WE are sad to report that on 12th April, Kenneth Fults was executed by lethal injection in Georgia USA.  The United States is the only country in the Americas which still has the death penalty.  The case revealed the usual catalogue of dubious legal practice that is so common in these cases: a black defendant poorly represented by lawyers one of whom was allegedly asleep during part of the proceedings; a plea bargain and a juror who made derogatory racial remarks about Fults.  Other factors are set out in a previous blog.

Amnesty International’s senior death penalty campaigner Jason Clark said:

Those troubling factors are typical of Georgia’s use of the death penalty.

Virtually every execution that’s happened in Georgia has been emblematic of problems with the death penalty.

He noted that the 28 executions in the U.S. last year were carried out by just six states.

In states like Georgia that are still carrying on a lot of executions, it’s because they’re not implementing issues of fairness.

Amnesty is opposed to the death penalty in all cases.

A sad day…