in-dissent-issues-first-supreme-court-opinion

 

SCOTUS Ruling Guarantees More Innocent Will Be Put to Death (Opening Arguments podcast OA601)

The way you know the Supreme Court is ruining the law in this country is if their lips are moving. Well, this time they’ve decided that a 10 year old precedent is already too old for them, and that if you were given a terrible lawyer by the state, you should have thought of that before you decided to be poor. Shinn v. Ramirez.

Interview:

https://openargs.com/oa601-scotus-ruling-guarantees-more-innocent-will-be-put-to-death/