PrairiePundit

  DC Daily Journal: ... Last Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointed jurist known for her fair handling of high-profile cases, granted Ryan Routh’s request to represent himself in his upcoming trial for attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump on September 15, 2024, at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Routh, 59, appeared in Fort Pierce, Florida, in beige jail scrubs, taking notes despite being shackled. Cannon cautioned Routh that his court-appointed attorneys “will defend you far better than you can defend yourself,” urging him to reconsider, but Routh insisted, citing a broken attorney-client relationship. “These are nice ladies… How [can] they defend me and say I’m not a dangerous person if they’re afraid of me?” Routh claimed, though his attorneys refuted this as untrue. Cannon ruled that the attorneys must remain on standby, ensuring a safety net for justice in this critical case involving a second attempt on Trump’s life i...

All those ignorant of history who have been comparing Trump to Hitler should hang their heads in shame.  He is the opposite of Hitler when it comes to protecting the Jews.  He also called for the death penalty for those involved in the murder of Jews.

LA Times: Illegal drugs are flowing into California's most guarded prisons — and killing death row inmates The condemned inmates on California's death row are among the most closely monitored in the state, but six have died between 2010 and 2015 with detectable levels of meth, heroin and other drugs in their system. It appears to be a self-administered lethal injection.

Daily Beast: All Men in Iranian Village Executed Iran also claims the children of the men are also drug dealers.  Iran does have a serious drug problem.  It is right next to Afghanistan where the Taliban grow and sell dope on an industrial scale, and it has very many unhappy people trying to escape from the oppression of the group of religious bigots who run the country.

BBC: There has been an "unprecedented spike" in the number of executions in Iran, Amnesty International has warned. The rights group said it believed 694 people were killed between 1 January and 15 July, almost three times the figure acknowledged by the authorities. It said credible reports suggested Iran executed at least 743 people in 2014. Amnesty said the surge was disturbing as the death sentences were invariably imposed by courts "completely lacking in independence and impartiality". "They are imposed either for vaguely worded or overly broad offences, or acts that should not be criminalised at all, let alone attract the death penalty," it added. "Trials in Iran are deeply flawed, detainees are often denied access to lawyers, and there are inadequate procedures for appeal, pardon and commutation." ... "Iran's staggering execution toll for the first half of this year paints a sinister picture of the machinery of the state carryi...

NY Times: Texas Calls Its Execution Process the Gold Standard As lawyers for a Texas death row inmate try to stop his scheduled execution on Tuesday, even those who condemn the process acknowledge that the state kills with efficiency. I support the death penalty as the most effective way to stop recidivism for certain crimes.  Opponents of the death penalty have tried to make it as difficult as possible for states to enforce the law.  It is one reason some states have had a difficulty with their executions.

Washington Post: Okla. residents’ reaction to botched execution: He had it coming Many in the state say Clayton Lockett got exactly what he deserved; anything else “wouldn’t be right.” The liberals who oppose capital punishment created this problem by blocking access to lethal injection drugs and they are now trying to take advantage of it by showing their empathy for an evil man who killed without mercy.   I can understand why Oklahoma residents would feel that the guy got what he deserved.

Guardian: Family of Oklahoma inmate killed in botched execution may sue state Actually the guy was a victim of the anti death penalty left which has made it difficult to get the kind of drugs needed for a lethal injection.   I don't have a lot of empathy for this sadistic murderer, but I blame any discomfort he had on those death penalty opponents who have made it difficult to get the injections needed. He did admit his guilt: He deserved it! Friends of victim weigh in on botched execution as video surfaces of the chilling 1999 taped confession of Oklahoma murderer who showed no remorse

From the AP: White supremacist executed for Texas dragging   There were no marches fro this brutal  killer.  Good riddance.

I think Brian Williams was surprised to hear the audience applaud the death penalty and Gov. Perry's answer.  It probably tells you something about the liberal cocoon he lives in in the New York area.

NY Times Editorial: Editorial: The Military and the Death Penalty New evidence of racial bias in the military is further proof that it’s time to abolish capital punishment. Say what?  Doesn't make more sense to stop racial bias?  Is the Times suggesting that racial bias is acceptable without the death penalty? I think we should keep the death penalty and do away with racial bias, if it exists.

Debra Saunders: Texas Death Penalty Not a Liability for Perry Saunders examines the anti death penalty lobby's arguments and finds them wanting.  Since most voters support the death penalty the arguments will only persuade liberals who were going to vote against Perry anyway.  Based on their conduct, I think the anti death penalty crowd really hopes for an innocent person to be executed in order to help their cause.

BBC: Inside death row Post-9/11 killer forgiven by his victim as execution looms Actually two of his three victims are dead and so are incapable of forgiveness.  But, the anti death penalty lobby inside the BBC is willing to latch onto anything to save the guilty.  The killer was engaged in a series of hate crimes after the 9-11 attacks.

Image via Wikipedia Niles Gardiner: Why on earth are British taxpayers being forced to fund European Union lobbying for policy campaigns in the United States? Furthermore, why is the EU directly interfering in domestic political debates in America, and so far without Congressional oversight? As the research detailed below demonstrates, the EU’s European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) is spending millions of Euros on US-based campaigns against the death penalty. An extraordinary development. The EIDHR project list for 2009 (the latest year for which a full itemised list is given), unearthed by my intrepid colleague Sally McNamara, is a real eye-opener. While most of the projects focused on developing countries, several million Euros were actually set aside for projects in the United States, specifically for groups opposed to the death penalty. This extremely unusual funding for US groups – by a taxpayer-funded foreign entity to advance a political cause – deserv...

Timothy Carney: It's clear that President Obama has decided the Democrats should try to frame the 2010 elections as a battle against a GOP-corporate takeover of our democracy. This is a bogus line of attack/self-aggrandizement, and much of what I've written for the past 21 months shows how it's bogus. Obama went after this issue again in his weekly address in which he critiqued the recent Supreme Court ruling striking down some bans on corporate, non-profit, and union political speech, and Jacob Sullum at Reason.com has a good response, that makes this important point: "No matter how shadowy or flush with corporate dollars an interest group is, the only thing Citizens United allowed it to do is speak. Advocacy has no impact unless it persuades people." I think Sullum, however, is too categorical in dismissing the importance of the cui bono question (he calls it a "fallacy" to take that into account), and in fact, I think that one important critiqu...

From AFP: Lethal injection or firing squad? Death row inmate in a bind The end results will be the same. I suspect he will take the injection.

BBC: The oldest death row inmate in the US has died of natural causes aged 94. The Arizona Department of Corrections said Viva Leroy Nash died late on Friday at the state prison in Florence. Nash had a criminal record dating back to the 1930s, and was deaf, mostly blind, crippled, mentally ill and had dementia, his lawyer said. He was sentenced to death in 1983, for shooting a salesman after escaping from jail. But he managed to stave off his execution with a series of appeals. At the time of his death, state prosecutors were appealing to the Supreme Court against a federal appeals court ruling that Nash might not be mentally competent to assist in his defence. ... I don't think anyone on death row in Texas has survived that long. This guy was a career criminal who should have been executed decades ago. It tells you something about the success of the anti death penalty lobby, in some states, that he survived this long.

San Antonio Express-News: A special master concluded Wednesday that Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Sharon Keller didn't deserve to be removed from office or even given "further reprimand beyond the public humiliation she has surely suffered" for her conduct in a death-row inmate’s failed last minute appeal before his execution. San Antonio-based District Judge David Berchelmann Jr., serving as special master in the case of alleged judicial misconduct, wrote that the Texas Defender Service in representing Michael Richard "bears the bulk of fault for what occurred on September 25, 2007." That was the date of Richard’s execution, after the Texas Defender Service was unable to file an appeal late based on a U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to consider the use of lethal injection in a Kentucky case. ... Berchelmann, in blaming the Texas Defender Service for the bulk of the problem, wrote that it didn’t begin contemplating a lethal injection claim until two hours...

NY Times: Questions about whether Gov. Rick Perry allowed the execution of a man some arson experts say may have been innocent, and then hindered an investigation into the evidence, continue to reverberate across Texas, where issues surrounding capital punishment have rarely stirred such controversy. On Sunday, Mark White, who as governor himself was a strong death penalty supporter, said he believed that the state should reconsider capital punishment because, among other reasons, there was too great a risk of putting innocent people to death. “There is a very strong case to be made for a review of our death penalty statutes and even look at the possibility of having life without parole so we don’t look up one day and determine that we as the State of Texas have executed someone who is in fact innocent,” Mr. White, a Democrat who was governor from 1983 to 1987, told The Houston Chronicle and The San Antonio Express-News. Mr. White’s remarks came with Mr. Perry, a Republican and stau...

NY Times Editorial: Judge Sharon Keller, the Texas appellate court judge who closed the clerk’s office before a death row inmate could file a last-minute appeal, is fighting to keep her job. At a hearing on Wednesday, she said in a crowded courtroom that if she had it to do again, she would do the same thing. That testimony is further proof of why Judge Keller needs to be removed from the bench. On Sept. 25, 2007, Michael Richard’s lawyers called the court clerk’s office to say they were running late in delivering the papers for his appeal. The Supreme Court had unexpectedly issued an order in another death penalty case that they believed provided grounds for putting off his execution. When the request to keep the office open reached Judge Keller, she insisted it would close promptly at 5 p.m. The appeal was not filed, and Mr. Richard was executed hours later. ... All Judge Kellor did was convey the fact that the clerks office would close at its normal time. This did not have the effe...