Louisiana recently started executing death-row prisoners after more than 20 years of not doing so (save a “voluntary” execution in 2010, when a prisoner waived his right to appeal and said he wanted to die). John Corley, an award-winning writer who is incarcerated at Louisiana’s Angola prison, reflects on how MAGA politics have re-invigorated the practice of state killing in Louisiana and elsewhere, and what it means for the tenor of life in institutions like Angola:
Dalton Prejean Jr, who is serving time for manslaughter, found Hoffman’s execution particularly painful. When he was ten years old, in 1990, his father died in the penitentiary’s electric chair. “The day it all went down, it was almost like reliving the moments leading up to my father’s execution,” Prejean told me. “At ten o’clock the news reporter announced that Hoffman was dead. My heart skipped. I couldn’t believe they had actually killed somebody. Was what he did so bad that he just couldn’t be allowed to go on living? Wasn’t there anything about him that was redeemable?”
Twice a week, the inmate counsel substitute Gary Boudreaux makes rounds on the five death row tiers. He knows each of the surviving men housed there. “There was no tension on the row because the guys believed the execution wouldn’t happen,” Boudreaux said. “It had been so long, and they have good lawyers. They just didn’t think executions would come back.”
A week after the execution, Boudreaux returned to the row. The atmosphere was “totally different.” The men now knew that Governor Landry “is serious about executing people, and the state will execute people. There’s no doubt in their minds about that any more.”
In a post on X, the American pope quoted the revised Catholic teaching on capital punishment that the death penalty attacks the inherent dignity of a human being
In a post on X, the American pope quoted the revised Catholic teaching on capital punishment that the death penalty attacks the inherent dignity of a human being
For the last several days, Israeli forces have blocked the main entrances and exits to the central West Bank governorate of Ramallah and Al-Bireh, further restricting Palestinian movement.
The punitive measure was taken after a Palestinian man carried out a shooting attack near the illegal settlement of Halamish, located to the northwest of Ramallah in the Occupied West Bank, on Sunday, September 20.
The attack resulted in the killing of an Israeli settler. The assailant was also injured and later identified as Qadri Samara (37). Samara was shot at by Israeli soldiers stationed at an army post near the site of the attack.
Although Samara managed to withdraw from the scene, later in the day Israeli forces carried out a raid at the HClinic Hospital in Ramallah and arrested him.
Following his arrest, the Israeli army also stormed Samara’s town of Biddu, northwest of Jerusalem, on Sunday evening, raiding his home and surrounding worshippers inside a mosque.
Ben-Gvir calls for implementation of death penalty law for the first time on Samara
In a security meeting held on Monday, September 21, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir called for the controversial death penalty law, mandated in March, to be used against Qadri Samara.
The law has faced widespread condemnation from international human rights groups for multiple reasons, mainly because it applies exclusively to Palestinians, while exempting Israelis convicted of the same offenses from the same penalty.
Both Israeli soldiers and illegal settlers have enjoyed total impunity despite murdering thousands of Palestinians over the past two decades in the occupied West Bank, a territory regarded under Palestinian jurisdiction in accordance with international law.
Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court heard an appeal from death row inmate Terry Pitchford, who was denied relief by the Mississippi Supreme Court after his attorneys claimed Black people were illegally struck from his jury. Investigative reporter Hannah McAlilly delves into the case, and into the wider problem of racial prejudice in the selection of juries in Mississippi:
A prosecutor struck a Black woman for having “red dyed hair” and in another, a prosecutor struck a Black man because he had “a ponytail, a sort of strange hair design.” That prosecutor told the judge he was concerned the juror might identify too closely with the defendant, who also was of a similar age. “Both have unusual hair styles,” the prosecutor said.
Prosecutors struck Black jurors who, they said, seemed angry, irritated or inattentive. A Black woman was struck because the prosecutor didn’t like her “vibe.” Another, who worked a night shift before showing up to jury selection, was struck for being “fidgety” and looking “angry.” Another was struck because she “frowned a lot.”
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