April, 13 2017, 04:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
AIUSA media office,Email:,media@aiusa.org,Phone: 202-544-0200 x302
USA: Arkansas Must Urgently Halt 'Conveyor Belt' of Executions
The US state of Arkansas must halt the execution of eight death row prisoners, seven of whom are due to be killed in an 11-day period this month, Amnesty International said today, highlighting legal concerns and the fact that two of the men facing death have serious mental disabilities.
Arkansas has not put anyone to death for more than a decade, but plans to execute two men per day on 17, 20 and 24 April, and one man on 27 April, because its supply of the controversial execution drug midazolam will expire at the end of the month.
"The close scheduling of these executions is unprecedented in modern US history. Just four months after the USA recorded its lowest execution total for a quarter of a century, Arkansas is preparing to buck this positive trend in a shameful race to beat a drug expiration date," said Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International
"It is not too late for Arkansas to halt these executions. The conveyor belt of death which it is about to set in motion proves how out of step it is with the rest of the world when it comes to state-sanctioned killing, which is on the decline globally as more and more governments, and more US states, recognize it for the cruel anachronism it is."
A spate of killings
Don Davis and Bruce Ward are scheduled to be killed on 17 April; Ledell Lee and Stacey Johnson on 20 April; Marcel Williams and Jack Jones on 24 April, and Kenneth Williams on 27 April. Although a federal judge has blocked the execution of Jason McGehee, he remains under threat of execution even if not on 27 April as originally scheduled.
Amnesty International continues to call on Governor Asa Hutchinson to commute all eight death sentences.
In some of the cases legal failings meant jurors had nothing like a full picture of who they were being asked to sentence to death. In others, the prisoners have been diagnosed with serious mental disabilities, meaning their executions would be contrary to international law.
At the trial of Jack Jones, for example, the jurors did not know he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder shortly before the crime. Bruce Ward, who has spent more than 25 years on death row, was diagnosed in 2006, 2010, 2011 and 2015 with paranoid schizophrenia. The doctor described his persecutory and grandiose delusions, and said that he does not have a rational understanding of his punishment.
It is a violation of the US Constitution to execute someone who does not understand the reason for, or the reality of, their punishment. The execution of people with mental disability is clearly prohibited by international law.
In the case of Marcel Williams, the jury was left entirely in the dark about his childhood of appalling poverty, deprivation and abuse. The only judge to consider this mitigation concluded that the defendant had been utterly failed by his trial lawyers.
"Taken together, these cases could serve as a textbook guide to the problems with the death penalty: arbitrariness, inadequate legal representation, questionable prosecutorial tactics and racial and economic discrimination have all played their part in this raft of death sentences," said Erika Guevara Rosas.
"Debates over the use of lethal injection must not just be about fine-tuning the killing process. It is a myth that the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the state can ever be 'humane', and it is long past time for the USA to join the global abolitionist trend."
Background
On 27 February 2017, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson scheduled eight executions to take place within an 11-day period in April 2017.
On 6 April, the Arkansas parole board voted that Governor Hutchinson should commute the death sentence of Jason McGehee, who was scheduled to be executed on 27 April. On the same day, a US District Court judge issued an order preventing the authorities from carrying out the execution until the board's recommendation has been kept open for 30 days, as required under state law, and the governor has acted on the recommendation. It is not clear if the state will appeal the judge's order.
Amnesty International's annual report on the death penalty, released on 11 April, showed that, for the first time since 2006 the USA is not among the world's five biggest executioners. Last year saw the lowest national execution total in the USA in a quarter of a century.
The last execution in Arkansas - its 27th since 1977 - was carried out on 28 November 2005. If Arkansas carries out these eight executions in April, it would in a week and a half add 30%to its total judicial death toll of the past four decades. It would be killing nearly a quarter of its current death row population.
Executions were on hold in Arkansas because of lethal injection challenges. Once the current supply of midazolam expires it will be extremely difficult to replace because of concerns about its role in recent "botched" executions.
A number of recent instances have been documented of prisoners who have been given midazolam writhing, gasping and struggling in agony for prolonged periods of time before dying.
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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Sanders Unveils Resolutions to Block US Arms Sales as Israel Rejects Cease-Fire Call
"Sending more weapons to Netanyahu's extremist government is unacceptable," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Sep 26, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and a pair of his Senate colleagues on Wednesday formally introduced resolutions aimed at blocking a series of proposed arms sales to the Israeli government as it bombards Gaza and Lebanon, deepening humanitarian crises there and pushing the region to the brink of all-out war.
The six Joint Resolutions of Disapproval, five of which were backed by Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), would together prevent the sale of $20 billion of U.S. weaponry to Israel. The Biden administration approved the massive sale of Joint Direct Attack Munitions, tank ammunition, F-15 fighter jets, and other military equipment last month.
In a statement, Sanders (I-Vt.) said that "there is a mountain of documentary evidence demonstrating that these weapons are being used in violation of U.S. and international law."
On top of the legal case for scrapping the sales, Sanders said Wednesday that "there are also clear policy reasons not to proceed," noting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has obstructed cease-fire efforts at every turn.
"It is clear that Netanyahu is prolonging the war to cling to power and avoid prosecution for corruption," the senator said. "Meanwhile, his government has also overseen record illegal settlement expansion in the West Bank and unleashed a wave of violence there that has killed nearly 700 Palestinians, including 150 children, and several Americans over the last 11 months. And now the world must contend with the dramatic escalation in Lebanon."
"Sending more weapons to Netanyahu's extremist government is unacceptable," he added. "That is why many of our closest allies have already stopped offensive arms transfers. Congress must now act to uphold U.S. and international law and use our leverage to advance U.S. policy goals."
Sanders, Welch, and Merkley introduced the resolutions as U.S., France, Qatar, and other nations issued a joint statement calling for a three-week cease-fire on the Israeli-Lebanon border—a proposal that Israel's foreign minister swiftly rejected as Israeli forces carried out a fresh wave of bombings in Lebanon, killing dozens.
"There will be no cease-fire in the north," Israel Katz wrote on social media. "We will continue to fight against the terrorist organization Hezbollah with all our might until victory and the safe return of the residents of the north to their homes."
The Sanders-led Joint Resolutions of Disapproval face long odds in a U.S. Congress that has passed billions of dollars in military aid to Israel since the Hamas-led October 7 attack.
With the formal introduction of the resolutions, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee now has 10 calendar days to consider the measures. Once that period is up, "the sponsor(s) of the resolution can force a floor vote on a motion to discharge the resolution from committee," Sanders' office explained in a fact sheet. Because the resolutions are privileged, they can't be amended or filibustered and require just a simple majority to pass.
The Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project said Wednesday that the resolutions mark "the first time in U.S. history" that "there will be a vote in Congress to block weapons to Israel."
"Sending Israel weapons is a violation of U.S. law and opposed by a majority of Americans, who are sick of seeing their tax dollars fund Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians," the group added.
Dylan Williams, vice president of the Center for International Policy, applauded the resolutions as "an appropriate, measured, and sadly necessary response to a security partner's repeated violations of U.S. and international law."
"We welcome Senator Sanders' initiative to put a stop to this carnage and U.S. complicity in it," said Williams.
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump's threat on Wednesday to blow Iran "to smithereens" if he returns to power was condemned by a leading Iranian American advocacy group as "genocidal."
Trump—the 2024 Republican nominee—addressed a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday after he was reportedly briefed about alleged Iranian assassination threats against him.
"If I were the president, I would inform the threatening country—in this case, Iran—that if you do anything to harm this person, we are going to blow your largest cities and the country itself to smithereens," he said to raucous applause. "We're gonna blow it to smithereens, you can't do that. And there would be no more threats."
Responding to the former president's remarks, the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said in a statement that "Trump's threat to blow Iran's largest cities and the country itself 'to smithereens' is an outrageous threat that should be widely condemned as psychotic and genocidal."
"Just like his threat to target 52 of Iran's most cherished cultural sites, Trump appears disturbingly willing to kill millions of Iranians who have no say over the actions of their authoritarian government," NIAC continued. "These remarks should be disqualifying for a man vying to once again be commander in chief and have sole authority over launching nuclear weapons with the power to make good on his horrifying threat."
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Trump ordered the January 2020 airstrike that killed Soleimani in Iraq. He also unilaterally withdrew from the so-called Iran nuclear deal and ramped up sanctions on Tehran, exacerbating Iran's economic woes.
While Trump is known for his boastful and sometimes empty claims, as president he also followed through on his 2016 campaign promise to "bomb the shit out of" Islamic State fighters and "take out their families," resulting in thousands of civilian casualties in countries including Iraq and Syria.
Although Trump often presents himself as the peace candidate, critics have warned voters not to be fooled.
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Social Security defenders have long argued that former Republican U.S. President Donald Trump's return to the Oval Office could spell disaster for seniors, and a nonpartisan government analysis released Wednesday bolsters their warnings.
U.S. House Budget Committee Ranking Member Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) asked the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to analyze the impact of raising the full retirement age (FRA) for Social Security from 67 to 69, as various Republican groups have proposed.
"This report shows that raising the retirement age to 69 would slash benefits by an average of $3,500 a year," Social Security Works executive director Alex Lawson told Common Dreams. "For seniors and people with disabilities, that means not being able to buy groceries, pay a heating bill, or buy birthday presents for their grandkids."
"This cruel benefit cut would hit those who claim benefits early—largely people who work on their feet, not those who work in offices—the hardest," Lawson noted. "Even worse, it is only one of the benefit cuts that Republicans are backing. Their goal is to destroy our Social Security system."
As CBO Director Phillip L. Swagel wrote to Boyle:
All people affected by such an increase in the FRA would receive a smaller amount of Social Security benefits over their lifetime. Workers who chose to delay claiming their retirement benefits by the same number of months as the increase in the FRA would receive the same monthly benefit for a shorter period. Those workers who claimed retirement benefits at the same age as they would have claimed them under current law would receive a smaller benefit for the same number of years.
In a statement responding to the report, Boyle's office highlighted that "for workers currently in their 30s and 40s who are subject to the full retirement age increase, the average annual benefit cut would be 13%, or around $3,500 a year."
As the congressman's office pointed out, the CBO also found that "though increasing the retirement age would reduce spending, it would not create enough savings to change the expected exhaustion date of the Social Security Trust Fund, which is projected to be unable to pay full benefits by the end of fiscal year 2034."
Boyle and Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) have introduced the Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act, which would extend the solvency of both programs by requiring Americans with higher incomes to pay more than they do now.
"Social Security is a sacred promise that after a lifetime of hard work, Americans have earned the right to retire with dignity," Boyle said Wednesday. "This independent, nonpartisan report shows just how devastating Republican plans to rip away hard-earned Social Security benefits would be for American workers."
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The CBO report comes less than six weeks away from the U.S. general election. Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is facing Trump in the race for the White House.
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