Entries by Nina Motazedi

More than one hun­dred bills have been intro­duced this year in 34 states and in Congress to expand and lim­it use of the death penal­ty, abol­ish and rein­state the death penal­ty, mod­i­fy exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols and secret the infor­ma­tion about them, and alter aspects of cap­i­tal tri­als. Thus far, nine bills in five states have been enact­ed, with Florida enact­ing the most leg­is­la­tion thus far. Of the bills that have been signed into law, three mod­i­fy exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols; two…

According to Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), there have been at least 343 exe­cu­tions in Iran in the first four months of 2025 — a 75% increase over the same peri­od in 2024, when 195 exe­cu­tions were record­ed. Secrecy remains an issue with less than 4%, or only 13 of the 343 exe­cu­tions, report­ed by offi­cial sources. In April alone, there were at least 110 exe­cu­tions, the high­est month­ly total yet this year. Trends iden­ti­fied in recent years appear to be sustained into…

A new report pub­lished by Ius Stella, a non-prof­it in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), high­lights ongo­ing human rights vio­la­tions in the nation’s efforts to elim­i­nate urban gangs, which has been marked by arbi­trary arrest and the impo­si­tion of death sen­tences, includ­ing on vul­ner­a­ble civil­ian youth pop­u­la­tions, after mil­i­tary tri­als whose fair­ness is in grave doubt. Earlier in January, reports emerged that 170 death-sen­­tenced pris­on­ers, ages 18 to 35, con­vict­ed for their links to…

For the third con­sec­u­tive ses­sion, the Georgia House of Representatives is review­ing a bill seek­ing to pro­vide bet­ter pro­tec­tions to cap­i­tal defen­dants with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties. Currently, the state requires a defen­dant to prove​“beyond a rea­son­able doubt” that they have an intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty – the only death penal­ty state to have this unusu­al­ly high stan­dard. Introduced by a bipar­ti­san group of leg­is­la­tors on January 27, 2025, HB 123 would…

On January 16, 2025, Taiwan car­ried out its first exe­cu­tion since April 2020. Huang Linkai, who was sen­tenced to death in 2017 for the 2013 mur­ders of his ex-girl­friend and her moth­er, was exe­cut­ed at the Taipei Detention Center. Although Mr. Huang’s attor­ney filed a last-minute appeal, the execution…

Progress towards glob­al abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty con­tin­ues with Zimbabwe’s end-2024 deci­sion to near­ly elim­i­nate the prac­tice, only pre­serv­ing the right to impose death when the coun­try is under a declared pub­lic emer­gency. Zimbabwe’s last execution…

According to num­bers report­ed by Agence France-Presse, Saudi Arabia exe­cut­ed 303 peo­ple in 2024 — the nation’s high­est ever total, and cur­rent­ly the sec­ond high­est known exe­cu­tion total world­wide for this year. November alone saw the exe­cu­tion of more than 100 for­eign nation­als, near­ly triple the num­ber in each of the past two years. UN human rights experts expressed con­cern fol­low­ing the December 3 exe­cu­tion of three Egyptian nation­als, call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to halt the pending…