CrimLaw

Death Cases - Philipines:

The President of the Philipines lifted her moratorium on the death penalty as of January 2004. Shortly thereafter, it was clarified that this only applies to kidnapping cases. While some hailed this as a triumph, others condemned it including members of the legislature and a man hoping to take her job.


Death Cases - International:

(1) India may put the death penalty in place for "spurious drug makers."

(2) It might be somewhat difficult to extradite this fellow from Canada because the officer who investigated the case now has this to say:

"I'm haunted by the fact that I now think we seized an innocent man, with no valid Canadian arrest warrant, based on false evidence from the U.S."

There might also be some distrust based on a prior extradition:

Peltier, an AIM activist who is serving two life sentences for the 1975 murders of two FBI agents in South Dakota, fled to Canada. He was extradited in 1976 on the basis of affidavits from a witness named Myrtle Poor Bear, a mentally challenged woman who claimed she was Peltier's girlfriend and had seen him shoot the two agents.

Poor Bear later recanted her evidence after it was proven she had never met Peltier nor witnessed the shootings.

Warren Allmand, a former justice minister, and the judge who extradited Peltier later said they would never have agreed to his extradition had they known some affidavits and evidence presented by the U.S. were false.

Defendant: John Graham

(3) The victor in the strangest case of the week catagory:

Prosecutors in the case of the German who killed and ate a man could face legal problems proving he had committed murder because the victim offered himself for slaughter and wanted to be eaten.

(4) Kenya's government plans to do away with the death penalty:

Wilfred Machage, assistant minister for home affairs, said: "The practice has been used worldwide in the past but latest trends show that it is an abuse of an individual's right to life and it is not part of the measures that can help a convict fit in society because they will be dead."

(5) The honorable Alex Nwofe, Chairman, Nigerian House of Representatives Committee on Justice & Legal Matters:

It is to the credit of the Federal Ministry of Justice that it has assumed responsibility of not only raising issues of this nature but for ensuring that Nigerians are properly informed on the many issues related to death penalty.

This is why my Committee looks forward with much expectation to the outcome of this dialogue. Specifically the interest of the Committee on Justice and Legal Matters in the death penalty dialogue is based on our desire to raise key concerns about the state of the Nigerian Criminal Justice System. We believe that this dialogue should not be based solely on whether or not the state should be given the power to kill. This must also be a platform where stakeholders should collectively explore means by which the Federal Government and I mean specifically the Presidency would put the reform of our justice sector on top of its agenda.