Death Penalty

Hours after Ariel Castro was arraigned on rape and kidnapping counts in connection with three women held prisoner for years in his Cleveland house, Ohio prosecutors said they would seek new charges that he abused some of his victims and forced them to have miscarriages. Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty, whose office will present the case to a grand jury, said that if Castro, 52, were charged and convicted of aggravated murder as a result of the miscarriages, he could face the death penalty.

Hours after Ariel Castro was arraigned on rape and kidnapping counts in connection with three women held prisoner for years in his Cleveland house, Ohio prosecutors said they would seek new charges that he abused some of his victims and forced them to have miscarriages. Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty, whose office will present the case to a grand jury, said that if Castro, 52, were charged and convicted of aggravated murder as a result of the miscarriages, he could face the death penalty.

My entire professional life has been entwined with the death penalty. As a prosecutor, I asked for the death penalty. As a judge, I imposed it. As a citizen, I will vote next month to retain it as a punishment option in California. I have often encountered the argument that the death penalty is not a deterrent because it did not deter someone from carrying out a particular murder. But the actual issue is a larger one: Would there have been more murders in California without its deterrent effect?

FBI agents arrested a Century City man for allegedly running a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme that primarily targeted the Persian-Jewish community in Los Angeles, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Shervin Neman, whose given name is Shervin Davatgarzadeh,   31, was indicted on two counts of wire fraud and one count of mail fraud. He was taken into custody Friday morning. His victims allegedly lost more than $3 million, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.

Enter the trophy room at Southern Methodist University and feel what it must have felt to walk into a palace in which the royal family has hastily abdicated. Monuments to a lost civilization stand and remaining artifacts tell of great triumphs, but Heritage Hall, as it is housed in meticulously kept, red-bricked Gerald J. Ford Stadium, is a mausoleum. And it doesn't tell the whole story.

While the rest of the college football world frets over such fluffy matters as a playoff system, drug tests and the Boz, folks here are preoccupied with a real stomach-churning issue--capital punishment. Southern Methodist University, the most flagrant sinner in college sports, is being fitted for a noose. The institution that gave football Doak Walker, Don Meredith and Eric Dickerson is facing the athletic equivalent of the death penalty, a two-year suspension from football competition.

The cost of executions is soaring, especially in the state that conducts the most: Texas. The reason? The necessary drugs have become increasingly hard to get. A year ago it cost the Texas Department of Criminal Justice $83.55 for the drugs used to carry out an execution -- sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. Then last March the state was forced to replace sodium thiopental with pentobarbital after the U.S. supplier of the former drug halted distribution amid international protests.

After Casey Anthony was found not guilty of murdering her daughter Caylee this week, a disturbing spectacle unfolded outside the Florida courthouse where the trial took place. The crowd outside, convinced that Anthony should have been convicted, began chanting "Appeal! Appeal!" The spontaneous demonstration revealed how little many Americans know about the justice system. The 5th Amendment guarantees that defendants can't face "double jeopardy," which means the government can't prosecute a person a second time for the same crime if the jury returns a verdict.

HOUSTON - A military judge ruled Thursday that an Army psychiatrist charged in the deadly 2009 shooting at Ft. Hood in Texas will stand trial in three months. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 42, is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder in connection with the rampage at the sprawling central Texas Army base, the worst mass shooting on a U.S. military installation. After repeated delays, lawyers for both sides recently indicated that they were prepared to begin trial in April, but the judge decided to take more time before seating a jury.

BEIJING - It was reality television in the extreme. Chinese state television Friday broadcast live images of the last moments of four foreign drug traffickers who were about to be executed for the 2011 killings of 13 Chinese fishermen on the Mekong River. Although the cameras pulled away before the lethal injections, the coverage was unprecedented, unleashing a storm of criticism and debate about the death penalty. Psychologists decried the coverage as distressing to children.

The wife of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev released a statement through attorneys expressing her sadness for the victims of last week's explosion and her "absolute shock" upon learning of her husband's and brother-in-law's alleged involvement. Katherine Russell is cooperating with law enforcement, according to the statement by the Providence, R.I., law firm Deluca + Weizenbaum. "The injuries and loss of life -- to people who came to celebrate a race and a holiday -- has caused profound distress and sorrow to Katie and her family," the statement said.

WASHINGTON -- Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev made his first court appearance from his hospital room in Boston on Monday while being formally charged with using a weapon of mass destruction in the double bombing that killed three people and injured more than 170 others during last week's Boston Marathon. In a criminal complaint unsealed today in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Tsarnaev, 19, was charged with one count of using and conspiring to use an improvised explosive device against persons and property within the United States resulting in death and one count of malicious destruction of property by means of an explosive device resulting in death.  If convicted in federal court, he could face the death penalty or life in prison.

BOSTON -- Boston's Catholic archbishop marked the city's renewed sense of community after the marathon bombings but warned of the “culture of death” that led to the tragedy, calling on the faithful to “build a civilization of love.” At the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley offered Sunday's Mass, which was attended by the city's police commissioner, “for the repose of the souls” of those who died as a result of...

A condemned man on California's death row for murdering five people, including the daughter of blues guitarist Elvin Bishop, is dead in what prison officials say they are investigating as a suicide. Justin Helzer, 41, was found dead Sunday in his cell, where he was housed alone at San Quentin State Prison, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. His brother, also condemned, is incarcerated at the same prison. He and his older brother, Glenn Helzer, and roomate Dawn Godman were convicted in 2005 for a robbery and killing rampage that prosecutors said started with an attempt to extort $100,000 from an elderly Concord couple.

SHERMAN, Texas - Sgt. John Russell designed his new house here so there would be room for everyone: for him and his wife, Mandy, his wife's parents and his own. There was a doggie door for Louie and Queenie - "the little ones," he called them in his emails. It was where he wanted to spend the rest of his life when he got home from Iraq, he'd say as he shared photos of the latest construction. After a dispute with a co-worker, Russell fretted that he'd get demoted and would not be able to make the payments.

Some friends and relatives of the victims of July's movie theater shooting spree in Aurora, Colo., in which 12 people were killed and dozens injured, are pleased that prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against alleged gunman James Holmes and have rebuffed his offer to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison. Should their opinions matter? My short, if politically unpopular answer, is no. It's natural that the victims' loved ones are talking in terms of an eye for an eye and a death for a death (actually many deaths)

As hired killers slit Pamela Fayed's throat in a Century City parking garage, her "bloodcurdling" screams echoed throughout the structure. Bystanders turned their heads in the direction of the horrific attack, footage from security cameras shows. The only person within earshot who didn't react was the victim's estranged husband who was sitting on a nearby bench "texting on his cellphone, like he doesn't have a care in the world," Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy said Thursday, moments before sentencing James Fayed to death for the contract killing.

A grand jury indicted a Woodland Hills man Thursday in the abduction, sexual assault and slaying of 8-year-old Nicole Parker, whose body was discovered in the defendant's bedroom closet, sources close to the case said Friday. Hooman Ashkan Panah, 22, who faces the death penalty, will appear in Los Angeles Superior Court for an arraignment Tuesday morning, when the indictment is scheduled to be unsealed, the sources said.

Prosecutors have rebuffed an offer by James E. Holmes, the accused killer of 12 people in a movie theater rampage in Aurora, Colo., last year, to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life in prison. In deciding instead to seek the death penalty, the district attorney is ignoring significant indications that Holmes was deranged when he allegedly committed his crimes. Equally troubling, the D.A. said he reached his decision after speaking to families of victims. This editorial page opposes capital punishment in all circumstances.

CENTENNIAL, Colo. -- The prosecution in the Colorado theater massacre case will seek the death penalty against accused shooter James E. Holmes, rejecting for the time being an attempt by the defense to have him plead guilty and spend the rest of his life in prison. At a hearing Monday before Chief Judge William Sylvester, the prosecution announced its decision to seek the death penalty. "In this case for James Eagan Holmes, justice is death," a grim Arapahoe County Dist. Atty.