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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Death row inmates challenge electric chair in Tennessee execution protocol

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After state allowed use of chair in the event of a drug shortage judge permits inmates to object to chair in ongoing lawsuit

Ten death row inmates already challenging Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol were permitted by a judge Thursday to amend their lawsuit to include objections to the use of the electric chair.

The general assembly passed a law earlier this year allowing prisoners to be electrocuted if Tennessee Department of Correction officials were unable to obtain the drug used for lethal injection.

Prior to that, prisoners could not be forced to die by the electric chair, although they were allowed to choose that method under some circumstances.

The death row plaintiffs claim the new law violates both the US and Tennessee constitutions. Among other things, they claim it violates evolving standards of decency. They also claim that the law is too vague. And they question whether the state’s electric chair actually operates as it is supposed to.

Davidson County chancellor Claudia Bonnyman ruled on Wednesday that the inmates could amend their lawsuit to include the new claims. The original lawsuit challenged the state’s new lethal injection protocol, adopted in September 2013. It switched execution from the use of three drugs to just one, pentobarbital.

The switch was a response to legal challenges over the effectiveness of the three-drug mixture and a nationwide shortage of one of them, sodium thiopental. Those issues have effectively prevented any executions in Tennessee for nearly five years.


Source: The Guardian, Sept. 18, 2014
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