[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 20


JAPAN:

'Black widow' investigated after deaths of 7 partners----Japanese millionairess 
denies murdering 4 husbands and 3 boyfriends for 4.3 million pounds in payouts


Japanese police have arrested an elderly millionairess on suspicion of 
poisoning her husband and are investigating the deaths of a further 6 partners.

Chisako Kakehi, 67, was arrested in Kyoto on Wednesday in an investigation that 
has hit the headlines here as a "black widow" case.

Kaheki, who has reportedly amassed more than 800 million yen (4.3 million 
pounds ) in life insurance payouts and inheritances from her late partners, has 
denied the charges.

"I did not kill anyone," police quoted Kakehi as telling them, according to TV 
Asahi. "I don't even know how to kill someone. And I don't know where the 
cyanide came from. I wish someone would tell me."

Police launched their investigation after the death of Isao Kakehi, 75, at the 
end of last year. Mr Kakehi collapsed at the couple's home, in Muko City, just 
1 month after their marriage and died in a local hospital.

An autopsy conducted by the hospital discovered highly toxic cyanide compounds 
in his system.

3 months earlier, Kakehi's then-boyfriend was taken ill after they ate at a 
restaurant, Jiji Press reported.

In March 2012, her 71-year-old fiancee died after falling off his motorbike in 
Osaka. The cause of death at the time was given as a heart attack, although 
blood taken during the autopsy was stored by police.

As the case against Kakehi proceeded, analysis of that blood sample also 
revealed the presence of cyanide compounds.

Kakehi's 1st husband died in 1994, at the age of 54, while her 2nd husband, 
whom she met through a dating agency, had a stroke in 2006 and died at the age 
of 69. A 3rd marriage ended with her husband's death in 2008.

1 year later, a boyfriend died from what was ascribed to cancer.

If she is convicted of murdering her partners, Kakehi is likely to be sentenced 
to death.

In April 2012, another black widow killer, 39-year-old Kanae Kijima, was given 
the death penalty for the murders of 3 men she met through Internet dating 
sites. Kijima was found guilty of drugging the men with sleeping tablets and 
then burning charcoal briquettes to poison them with carbon monoxide.

Kijima is awaiting the outcome of her appeal to the Supreme Court.

(source: The Telegraph)






EGYPT:

Egypt prosecutors demand death penalty for Morsi


Egyptian prosecutors have officially asked the Cairo Criminal Court to sentence 
the country's ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, and other Muslim Brotherhood 
leaders to death.

Prosecutor Emad el-Sharawy said on Wednesday that Morsi and his aides must be 
handed down the death penalty on espionage charges.

Morsi and 35 Muslim Brotherhood leaders are standing trial for what the 
military-backed court calls destabilization of Egypt through collaborating with 
such groups as Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah and leaking 
confidential information to foreign countries.

The court's final session is set to be held on November 26 to hear Morsi's 
closing defense remarks.

Morsi, Egypt's 1st democratically-elected president, was ousted in July 2013 in 
a military coup led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the country's current president 
and the then army commander.

Sisi is accused of leading the suppression of Muslim Brotherhood supporters as 
hundreds of them have been killed in clashes with Egyptian security forces over 
the last year.

Rights groups say the army's crackdown on the supporters of Morsi has left over 
1,400 people dead and 22,000 arrested, while some 200 people have been 
sentenced to death in mass trials.

(source: PressTV)






INDONESIA:

Death row inmates 'burdening' Indon jails----There's fresh discussion on the 
death penalty in Indonesia where 118 people, including 2 Aussies, are on death 
row.


Indonesian officials are debating the nation's death penalty, as they count 118 
prisoners awaiting execution in overburdened jails.

2 of them, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, are Australian, and desperately 
hoping for a 2nd chance.

Indonesia's Law and Human Rights director-general Wicipto Setiadi on Wednesday 
told a public forum the death row inmates were becoming a burden on the state.

But his hands were tied, because his department couldn't order the penalty to 
be carried out.

"We in the Law and Human Rights Ministry just happen to be a passing room," he 
said as quoted by Indonesian news website Detik.com.

"For executing it, it's up to the prosecutor." Chan and Sukumaran, members of 
the Bali Nine drug smugglers, have had a clemency request before the president 
for more than 2 years.

Indonesia's new president, Joko Widodo, will now decide on it.

He will likely take advice from his Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna 
Laoly.

He recently told AAP that while his department must uphold laws that still 
contain the death penalty as a sentencing option, he personally did not support 
it.

The public discussion held by the National Law Commission also involved Supreme 
Court judges.

It comes after a lawmaker from the parliament's justice commission on the 
weekend met Sukumaran in jail.

Aziz Syamsudin said he was concerned the cost burden of feeding so many 
prisoners had now reached 5 trillion rupiah ($A477 million) annually.

The death sentence is reserved in Indonesia for what are considered 
"extraordinary" crimes like drug smuggling and murder.

On death row are Ryan, a serial killer who took 10 lives, and Baekuni who 
killed 14 children, Detik reported.

Meanwhile in the prison art studio he helped establish, Sukumaran told 
reporters on the weekend he was using what time he had to better himself.

"I'm trying to be a better person," he said.

(source: SBS news)



AUSTRALIA:

Louisa Collins died in a gruesome 1889 hanging for husband's murder, but did 
she do it?


Louisa Collins was one of the only people in the world ever to be tried 4 times 
for murder.

On 8 January 1889, Louisa Collins, 39, a mother of 10 became the last woman 
hanged at the Darlinghurst gaol in NSW.

It was a gruesome end at the hand of hangman Robert "Nosey Bob" Howard, who 
misjudged the drop and nearly tore her head off.

Louisa was beautiful. She was promiscuous. She was under suspicion for 
murdering her 1st husband and had just been found guilty of murdering her 2nd, 
Michael Peter Collins. To make matters worse the evidence which condemned her 
to the gallows came from her own daughter, 11-year-old May.

But was she guilty? Or did the courts send an innocent woman to hang?

For 5 years, author, journalist and now associate editor of the Australian 
Women's Weekly, Caroline Overington has investigated the case.

She found a justice system gone wrong and a case that had stunning implications 
for society, sparking changes that generated new rights for women.

Chapter 11 of her book Last Woman Hanged covers the verdict and the turmoil it 
triggered.


The Verdict: 'Be hanged by the neck until you are dead'

The sentence would be death. Murder was a capital crime so it had to be death. 
Everyone knew that, before Chief Justice Darley even began to speak. Louisa 
would hang.

That was what the Crown wanted. That was what the Crown would get, and yet 
Chief Justice Darley's final address contained no ring of triumph.

Yes, Louisa had committed a wicked crime. She had taken the life of a man she 
had promised to love, but still, at least according to the Evening News, the 
Chief Justice was 'visibly affected' by his terrible responsibility and it 
seems that 'scarcely a dry eye was visible in the court' as he began to speak: 
'Louisa Collins, after a most favourable and exhaustive trial, you have been 
found guilty of a most dreadful offence - the offence of murder.'

Of course, the Chief Justice might have said 'you have finally been found 
guilty of murder', but he did not. He went on:

"No one who has heard this case throughout can have any doubt that this verdict 
which has been given is a true and honest verdict. In fact, no other verdict 
could be arrived at by a body of intelligent men such as those who have so 
carefully attended to this case throughout."

In fact, 3 juries that comprised 36 men who had heard similar evidence over 
many months had been far from convinced of Louisa's guilt. But that was now 
irrelevant: the only verdict that counted was this final one.

"The murder you have committed is one of peculiar atrocity. You were day by day 
giving poison to the man whom above all others you were bound to cherish and 
attend.

"You watched his slow torture and painful death, and this apparently without a 
moment's remorse. You were indifferent to his pain, and gained his confidence 
by your simulated affection. There is too much reason to fear that your 1st 
husband Andrews also met his death at your hands; that he, too, you watched to 
the end - saw his torture day after day, and added to its horror this crime."

Louisa had in fact never been found guilty of Charles's murder; this was pure 
suspicion on the Chief Justice's part. He went on:

"I hold out no hope of mercy to you on earth. It would be wicked of me to do 
so. But I implore of you to seek forgiveness where it will assuredly be found. 
Seek the assistance of the clergyman to whose faith you belong. He will point 
out to you the way to gain such forgiveness."

This was an appeal to Louisa to pray for God's forgiveness or risk eternal 
damnation in hell.

"Your days are surely numbered, and it now remains for me only to pass the last 
dread sentence of the law upon you. The sentence of the Court is that you be 
taken to the place from whence you came, and on a day hereafter to be named by 
the Governor in Council, that you be taken to the place of execution, and there 
be hanged by the neck until you are dead; and may the Lord have mercy on your 
soul."

Louisa rose from her seat in the dock. In the Herald's re-telling, she appeared 
'quite unmoved by the result of the trial' and remained 'perfectly calm and 
collected', even as the sentence of death was passed.

She did not scream out, or start to cry. According to the Evening News, Louisa 
- now 'the wretched woman' - was 'at once removed from the dock and taken into 
the gaol, where she was immediately placed in one of the condemned cells'. 
(This was in fact not true, but more about the cell in which Louisa spent her 
last days later.)

As so many reporters had already said, Louisa remained calm:

'Throughout the whole of his Honour's remarks not a muscle of her face 
quivered, and she appeared as calm as it was possible for any person to be."

Why was Louisa so calm, where so many others in court were weeping? She 
certainly didn't want to die. In the weeks ahead she would beg for her life: 
'Oh Lord, have mercy, I have 7 children ...'

Perhaps she understood what many in court that day did not: that while she had 
been sentenced to death, the fight to save Louisa's life was not in any sense 
over.

It had been almost 30 years since a woman had been hanged in New South Wales. 
That woman was Ellen Monks, who was executed in May 1860 for the murder of her 
husband, Thomas Monks, at Longnose Creek on Halloween 1859. One key difference 
between the cases was that Ellen had pleaded guilty.

Conversely, just 3 years earlier, 2 women, Sarah Keep and her stepmother, Mary 
Ann Burton, who had been found guilty of the strychnine poisoning of Sarah's 
husband, had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment after a 
sustained protest.

Their supporters had argued that it would be barbaric to hang both a woman and 
her stepdaughter, especially since the daughter was just 24 years old and 
pregnant. (Only months after being granted a reprieve, Sarah died delivering 
her premature baby in prison.)

Given this history, it's perhaps no wonder that Louisa felt confident that she 
would not be hanged, either. If all else failed - and pretty much all else now 
had - her gender would protect her.

One of the key features of a good democracy is the principle of the separation 
of powers: put plainly, it means that parliament shouldn't interfere with the 
business of the courts. Judges need to be independent - especially of 
politicians.

Despite this, debate about the fate of Louisa Collins moved from the courthouse 
to Parliament House in about the length of time it took to traverse the 
distance by foot. Well, not quite, but the point is made.

To be clear, parliament was not due to debate the case. In fact, when the 
by-now-premier-again, Sir Henry Parkes, and other members of the Legislative 
Assembly went into the bear pit - a ferocious debating chamber, ripe with 
insult and upset - 6 days before Christmas in 1888, the item of business was 
Estimates, and the topics at hand included the cost of running trams.

Nobody in the Parkes ministry expected Louisa's case to come up and almost as 
soon as it did, some members of parliament tried to shut it down, saying 
politicians had no business under the doctrine of the separation of powers 
debating whether a mother of 7 should hang by her neck until she was dead. New 
South Wales was apparently too mature a democracy for that.

In any case, the Speaker took the chair at 4.30pm and for at least 2 hours, 
debate was as scheduled - until Sir Ninian Melville got to his feet. To sketch 
the scene, Melville was a former undertaker who liked to wear long black coats 
and puff on a grand, curled pipe, and although he was listed as a member of the 
temperance movement, he also liked to tell witty stories at his local public 
house. Now he wanted to talk about Louisa Collins.

The audacity of his move enraged Parkes. (For the sake of context, it's worth 
noting that Melville and Parkes loathed each other; at elections just a year 
earlier, Parkes had denounced Melville as 'the veriest charlatan that ever 
lived'. 12) Melville didn't give a hoot. He was determined to have his say. 
Lest anyone in the House not be aware of the case, he gave a brief outline: 
Louisa Collins was, he said, a woman who had been tried twice already for the 
murder of her second husband. Both juries had failed to find her guilty but 
instead of setting her free, the Crown had tried her a 3rd time, this time for 
the murder of her 1st husband. When that jury failed to reach a verdict, the 
Crown went back to the 1st charge, finally obtaining a conviction, but only 
after the Crown had objected to at least 4 of the potential jurors.

This was not justice, Melville said. This was a travesty of justice.

No 2nd guesses for knowing why Robert Howard was known as "Nosey Bob" after his 
face was disfigured by a horse.

Was the parliament really going to sit back and let this woman hang? 'It has 
been years since New South Wales was disgraced by the execution of a woman,' he 
cried. The colony ought to be ashamed of its ongoing thirst for the blood of 
criminals. It was immature.

New South Wales was surely no longer a penal colony. Wasn't there anyone who 
could see how poorly an execution would reflect upon the notion of New South 
Wales as a fully grown democracy, striving to take a seat at the table of 
mature and dignified nations? Also, it was the centennial year: 100 years since 
the arrival of the First Fleet. Rather than remind the world of how far New 
South Wales had come, all the execution of a woman could do was demonstrate how 
far the colony still had to go.

Many in the chamber agreed. 'Hear, hear!' they cried.

Unfortunately for Louisa, 1 man who did not agree was also one of the few men 
with the power to make a difference: Sir Henry Parkes.

To be clear, Sir Henry was in principle opposed to the death penalty. Just 2 
years earlier, he had been part of the campaign to save the young men of Mount 
Rennie, writing personally to the New South Wales governor, Lord Carrington, to 
remind him that Britain didn't hang men for rape, and if New South Wales wanted 
to be seen as more than a penal colony where drunks were sent to dry out in the 
stocks and men were flogged with the cat-o'-9-tails, then it probably shouldn't 
hang men for the crime of rape, either.

Of course, Sir Henry hadn't then been premier. Now that he did hold that office 
- and could make a difference - he was on the side of death.

Sir Henry's lack of support for Louisa cannot have been for lack of empathy. 
Unlike many of the men who occupied positions of power in New South Wales at 
that time, men who came from aristocratic British families, Sir Henry actually 
knew something of grinding poverty (and of grand love affairs, although you'll 
have to go to the epilogue to read about those). He also understood power, 
having either hungered for, or exercised, it all his adult life.

Born in Britain in 1815, Sir Henry was already in his 70s by the time Louisa's 
case came to trial. He had a great, flowing white beard and unusually long 
white hair: 'leonine' was the word most commonly used to describe him. Although 
by most accounts a magnificent orator, Sir Henry had received only a few years 
of formal education. 15 As a boy, Henry did his best to scratch out a living in 
a brick pit before taking an apprenticeship with an ivory turner, opening a 
store and marrying a butcher's daughter called Clarinda.

By 1838, Henry's business had failed, and although Clarinda had twice given 
birth, both children had died. Henry pawned his tools and the couple sailed for 
Sydney in 1839, arriving 2 days after the birth of Clarinda's 3rd - but only 
living - child with only a few shillings to the family's name and no letter of 
introduction.

Henry looked for work but there was none to be found. He sold his possessions 
to survive, before finally taking labouring work at the estate of grazier Sir 
John Jamison near Richmond in New South Wales. 6 months later, the family 
returned to Sydney, where Henry worked at a foundry and a brassworks before 
opening an ivory and luxury goods store in Hunter Street. That business also 
failed but, never mind, it wasn't business that Henry wanted to be in. It was 
politics.

Parkes won the seat of Wentworth in 1854. One of the 1st committees he chaired 
as a parliamentarian examined the conditions of the working classes. He wrote 
critically of people living in hovels, alongside rats and disease, and of the 
more than 1000 vagrant children who roamed Sydney's streets barefoot, hungry 
and illiterate. A man of action as well as words, Parkes created a school - a 
magnificent little school - for orphan boys on a hulk in Sydney Harbour. Later 
still, he took steps to ensure that primary education in New South Wales would 
be compulsory, secular and free.

Hanged Sir Henry became premier (then called prime minister) in 1872, but his 
1st term came to an end in 1875. And therein lay Louisa's problem: Parkes's 
reign had ended, at least in part, because Sir Henry had expressed sympathy in 
parliament for a notorious bushranger, Frank Gardiner, who had been on the run 
from police for at least a year before being recaptured, during which time he'd 
displayed exemplary behaviour (in fact, he'd been busy running a little shop). 
Sir Henry believed that Gardiner could be rehabilitated; others were thirsting 
for a sentence of least 30 years' hard labour, and while that debate alone 
would not cost Sir Henry the premiership, it would not assist him.

It is entirely possible that the debate about Louisa's sentence took Sir Henry 
by surprise, and he would certainly have been offended by the idea that New 
South Wales was not a mature democracy.

Sir Henry was by then on the verge of planting in Lord Carrington's mind the 
audacious idea that he could federate the colonies to create the nation that is 
now the Commonwealth of Australia in less than 6 months. (It would in fact take 
10 years and Sir Henry would not live to see it, but he is today regarded as 
the man with the greatest claim to the title of the Father of Federation.) Few 
had done more to prove that Australia was ready to stand on its own, and here 
was his arch-enemy arguing that the execution of Louisa Collins would somehow 
prove that the colony was still a penal outpost.

Parkes got to his feet, took up a position next to the dispatch box and he gave 
a mighty speech, condemning Louisa to her fate.

This woman - Louisa Collins - had had as fair and patient a trial as any person 
ever had, Sir Henry said, his voice booming across the bear pit. Moreover, she 
had been convicted of 'one of the most cruel, inexcusable, and frightful 
murders ever perpetrated in the world's history'.

Sir Henry Parkes with wife Julia refused to intervene to save Louisa.

Energised, Sir Henry's supporters began to cheer: 'Hear, hear!' If the taking 
of a life could ever be justified, then Louisa's life could justly be taken, 
Sir Henry said. If it were ever sound to inflict the punishment of death, this 
was the case in which that punishment was sound.

Hear, hear, his supporters cried.

Louisa Collins had been ably defended. What's more, Sir Henry said, he had 
already put these very questions - whether the trial was fair and the 
punishment just - directly to the Chief Justice, and the Chief Justice had 
assured him in the 'most exhaustive and complete report ever conducted' that 
this woman had indeed received a fair trial. Moreover, the Chief Justice had 
given him no reason to believe that mercy could or should be extended to 
Louisa. In fact, when Sir Henry had asked whether the Chief Justice would 
consider mercy, the answer he had received had been a 'most decided negative'. 
Louisa Collins was guilty. The Chief Justice was in no doubt about that. Who 
could disagree? As for Melville's argument that Louisa could not be hanged 
because she was a woman, and therefore somehow precious and delicate, Sir Henry 
knew better: when women gave into a life of crime, he said, they soon became 
more evil and unpredictable than even the worst men. 'The worst of crimes have 
been committed by women,' Sir Henry said. In fact, 'in the fearful period when 
France ran riot in blood, those who were the most guilty of the most ferocious 
delight in blood were women - young women and tender girls!' Rising to the 
occasion, he went on, saying women had 'hoisted the heads of their fellow 
creatures on pikes!' Hear, hear! Further, once a woman forgot the character of 
her sex, 'there was no barrier to the lengths which she would go in crime!' Now 
Sir Henry's voice dropped. Let his fellow politicians understand: he did not 
himself believe in capital punishment, certainly not as having a deterrent 
effect.

'Hear, hear,' mumbled others in the chamber, less agitated now.

Capital punishment was, however, the law - and the parliament was bound to 
uphold the law. The sentence of death had been carried out on women whose cases 
were far less compelling than that of Louisa Collins. Did nobody in the chamber 
remember the case of Mary Ann Brownlow from Goulburn? Sir Henry did, and for 
the benefit of those who didn't, he was prepared to revisit the case.

Mary Ann had been 'young and married, and a mother', Sir Henry said. 'She had 
killed her husband with a knife in a fit of temper. She was found guilty of 
murder, and sentenced to death.

Efforts were made to secure her reprieve, but [all was in] vain ... The 
unfortunate woman [had] a young child at breast and just before ascending the 
scaffold steps' she paused to feed the baby, who nuzzled at her breast, before 
being taken from Mary Ann so she could hang.

At this, 'a howl of indignation shot up from all sides of the House' and cries 
of 'Shame, shame!' and 'Outrage, outrage!' and 'Disgrace to civilization!' rang 
out - but Sir Henry pushed on.

The execution of Mary Ann was, in his opinion, 'an inhuman thing' and yet it 
had been carried out, because murder was a capital crime and the law was the 
law, and if Mary Ann could not be reprieved for an 'impulsive murder', how on 
earth could the conniving Louisa Collins be reprieved for a poison murder 
involving vastly more scheming and plotting? Also, if the death sentence was 
wrong, there was an easy way to remedy it: those who thought so should move to 
abolish it. If such a bill were to come before the Assembly he - Sir Henry - 
support it, for he did not believe in death as punishment. But there was no 
such bill before the House.

Furthermore, the idea that he, as premier, or any other member of the 
parliament, could interfere with matters of justice was dangerous for 
democracy. The courts were independent and had to remain so. Any member of the 
House that desired to take action should do so as a private citizen - and not 
as members of parliament. This was not the forum. This was not the place.

'Hear, hear!' his supporters cried.

Sir Henry sat down. His speech had been loud and passionate, and wild debate 
now ensued. The member for Northumberland, Mr Thomas Walker, shouted that the 
state was 'on the eve of committing ... murder'. Imprisonment for life was 
surely enough for the interests of justice to be served. Member for Monaro, Mr 
Thomas O'Mara, agreed, saying no woman should be placed upon the scaffold. 
'There was a distinction made between man and woman,' he cried. 'Women were not 
flogged in this country' - and if they couldn't be flogged, surely they 
couldn't be executed.

The member for Paddington, Mr John Neild, was next to his feet.

In terms of extraordinary appearance, Neild gave even Sir Henry a run for his 
money: he had a pure-white, twirled moustache and his outfits included shirts 
with upturned collars and dinky neckties. In years to come, he would form his 
own militia and join the Senate.

On this day, he argued for Louisa's life on the grounds that her children - 
especially May - had probably been coaxed or even forced into giving evidence 
against her. These were little children, he said, who were brought to the court 
time after time after time, until they became educated as to what to say.

Some members were outraged by this accusation, and cried out: 'Shame! Shame!' 
Sir Henry, in particular, was livid, saying: 'That remark should not be made in 
a place like this!' But Mr Neild stood firm. He hadn't meant to suggest the 
Crown had coached the children but 'these little children could not be brought 
so often into court without the matter being impressed on their minds ... 
repeating a lie often [would eventually make any person] believe it!' (There is 
some evidence for this: in one of his earliest statements, Louisa's 16-year-old 
son, Arthur, told police that he couldn't remember any squabbles between his 
mother and Michael Collins; by the time of the final trial, he was saying that 
they squabbled often, and usually about how much she drank.) The member for 
Gundagai, Mr John Henry Want, was astonished. The children had not been 
coached, he said. The children were merely witnesses. It was very bad form to 
raise such allegations in parliament. A terrible precedent was being set, one 
that the House might soon regret.

Now Sir Henry rose again. He, too, was appalled by the debate - not the way it 
had roiled out of control on the floor of the House but by the gall of those 
who argued for Louisa's life while keeping capital punishment in place.

'There is nothing more abominable to my sense of feeling than the strangling of 
a woman,' he said. 'A woman! From whose breast the nurture of life is drawn by 
the human family! A woman! Who presides over the paths of our little children. 
A woman! Who is the very centre of everything that is gentle and lovable in 
social life!' Those who considered him bloodthirsty were wrong. He had spoken 
out in the Mount Rennie case because he didn't believe that young men should 
die for the crime of rape. He had genuinely believed that a mass hanging would 
scandalise the colony throughout the civilised world.

But that case and this one were different. Britain did not hang for rape. 
Britain did hang for murder.

'It would be a most dangerous practice to interfere here,' he said, because 
Louisa was guilty of murder, and if murderers could escape with their lives, a 
precedent would be set.

'Hear, hear!' his supporters shouted, but they were soon drowned out by those 
on the other side, arguing for Louisa's life.

Mr Thomas Henry Hassall, for example, cried out that the death sentence should 
be done away with, adding that it was a disgrace to the 'manhood' of any nation 
when a woman was hanged.

By now Sir Henry was furious. Who said it was only men that wanted to see 
Louisa hang? 'I believe that the women of the country would vote for Mrs 
Collins being hanged!' he cried.

It was an audacious thing to say. Sir Henry knew as well as anyone that the 
women in New South Wales in 1888 could not vote on anything.

Mr Hassall got to his feet. 'Slander!' he said. 'That is slander upon the women 
of New South Wales ... The women of Australia were not so depraved as to desire 
anything of the sort. I am astonished at a man like the premier uttering such a 
slander on the women of Australia!' Sir Henry was unrepentant. No, he said, the 
women of Australia would not support Louisa Collins. The women of Australia 
would be appalled by what she had done. The women of Australia 'do not approve 
of wives poisoning their husbands!'

>From Last Woman Hanged by Caroline Overington

Published: 1 November 2014 Imprint: HarperCollins

Hardback RRP: $39.99, E-Book Available

(source: The Herald Sun)






CHINA:

China executes more people than the 3 times the rest of the world combined


For thousands of Chinese citizens convicted every year of capital crimes, some 
300 court workers in an unmarked building in eastern Beijing are the only thing 
standing between them and death by lethal injection or a firing range.

China has been gradually reducing the number of executions - currently about 
2,400 by some estimates - that it carries out each year. One method a mandatory 
review of all death penalty verdicts. According to a profile of China's highest 
court, the Supreme People's Court, staff interview the convicted defendants in 
person or by video feed, reexamine evidence, and sometimes ask for more. They 
ultimately reject about 10% of death penalty verdicts.

The death penalty is often waived in cases involving the death of just one 
person, or if the defendant surrenders, according to the San Francisco-based 
human rights organization Dui Hua. China is also considering reducing the 
number of capital crimes from 55 to 46 - taking the smuggling of weapons, 
counterfeit currency, and nuclear materials off the list, along with fraud and 
forcing or facilitating prostitution - and has vowed to stop the widespread 
practice of harvesting organs from executed prisoners. Defendants may soon be 
able to be represented by lawyers throughout the review process; currently they 
are not.

Still, China executes a staggering number of its citizens: Last year, China's 
estimated 2,400 executions vastly outweighed the 778 people executed in the 
rest of the world. Chinese authorities don't release official data on the 
executions, a figure that is considered a state secret.

(source: qz.com)






BANGLADESH:

KP Assembly flays punishment of Bangladeshi Jamaat leaders


The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Wednesday condemned the award of death 
penalty and life imprisonment to Jamaat-i-Islami leaders and activists in 
Bangladesh and declared their trial partial.

The condemnation came in the form of the unanimous passage of a resolution 
tabled by Jamaat-i-Islami MPA Mohammad Ali Khan.

The resolution carried signatures of lawmakers of all parties in the assembly 
except Awami National Party.

During the session chaired by Speaker Asad Qaisar, only 1 ANP lawmaker, Yasmeen 
Pir Mohammad Khan, was in attendance.

She, however, didn't oppose the resolution.

The resolution, which was adopted unanimously, said the government of 
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hassina Wajid was punishing Jamaat leaders 
for fighting against India alongside the Pakistan Army in the 1971 war in the 
then East Pakistan.

"The pro-India government in Bangladesh at the behest of Indian government and 
as a political revenge is announcing unjust death sentences and life 
imprisonment for JI leaders. This assembly strongly condemns it," the 
resolution said.

It said Bangladeshi Jamaat leaders, including late Professor Ghulam Azam, 
Maulana Mateeur Rehman Nizami and Mir Qasim, had been given death sentences, 
while Mullah Abdul Qadir was executed for supporting Pakistan in the 1971 war.

The resolution said the punishments were awarded in violation of an agreement 
signed by then Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Indian Prime 
Minister Indra Gandhi and Bangladeshi President Sheikh Mujibur Rehman after the 
1971 war was over.

"That agreement said no one would be punished in connection with the 1971 war 
and the US, Britain and other countries had endorsed it. The Bangladeshi 
government is committing violation of human rights charters and international 
agreements," it said.

The resolution further said Bangladeshi Jamaat-i-Islami had recognised the 
country's Constitution and participated in the general elections and therefore, 
the punishment of its leaders and activists were unfair and unjust.

(source: Dawn)