Death penalty news headlines

Legislation stipulates capital punishment for 'serial offenders' and transmission of HIV/AIDS through gay sex.

Bryan Kohberger's silence led to judge entering not guilty pleas on his behalf ahead of a trial in which he could face the death penalty.

Iran has hanged two men convicted of blasphemy, authorities said, carrying out rare death sentences for the crime as executions surge across the Islamic Republic following months of unrest.

The US Supreme Court has put on hold the execution of Richard Glossip, an Oklahoma death row inmate whose capital conviction the state attorney general has said he could no longer support.

A racing stable has been fined $350,000 over the workplace death of jockey Mikaela Claridge.

Singapore has executed a man accused of coordinating a cannabis delivery, despite pleas for clemency from his family and protests from activists that he was convicted on weak evidence.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs is facing heavy pushback from a victim’s sister and a powerful county prosecutor for her plans to defy a court order to execute a prisoner next month for his conviction in a 2002 killing.

An Idaho judge says a couple accused in a bizarre triple murder case will not be allowed to meet face-to-face to talk about strategy before they stand trial in April.

Iran said on Saturday it executed a former high-ranking defence ministry official and dual Iranian-British national, despite international warnings not to carry out the death sentence.

Public support and use of the death penalty in 2022 continued its more than two-decade decline in the US.

Alabama's capital punishment system will be reviewed after the botched execution of a third criminal on death row.

Jimmy Spencer was a known violent offender. In 2018 he killed three people, including a seven-year-old boy.

A Texas woman convicted of killing a pregnant woman and then taking her unborn baby, who also died, has been sentenced to death in the US.

A jury spared has Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz from the death penalty for killing 17 people at a US high school in 2018.

Prosecutors have asked a Texas jury to sentence a woman to death for killing a pregnant woman and stealing her unborn daughter from her womb.

Two men used needles to repeatedly probe arms, legs, feet and hands, at one point using a phone flashlight to help their search for a vein, according to a court filing.

It's possible Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz talked himself into a death sentence.

The California Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and death penalty for one of two men implicated in at least 11 notorious horrific torture-slayings in the mid-1980s.

An appeals court has stayed this week’s execution of a death row inmate who had raised questions about whether prosecutors had presented false and inaccurate testimony from an expert.

Ramiro Gonzales is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on July 13 for fatally shooting 18-year-old Bridget Townsend, a southwest Texas woman whose remains were found nearly two years after she vanished in 200

A British man sentenced to death by proxy Russian court for fighting in Ukraine has been told the execution will proceed.

The white gunman who killed 10 Black people in a racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket has been charged with federal hate crimes and could face the death penalty if convicted.

Malaysia has agreed to abolish the mandatory death penalty and allow judges to set alternative punishments for a range of offences.

An Arizona man convicted of murder in the 1984 killing of an eight-year-old girl has been put to death in the state's second execution since May.

An Arizona man convicted of killing a college student in 1978 was put to death today after a nearly eight-year hiatus in the state's use of the death penalty.

A psychologist assessed his IQ to be 69. Malaysia's Prime Minister and British billionaire Richard Branson have decried the proceedings.

Melissa Lucio was set to be executed by lethal injection on Wednesday for the death of her two-year-old daughter Mariah.

Tennessee will hold the state's first execution since the start of the pandemic, sentencing 72-year-old convicted murder Oscar Smith to death.

Texas Reps. Jeff Leach, a Republican, and Joe Moody, a Democrat, led a group of politicians to the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville where Melissa Lucio is a death row inmate

An Australian study claims to have unearthed evidence which suggests Chinese surgeons are executing death-row prisoners by removing their hearts before they are clinically dead.

A Tennessee inmate scheduled to be executed this month has petitioned the courts to reopen his case after DNA from an unknown person was detected on one of the murder weapons.

Melissa Lucio has continued to deny more than 100 times she had fatally beaten her two-year-old daughter

Lea Rodger, a paralegal, says she is keenly aware of the realities facing her and death row inmate Richard Glossip.

A Singapore court has rejected a final appeal by a man sentenced to death for drug trafficking, following a campaign by his lawyers who said the trial violated international laws as the man has intellectual disabilities.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, who three years ago placed a moratorium on executions, now is moving to dismantle the US' largest death row by moving all condemned inmates to other prisons within two years.

Alabama executed an inmate by lethal injection for a 1996 murder on Thursday after a divided U.S. Supreme Court sided with the state and rejected defence claims the man had an intellectual disability that cost him a chance to choose a less “torturous,” yet untried, execution method.

An Ohio man charged with killing eight people from a single family lost his attempt on Wednesday to have the most serious charges and the possibility of a death penalty thrown out.

Authorities have uncovered the suspected remains of a Felicia Cox following a tip from her brother-in-law prior to his execution.

He was the first person executed in Oklahoma since another death row inmate convulsed on the gurney and vomited during his lethal injection.

A US man who has been on death row for nearly 20 years has had his execution cancelled just hours before it was carried out.

A US woman convicted of murder for her role in the death and dismemberment of a Nebraska hardware store clerk was sentenced to life in prison.

A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled on Monday that the state can move forward with scheduled lethal injections for five death row inmates.

A US man convicted of killing his estranged wife, her unborn child and three other people six years ago in north Alabama was sentenced to death this week after being convicted of multiple counts of capital murder.

On December 28, Isao Kakehi became the fourth and final victim of Japan's "Black Widow" killer. Kakehi eventually confessed to poisoning Masanori Honda, Minoru Hioki and Toshiaki Suehiro with cyanide capsules.

The US state of Alabama said it will allow a death row inmate's pastor to hold his hand during a lethal injection next month, a decision that was made to end litigation over the issue.

Texas death row inmate John Henry Ramirez won a reprieve from execution for killing 46-year-old Pablo Castro convenience store worker during a 2004 robbery during which he also stole $1.6 million

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam granted posthumous pardons on Tuesday to seven African-American men who were executed in 1951 for the rape of a white woman

A powerful yakuza boss in Japan has been sentenced to death by hanging.

The Taliban have sentenced the brother of an Afghan translator to death, according to letters obtained by CNN, accusing him of helping the US and providing security to his brother, who served as an interpreter to American troops

A Chinese court rejected a Canadian drug convict's appeal of a death sentence in what appeared to be an effort to step up pressure on Canada to release a detained executive of tech giant Huawei.