Iran has 300 convicted drug smugglers on death row, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said in comments published on Tuesday, adding that, to his regret, few of them were major traffickers.
"300 people have been sentenced to death in relation to drug smuggling," the English-language government-owned Iran Daily quoted the prosecutor as saying.
"However, these people are not the major drug traffickers. We need to move towards the big smugglers."
Jafari Dolatabadi did not specify whether all those he referred to had exhausted all avenues of appeal.
Possession of more than 30 grammes (just over an ounce) of narcotics is punishable by death in Iran as are murder, rape, armed robbery and some cases of adultery.
So far this year, Iran has executed 145 people, according to an AFP tally based on reports published by local media.
Iranian media reported 179 hangings last year. But international human rights groups say the actual number was much higher, making the Islamic republic second only to China in the number of people it put to death.
Iran says the death penalty is essential to maintain law and order, and that it is applied only after exhaustive judicial proceedings.
Iran is a major transit route for drugs from neighbouring Afghanistan, which produces some 90% of the world's opium, according to UN figures.
Iranian officials say that some 3,500 members of the security forces have been killed in clashes with traffickers over the past 30 years, mainly in areas bordering Afghanistan or Pakistan
Iran has 300 convicted drug smugglers on death row,
The Royal Oman Police (ROP) has arrested three Omani citizens on charges of using and smuggling in narcotics.
The Royal Oman Police (ROP) has arrested three Omani citizens on charges of using and smuggling in narcotics.
The suspects were caught while trading drugs and were carrying 103 rolls of paper that contained heroin.
The raiding police team also recovered a large amount of cash from the possession of accused that is believed to be from the sale of narcotic substances, according to a press release from ROP Wednesday.
The fate of three Malaysian brothers who could face the death penalty for drug trafficking remained uncertain on Wednesday
The fate of three Malaysian brothers who could face the death penalty for drug trafficking remained uncertain on Wednesday after the prosecution team failed to deliver its sentencing demand for the fifth time in a row.
Arivananthan Anguthan,44, Perumal, 41, and Mugilan, 36, are on trial at South Jakarta District Court for allegedly peddling crystal methamphetamine.
“This is the fifth delay in recent weeks and we have to wait until next Wednesday,” said Yahya Iskandar, a defense lawyer. “Prosecutors failed to show up because they needed to attend a ceremony.”
Last week the hearing was adjourned because the judges went on a business trip to Central Java. The week prior, the prosecution team said it was not ready to submit a sentencing demand.
A senior official at the Attorney General’s Office on Wednesday pledged to conduct an internal inquiry into the repeated court delays.
“We will check,” said Marwan Effendy, the deputy attorney general for internal supervision.
Prosecutors alleged that the three were given $21,800 by a suspect named Laurens Joosvia Marpaung, alias Edi Johnson, to buy 4 kilograms of crystal meth from an unidentified dealer in South Jakarta in November.
Lawyers said $10,000 was used for the drugs, while the rest was the brothers’ payment.
The defendants have been in custody since November.
Meanwhile, customs officials said on Wednesday that another Malaysian man was arrested for smuggling 1.4 kilograms of heroin into the country.
Ganesan Sanmugam, 24, was arrested on Friday shortly after landing in Surabaya with drugs worth around Rp 2.1 billion ($245,000) hidden in his luggage, officials said.
“The heroin was wrapped in aluminium foil and hidden inside the suitcase pocket,” said Buhari Sirait, a customs official.
Sanmugam later admitted to police that he had carried the drugs but claimed he was only a courier, the official added.
The death penalty case of Mumia Abu-Jamal took a surprising turn this week,
The death penalty case of Mumia Abu-Jamal took a surprising turn this week, as a federal appeals court declared, for the second time, that Abu-Jamal's death sentence was unconstitutional. The third US circuit court of appeals, in Philadelphia, found that the sentencing instructions the jury received, and the verdict form they had to use in the sentencing, were unclear. While the disputes surrounding Abu-Jamal's guilt or innocence were not addressed, the case highlights inherent problems with the death penalty and the criminal justice system, especially the role played by race.
Early on 9 December 1981, Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner pulled over a car driven by William Cook, Abu-Jamal's brother. What happened next is in dispute. Shots were fired, and both Officer Faulkner and Abu-Jamal were shot. Faulkner died, and Abu-Jamal was found guilty of his murder in a court case presided over by Judge Albert Sabo, who was widely considered to be a racist. In just one of too many painful examples, a court stenographer said in an affidavit that she heard Sabo say, in the courtroom antechamber, "I'm going to help them fry the n****r."
This latest decision by the court of appeals relates directly to Sabo's conduct of the sentencing phase of Abu-Jamal's court case. The Pennsylvania supreme court is considering separate arguments surrounding whether or not Abu-Jamal received a fair trial at all. What the court of appeals unanimously found this week is that he did not receive a fair sentencing. Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams has decided to appeal the decision to the US supreme court, saying:
"The right thing for us to do is to ask the US supreme court to hear this and to make a ruling on it."
As a result of this ruling, Abu-Jamal could get a new, full sentencing hearing, in court, before a jury. In such a hearing, the jury would be given clear instructions on how to decide between applying a sentence of life in prison as opposed to the death penalty – something the court found he did not receive back in 1982. At best, Abu-Jamal would be removed from the cruel confines of solitary confinement on Pennsylvania's death row at SCI Greene. John Payton, director counsel of the NAACP legal defence fund, which is representing Abu-Jamal in court, said:
"This decision marks an important step forward in the struggle to correct the mistakes of an unfortunate chapter in Pennsylvania history ... and helps to relegate the kind of unfairness on which this death sentence rested to the distant past."
His other attorney, Judith Ritter, a law professor at Widener University school of law, told me: "This is extremely significant. It's a life or death decision." I asked her if she had spoken to Abu-Jamal yet, and she told me that the prison failed to approve her request for an emergency legal phone call. I was not surprised, given my many years of covering his case.
He has faced multiple obstacles as he has tried to have his voice heard. On 12 August 1999, as I was hosting Democracy Now!, Abu-Jamal called into our news hour, mid-broadcast, to be interviewed. As he began to speak, a prison guard yanked the phone out of the wall. Abu-Jamal called back a month later and recounted that:
"Another guard appeared at the cell hollering at the top of his lungs, 'This call is terminated!' I immediately called to the sergeant standing by and looking on and said, 'Sergeant, where did this order come from?' He shrugged his shoulders and said: 'I don't know. We just got a call to cut you off.'"
Abu-Jamal sued over the violation of his rights, and won.
Despite his solitary confinement, Abu-Jamal has continued his work as a journalist. His weekly radio commentaries are broadcast from coast to coast. He is the author of six books. He was recently invited to present to a conference on racial imprisonment at Princeton University. He said (through a cellphone held up to a microphone):
"Vast numbers of men, women and juveniles … populate the prison industrial complex here in America. As many of you know, the US, with barely 5% of the world's population, imprisons 25% of the world's prisoners … the numbers of imprisoned blacks here rivals and exceeds South Africa's hated apartheid system during its height."
The United States clings to the death penalty, alone in the industrialised world. In fact, it stands with China, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Yemen as the world's most frequent executioners. This week's decision in Mumia Abu-Jamal's case stands as one more clear reason why the death penalty should be abolished.
seven Afghan Christians and their families who fled their homeland to India and were requesting refugee status were denied their requests by the UN in recent weeks and face deportation back to Afghanistan, where they risk arrest and possible execution for apostasy.
This is contained in a statement by the Regional Manager for the Middle East, International Christian Concern (ICC) (www.persecution.org) Aidan Clay adding that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) rejected or closed the applications of seven Afghan Christian families and individuals seeking refugee status in India after fleeing religious persecution in Afghanistan.
He said that among the applicants is Aman, a husband and father of four, who has since received a letter authorizing his deportation from the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs.
According to him, Aman and his wife converted to Christianity from Islam eleven years ago, after which Aman studied at Zaraphat Bible College in Rawalpindi, Pakistan before returning to Afghanistan to work with an aid organization in Kabul.
“He fled the country to India after an Afghan television network broadcast footage of Afghans being baptized and participating in prayer services in May 2010. The broadcast led to protests throughout the country and a government crackdown against Afghan converts to Christianity,” he stated.
Clay noted that after applying for asylum in India, Aman was told by the Deputy Chief of Mission at the UNCHR office in New Delhi on April 12 that he would be granted refugee status.
“However, a letter issued on May 6 stated that he had been denied based on failure to meet the criteria set forth in Article 6B of the UNHCR Statute which states that a person can receive refugee status if, “(he has a) well-founded fear of persecution by reason of his race, religion, nationality or political opinion and is unable or, because of such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of the government of the country of his nationality," he stated.
He also stated: “As seen in the recent cases of Said Musa and Shoaib Assadullah, there are severe penalties under Afghan law, including imprisonment and potential execution, for Afghans who convert from Islam to Christianity.”
He continued: “Aman, his family, and others whose applications were denied, will likely face a cruel punishment if they are forced to return to Afghanistan. We urge the UNHCR to reconsider these applications and for the Indian government to offer refuge to persecuted minorities who have fled to India for asylum.”
South African man has been saved from the gallows after successfully appealing against his death sentence in Botswana.
RELIEVED: Michael Molefe has been on death row in Gaborone prison since 2008
Michael Molefe has for years been haunted by the words "you shall be hanged by the neck until you die".
It was with these words, in the Lobatse High Court on March 7 2008, that Judge Maruping Dibotelo condemned Molefe to death.
The Soweto-born former soldier and a Botswana national, Brandon Kgotso Sampson, were arrested on Christmas Day in 2000 for the murder of two Zimbabweans, Robert Ncube and Sam Hombarume, in Mogoditshane. Molefe shot Ncube and Sampson stabbed Hombarume.
Now the 50-year-old father-of-three is counting the days to his release from a Gaborone prison after the country's court of appeal overturned his death sentence two weeks ago.
The court found there were extenuating circumstances, including that the murder was not premeditated.
Molefe and Sampson had gone to the victims' home to recover money they believed had been stolen from Molefe's aunt in SA.
Molefe's sentence has been commuted to 20 years' jail - backdated to the day of his arrest in 2000, but he could be a free man as early as 2014.
Fighting to stay alive has been a long, hard journey.
In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Times at Gaborone's First Offenders Prison, where he has been since winning his appeal, Molefe admitted he had made a "mistake".
"I killed someone. That's unacceptable. Taking a life is not a good thing. I have apologised to the families of the victims."
But he did not want to die. "I don't have words to describe how I feel. Facing death was a frightening experience."
Molefe was previously held at Gaborone's Maximum Prison - where all death-row inmates are held in a single cell.
Sometimes, he said, a fellow death-row prisoner would be taken away - and while the rest of them were shielded from this scene, the screams of that prisoner would be a sign that he was on his way to be hanged.
What was worse for those on death row was that they got notice of when they would be hanged and prison staff would not ask them about their final wishes. "I'm so happy my life has been spared," said Molefe.
Molefe would have been the third South African to be hanged in Botswana. In 2001 Mariette Bosch was executed after she was found guilty of murdering her friend, Maria Wolmarans. Her execution made international headlines as she was the first white woman to be hanged in Botswana.
Another South African, Lehlohonolo Kobedi, was executed in Botswana for murdering a police sergeant in 2003.
The Botswana Centre for Human Rights and other organisations have been calling for the abolition of the death penalty in the country, where more than 40 executions have been carried out since 1966.
Recently, Judge Terrence Rannowane of the Botswana high court sentenced Zibani Thamo to death for murdering his lover, Sihle Dube. An appeal is pending.
Molefe said he had started writing a book to be published once he is released from prison - which will cover how a death sentence had changed his life. He began writing it the day Bosch was hanged in 2001.
Molefe, whose entire family is in South Africa, relied mainly on the support of his Botswana girlfriend, Tshidi Banda, 41, during his years on death row.
She never gave up hope that his life would be spared and spent every little bit of money she had to support him.
She said this week: "They said I should just accept that he was going to be hanged. I could not do that to Michael. That did not even cross my mind. I love him too much."
Banda added: "When the judge was sentencing them I told myself this is just a human being talking. He is just reading the laws of Botswana. God is above all."
Molefe's daughter Madiale Mokgojoe, 32, who lives in Soweto, was equally thrilled that her dad's life had been spared.
"This is a miracle. When he was sentenced to death I thought his life was over. This was the best birthday present my father could ever ask for.
"He has been given a chance to live again," said Mokgojoe.
New Hampshire will expand its law to cover the kind of attacks that killed Kimberly Cates and maimed her daughter.
New Hampshire rarely expands its death penalty statute, but the brutal machete and knife attack that killed a mother in her bed and severely wounded her daughter could move lawmakers to add home invasion killings to the short list of crimes punishable by death.
The Senate holds a hearing Wednesday on a bill to do so that has passed the House.
Senate Republican Leader Jeb Bradley of Wolfeboro believes New Hampshire will expand its law to cover the kind of attacks that killed Kimberly Cates and maimed her daughter.
"Given the magnitude of that type of a crime, the death penalty is warranted," Bradley said. "I think an expansion of the death penalty is going to be seen favorably in the Senate."
The bill has powerful backers.
House Speaker William O'Brien sponsored the bill in response to the attack on Cates who was from his hometown of Mont Vernon and named the bill after her.
O'Brien said the bill will enhance protection for people in their homes and provide justice to future victims of home invasion murders.
"(The bill) is a measured and responsible expansion of the New Hampshire death penalty statute to address deadly assaults on people in their homes that were unimaginable until recent years," said O'Brien.
The House passed the bill on a voice vote.
Democratic Gov. John Lynch supports making home invasions a capital crime, but has not said whether he supports the House bill. He submitted a letter to the House pledging to work with lawmakers to pass a bill tailored to apply to home invasion murders.
Bradley believes the only thing that could hold up the bill's passage would be differences over details that can't be resolved by the end of the session in June.
"I think we all feel philosophically (that) for this type of crime the death penalty is warranted," he said.
Steven Spader was convicted of Cates' murder last year and sentenced to life without parole. Co-defendant Christopher Gribble admitted to taking part in the attacks but tried unsuccessfully to convince the jury he was insane at the time. He was sentenced to life without parole.
Three others were sentenced on lessor crimes.
Spader and Gribble couldn't have faced the death penalty in the 2009 attack because the crime doesn't fall into one of six types of murders punishable by death under New Hampshire's statute, one of the narrowest in the nation.
The six are: killing an on-duty law enforcement officer or judge, murder for hire, murder committed in connection with a kidnapping, murder committed during rape, murder committed during certain drug offenses and murder committed by a convict already serving a sentence of life without parole.
New Hampshire rarely approves expansions to the law. The last, in 1994, was the addition of killing a judge.
Only three people have been charged with capital murder in more than a dozen years in New Hampshire. Two men are serving sentences of life without parole and the third is on death row for killing a police officer.
In its 380-year history, New Hampshire has executed 24 people, and none since 1939.
A bill to repeal the law passed the House and Senate in 2000 but was vetoed by then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, now a U.S. senator. Repeal bills have not reached the governor's desk since.
Crafting a law concise enough to address the crime of home invasion could be difficult because legally, there is no such crime as home invasion.
The attorney general's office testified at a House hearing that the bill would cover a wide variety of behaviors, such as one burglar killing another to keep robbery loot to himself, or a death resulting from a fight with an estranged spouse. The attorney general's office offered to help narrow the bill to cover cases like the Mont Vernon home invasion, but the House passed O'Brien's bill unchanged.
Cates' husband, David, testified in support of the bill though he said he wasn't seeking vengeance since the law change wouldn't apply in his wife's case.
death on the installment plan
Year after year, polls show that about 60 percent of U.S. citizens support executing people convicted of murder.
Until those citizens become jurors.
An Inquirer analysis of almost 2,000 Pennsylvania homicide cases filed between Jan. 1, 2007, and Feb. 3 shows that just 3 percent of first-degree murder cases - the only charge for which capital punishment is possible - that went to a jury ended with the jury's choosing death.
A third of all first-degree murder cases ended with a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole, the remainder with guilty verdicts on lesser degrees of homicide, guilty pleas, acquittals, or dismissal of charges.
For the eight people with the dubious distinction of being condemned by Pennsylvania juries since 2007, it's more likely they will die of old age than the injection of chemicals that is now the state's method of execution.
Just three people have been executed since Pennsylvania reinstituted capital punishment in 1978 - two in 1995, the last in 1999 - and only because all three ended appeals and asked for death.
For the other 215 awaiting execution, there is life on death row - solitary confinement 23 hours a day in special units at four state prisons, some for as long as 27 years - a sentence some inmates have called "death on the installment plan."
Pennsylvania's execution stalemate hides a debate that continues in the state's legislative and legal communities.
Proponents complain that capital punishment, unused, mocks survivors of murder victims, condemning them to follow appeals for decades while waiting for a convicted killer to be executed.
Opponents say the death penalty is inhumane, is often wrongly and unfairly applied, deters no one, and caters to vengeance. A life sentence with no chance of parole - the law in Pennsylvania when a jury cannot agree on a death sentence - is just as effective.
And that is how Pennsylvanians vote when they get the chance as jurors deciding the fate of a fellow human.
Last year, just three Pennsylvanians were sentenced to death: one from Philadelphia, one from Lycoming County, one from York County.
State prison rolls list 211 men and four women awaiting execution - the fourth-largest condemned population among 35 states with the death penalty. New Jersey abolished capital punishment in 2007.
'We are all on death row,' Mobile man says after getting death sentence
A man who killed his estranged wife and her boyfriend 2 years ago must die by execution, a judge decided today.
Mobile County Presiding Circuit Judge James Graddick upheld a jury’s recommendation and sentenced Derrick Shawn Penn to death for the May 2009 deaths of Janet Penn and Demetrius Powe. Penn, 44, shot his wife and then beat Powe to death in an apartment in Mobile’s Birdville community.
“We are all on death row,” the defendant told Graddick after he pronounced judgment.
A jury in February convicted Penn on 4 counts of capital murder — 2 counts for each victim on killing more than 1 person and killing someone during a burglary.
Jurors voted unanimously to recommend the death penalty for 3 of those counts and split 10-2 in favor of execution on the 4th.
“We’re, of course, pleased that Judge Graddick took the jury’s recommendation on all 4 counts of capital murder,” Mobile County District Attorney Ashley Rich said. “We think the jury made the right decision.”
'Nothing . . . outweighs his responsibility for his heinous acts'
According to testimony at trial, Penn showed up at his estranged wife’s apartment on Eagle Drive early one morning of May 27 — 9 days after Janet Penn had filed for a protection-from-abuse order against the defendant. He chased her into a bathroom before shooting her twice. His gun jammed, prosecutors said, so he used it to pistol-whip Powe until he died.
According to prosecutors, Janet Penn had left her husband 2 years earlier, but couldn’t afford a divorce.
“Janet Penn and Demetrius Powe did not deserve to be killed in that apartment the early hours of May 27, 2009,” Graddick wrote in his sentencing order. “Penn wanted Janet back and she did not want him, so since he could not have her, he made sure no one else would either.”
Penn’s attorneys had tried to convince jurors that the defendant deserved life in prison without parole. They offered testimony that Penn had suffered abuse at the hands of his father as a child and that he had seen his father beating his mother.
But Graddick was unmoved.
“Nothing Derrick Penn has presented in mitigation outweighs his responsibility for his heinous acts or the value of what he has stripped away from the children and families of Janet Penn and Demetrius Powe,” the judge wrote.
Relatives of both victims spoke during the sentencing hearing. Rich said it was harder for relatives to lose their loved one to a perpetrator they knew well.
“The hardest part about this case is each family knew the defendant because they had been married,” she said. “In a sense, their pain was doubled.”
For the first time in two years, South Carolina authorities plan to execute a convicted inmate. Upstate native Jeffrey Motts, 35, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. today at the Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia.
He was serving two life sentences after being convicted of the murder of his great aunt and her husband during a robbery at their Spartanburg County
home in 1995. His death penalty conviction came more than a decade later, after the 35-year-old inmate was found guilty of the 2005 killing of his cellmate.A cocktail of three drugs will be used in the execution. Those drugs, in order, induce unconsciousness, cause paralysis and stop the heart.
The first drug, for unconsciousness, is typically sodium thiopental; it is used in South Carolina and most other lethal injection states. But federal agents seized South Carolina’s supply of the drug last month as part of a nationwide investigation into how prisons obtained the drug.
The only U.S. producer of sodium thiopental stopped production in January and overseas producers had ceased sales to the U.S. before January. The last U.S.-made supplies would expire by the end of 2011, according to manufacturer Hospira.
The Independent Mail reported in that the South Carolina Department of Corrections had no plans to use a drug other than sodium thiopental for the first stage.
In place of sodium thiopental, today’s execution would use pentobarbital, which is a surgical sedative that is sometimes employed in assisted suicides and is more commonly used to destroy dogs and cats.
Motts has waived any appeals, corrections spokesman John Barkley told the Independent Mail.
Barkley referred questions about whether the governor would intervene to that office, but said that since Motts had actively avoided appeals and publicly has welcomed his execution, the penalty is expected to be completed today.
Motts’ last meal will be given between 3:30 p.m. and 4 p.m., Barkley said.
Independent Mail coverage partner WSPA News Channel 7 will have a reporter witnessing the planned execution. Channel 7 has reported that Motts was given the choice of the electric chair or injection, and he chose injection.
South Carolina requires the state Supreme Court to sign off on an execution one month before it happens. There are 55 convicted people, including Motts, on the state’s death row. The last person executed by the state was in May 2009.
Expected death sentence for killers
The mother of slain Public Works Department (PWD) engineer Manoj Gupta Friday hailed a Lucknow 
court’s decision awarding life imprisonment to a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) legislator and nine others, but said that she expected capital punishment for all those involved in her son’s murder.‘I am very thankful to the judge. But considering the brutality of the murder of my innocent son I expected those involved would get the death sentence,’ Kiran Bala told reporters here.
Lakhimpur Kheri is the home district of Gupta, where his last rites were performed.
‘I believe life imprisonment is not sufficient for the killers…The manner in which my son was tortured to death warranted capital punishment,’ said Bala.
She avoided comment when asked whether her family would approach a higher court, pleading for the death penalty for the legislator and others involved in the murder.
A special trial court in Lucknow Friday awarded life term to BSP legislator Shekhar Tiwari and nine others, including three policemen, for Gupta’s murder in Auraiya town in 2008.
The special court of judge Virendra Kumar also awarded two-and-a-half year’s imprisonment to the legislator’s wife, Vibha Tiwari, for destroying evidence.
Gupta was lynched on the night of Dec 24, 2008 for resisting extortion by Tiwari, who was allegedly collecting money for Chief Minister Mayawati’s birthday celebrations.
The incident took place in Auraiya town, about 250 km from here.
The case was transferred to a special court in Lucknow following a request by the victim’s family members who alleged that Tiwari was trying to use his influence on the Auraiya court.
Religious leaders called Thursday on their peers to join them in seeking clemency for a man on Georgia's death row, citing doubts about whether he is guilty.
People of Faith Against the Death Penalty and Amnesty International said they were asking religious leaders to encourage others to sign a public letter (troyletter.org) asking the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute the death sentence of Troy Davis, 42. As of Thursday night, more than 1,600 people from across the country had done so.
"This is a matter of conscience and it is urgent," said Stephen Dear, executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, a national advocacy group based in North Carolina.
"We call on religious leaders, regardless of their position on the death penalty, to use their moral authority to help stop the execution of a man with a strong case of innocence."
Witnesses testified that Davis, then 19, and two others were harassing a homeless man in a Burger King parking lot in 1989 when off-duty Savannah, Georgia, Police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail went to the man's assistance. They testified that Davis shot MacPhail twice and fled.
Since Davis was convicted in 1991, seven of the nine original witnesses have recanted or changed their testimonies; no physical evidence links him to the crime.
Davis was granted a stay of execution by the U.S. Supreme Court two hours before he was to be put to death in 2008, and the court in 2009 ordered the federal district court to take another look at the case.
That court, after holding a hearing to review evidence, ruled that Davis "failed to show actual innocence" in the case. The district court suggested that, for procedural reasons, Davis should take his appeal of its ruling directly to the Supreme Court.
Davis ended up filing with both the 11th Circuit and the Supreme Court. The 11th Circuit deflected the appeal in November, saying it agreed with the district court that the Supreme Court was the correct place for the filing. Davis then took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court in January, filing two pleas.
One sought review of the Georgia federal judge's rejection of the innocence claim, and the other asked for a test of the 11th Circuit's refusal to review the case. The justices in March turned down both pleas without comment.
That means Davis could face a fourth execution date within two weeks, according to the letter. "Only the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles can stop his execution now," the release said.
"Pastors and ministers and imams and priests and rectors are reading about this case and they're researching it for themselves," Davis' sister, Martina Correia, told CNN Thursday. "They're having lots of problems with it and saying, 'Look, we've got to stop this. We're supposed to be a country of faith and a state of faith, but you're not willing to give somebody a fair chance."
Davis, who is being held at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson, has not been allowed to speak to the news media, Correia said.
She said the case has already exacted a fatal toll on her family: Their 65-year-old mother died two weeks ago as she sat watching television. Earlier in the day, she had been reading a newspaper article that said her son might be the first prisoner in the state to be put to death with a new drug, Correia said. "That's the last thing she read."
Their father died in February 1992, six months after his 19-year-old son was sentenced to death. "He said that he couldn't watch them kill his son for something he didn't do, so he stopped taking his insulin," she said. "One day he just went into a diabetic coma. He didn't wake up."
But she said her brother has accepted that he may be executed if that helps focus attention on the inequities of the system.
"I just want people to know that this is not just for our family," Correia said Thursday in a telephone interview. "Because we dishonor Officer MacPhail by killing the wrong person. All we've wanted is fairness over finality."
The jury that convicted a Columbia, Illinois man of murdering his wife and their two children, has decided Chris Coleman will be eligible for the death penalty under Illinois law.
"Phase two" of the trial began at 10:00 a.m. Friday.
Once the jurors met, it took them just 20 minutes to reach their decision about eligibility. It was announced shortly after noon.
Lawyers in the case told jurors that they must consider three factors in determining if Coleman is eligible for death: premeditated, young victims, multiple murder.
The prosecution argued the case met all three factors.
"How could it be more premeditated?" Special prosecutor with the State of Illinois Ed Parkinson, asked the jury. "Thought he (Coleman) was so smart, all he had to deal with was little Columbia Police Department. Well, he learned differently."
Defense attorney John O'Gara had a much more somber tone, than what was used during the trial.
"You are now a jury of one," O'Gara said to the jury. "You are not required to reach a unanimous verdict. Your verdict from here on out, no matter what, is going to be respected."
O'Gara also told the jurors he knew it was hard and heart-throbbing.
Parkinson responded and said, "When they went to bed, May 4th, there were four hearts throbbing, beating and the only one left is his." Then, he pointed at Coleman.
He went on and urged the jury to let Sheri and the boys, Gavin and Garett, celebrate Mother's Day.
"Don't let him beat this part," Parkinson said. Sheri and the kids deserve you to say this guy meets the eligibility to be put to death."
"The verdict is not just a reflection on him," O'Gara said. "Also reflects on who you are."
The jury will meet again on Monday for the third and final phase and decide between life in prison and death for Coleman. Before making that decision, jurors will hear from the victim's family and Coleman's family, as well as other witnesses.
Parkinson said his team will do everything they can to convince the jury to sentence Coleman to death, despite the fact that Illinois will no longer have a death penalty come July 1. Governor Pat Quinn has said he will commute a death sentence.
"If there was ever a reason for a death penalty I think it would be for a father who murdered his wife and two defenseless young boys, innocent as they are, in their beds," said Parkinson.
Guilty verdict
Chris Coleman was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder on the second anniversary of the deaths of his wife, Sheri, and their two sons, Gavin and Garett.
The verdict came on the second day of deliberations. Earlier Thursday, the jury had asked the judge for the definition of "reasonable doubt" and requested to see the window from the Coleman home.
A crowd had gathered outside the courthouse prior to the verdict being read. Those people erupted in cheers when the verdict was made public.
When the jurors came out of the courthouse to head back home, the crowd clapped for them as well.
"That's all I ever wanted was the truth," said Sheri Coleman's brother Mario DeCicco. "Now the whole world knows what the truth is."
"Justice was done for Sheri," said DeCicco who also said he felt his sister helped with the conviction through text messages she sent to friends that were read to the jury that told of her troubled marriage.
"My sister practically testified in the courtroom," said DeCicco.
"Every lead we investigated pointed back to the same person, and that person was found guilty tonight of murdering Sheri, Garett and Gavin Coleman," said Columbia Police Chief Joe Edwards.
Meanwhile, two of Sheri Coleman's best friends, Meegan Turnbeaugh and Kathy Laplante, said they were waiting for this moment. They exited the courtroom Thursday crying and hugging, overwhelmed with emotion. They had a plan to hand out bracelets in honor of Sheri's memory, but unfortunately they couldn't execute that plan.
Laplante was so overwhelmed with the verdict, she fell feet first down a flight of stairs, tumbling on her head. She was conscious and alert but had to be transported to the hospital to be checked out. She was seen being carried out of the courthouse on a stretcher wearing a neck brace.
Chris Coleman's family left the courthouse Thursday without offering comment.
Jurors spent five hours deliberating on Wednesday and wrapped at 8:00 p.m. The jury began its second day of deliberations at 10:00 a.m. Thursday before reaching a verdict shortly before 7 p.m.
"That was the longest wait of my life," said Chief Edwards.
During the trial, the defense repeatedly told the jury there was reasonable doubt in the case and that no physical evidence linked Coleman to the murders.
Prosecutors claimed Coleman strangled his wife and their two sons at their Columbia, Illinois home on May 5, 2009. They said he did it because he wanted to be with his mistress and feared he could lose his job in security for Joyce Meyer Ministries if he divorced his wife.
When police arrived at the Coleman home after the murders, they found a back window open.
Rick Sawdey, who works for the company that made the windows, testified that the window was not damaged and that the window has a forced entry resistance mechanism that prevents anyone from entering from the outside. He said there was no damage to the locks and it did not appear to have ever been forcefully opened.
