Amina Lawal Kurami is a Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery and for conceiving a child out of wedlock. Lawal was sentenced by an Islamic Sharia court in Funtua, in the northern state of Katsina, in Nigeria, on 22 March 2002. The person she identified as the father of the child, Yahayya Muhammad Kurami, was acquitted of the accusation of zinā. Although Kurami was excused because he took an oath by the Holy Qur’an, this was not an option for Lawal due to the presence of her child, which is proof in the Mālikī school.
Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), was a landmark decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that it is unconstitutional to impose capital punishment for crimes committed while under the age of 18. The 5–4 decision overruled Stanford v. Kentucky, in which the court had upheld execution of offenders at or above age 16, and overturned statutes in 25 states.
Rajm in Islam refers to the Hudud punishment wherein an organized group throws stones at a convicted individual until that person dies. Under some versions of Islamic law (Sharia), it is the prescribed punishment in cases of adultery committed by a married man or married woman. The conviction requires a confession from either the adulterer/adulteress, or the testimony of four witnesses, or pregnancy outside of marriage under certain circumstances in Maliki school.
Nazanin (Mahabad) Fatehi is an Iranian woman who was sentenced to death for stabbing a man who allegedly tried to rape her and her 15-year-old niece, events occurring when she herself was a 17-year-old. After more than two years in jail, Fatehi was cleared of intentional murder, ordered to pay diyeh, and released on bail. As of 2012, Fatehi's whereabouts were reported to be unknown to concerned supporters outside of Iran.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Iran. Crimes punishable by death include murder; rape; child molestation; homosexuality; pedophilia; drug trafficking; armed robbery; kidnapping; terrorism; burglary; incestuous relationships; fornication; prohibited sexual relations; sodomy; sexual misconduct; prostitution; plotting to overthrow the Islamic regime; political dissidence; sabotage; arson; rebellion; apostasy; adultery; blasphemy; extortion; counterfeiting; smuggling; speculating; disrupting production; recidivist consumption of alcohol; producing or preparing food, drink, cosmetics, or sanitary items that lead to death when consumed or used; producing and publishing pornography; using pornographic materials to solicit sex; recidivist false accusation of capital sexual offenses causing execution of an innocent person; recidivist theft; certain military offenses ; "waging war against God"; "spreading corruption on Earth"; espionage; and treason. Iran carried out at least 977 executions in 2015, at least 567 executions in 2016, and at least 507 executions in 2017.
Delara Darabi was an Iranian Gilaki woman who was sentenced to death after having been convicted of murdering her father's female cousin in 2003. Although Delara initially claimed that she had committed the crime, she subsequently recanted and explained that her older boyfriend, Amir Hossein, had persuaded her to lie about the incident to protect him. According to Delara and other sources familiar with the case, Amir Hossein was the person who had committed the murder in an attempt to steal from a wealthy member of the Darabi family. She was hanged in Rasht Prison on 1 May 2009.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Saudi Arabia. Death sentences are almost exclusively based on the system of judicial sentencing discretion (tazir), following the classical principle of avoiding Sharia-prescribed (hudud) penalties when possible. In recent decades, the government and the courts have increasingly issued these sentences, reacting to a rise in violent crime during the 1970s. This paralleled similar developments in the U.S. and Mainland China in the late 20th century.
Safiya Hussaini Tungar Tudu is a Nigerian woman condemned to death for adultery in 2002. She gave birth to a child as a single woman in Sokoto, a Nigerian state under Sharia law. She was sentenced to be stoned, but was acquitted of all charges in March 2002 after a retrial.
Stoning, or lapidation, is a method of capital punishment where a group throws stones at a person until the subject dies from blunt trauma. It has been attested as a form of punishment for grave misdeeds since ancient times.
Mahmood Hussein Mattan was a British Somali former merchant seaman who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Lily Volpert on 6 March 1952. The murder took place in the Docklands area of Cardiff, Wales, and Mattan was mainly convicted on the evidence of a single prosecution witness. Mattan was executed in 1952 and his conviction was quashed 45 years later on 24 February 1998, his case being the first to be referred to the Court of Appeal by the newly formed Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani is an Iranian Azeri woman convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and adultery. She gained international notoriety for originally being sentenced to death by stoning for her crimes. Her sentence was commuted and she was released in 2014 after serving nine years on death row.
Mohammad Mostafaei is an Iranian human rights lawyer specializing in death penalty cases, particularly those with juvenile defendants and other human rights cases. In 2010, he moved to Norway, having left Iran due to alleged persecution by authorities for his defense of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani.
Teresa Wilson Bean Lewis was an American murderer who was the only woman on death row in Virginia prior to her execution. She was sentenced to death by lethal injection for the murders of her husband and stepson in October 2002. Lewis sought to profit from a $250,000 life insurance policy her stepson had taken out as a U.S. Army reservist in anticipation of his deployment to Iraq.
Youcef Nadarkhani is an Iranian Christian pastor who was sentenced to death in Tehran as being a Christian having been born into Islam. Initial reports, including a 2010 brief from the Iranian Supreme court, stated that the sentence on Nadarkhani was based on the crime of apostasy, renouncing his Islamic faith. Government officials later claimed that the sentence was instead based on alleged violent crimes, specifically rape and extortion; however, no formal charges or evidence of violent crimes have been presented in court. According to Amnesty International and Nadarkhani's legal team, the Iranian government had offered leniency if he were to recant his Christianity. His lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah stated that an appeals court upheld his sentence after he refused to renounce his Christian faith and convert to Islam In early September 2012, Nadarkhani was acquitted of apostasy, but found guilty of evangelizing Muslims, though he was immediately released as having served prison time. However, he was taken back into custody on Christmas Day 2012 and then released shortly afterwards on 7 January 2013.
In 2010, a Pakistani Christian woman, Aasiya Noreen, commonly known as Asia Bibi or Aasia Bibi, was convicted of blasphemy by a Pakistani court and was sentenced to death by hanging. In October 2018, the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted her based on insufficient evidence, though she was not allowed to leave Pakistan until the verdict was reviewed. She was held under armed guard and was not able to leave the country until 7 May 2019; she arrived in Canada the next day.
Capital punishment in Montenegro was first prescribed by law in 1798. It was abolished on 19 June 2002. The last execution, by shooting, took place on 29 January 1981, and the two last death sentences were pronounced on 11 October 2001. Montenegro is bound by the following international conventions prohibiting capital punishment : Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as Protocols No. 6 and No. 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights. According to Art. 26 of the Montenegrin Constitution (2007): „In Montenegro, capital punishment is forbidden”.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the United Arab Emirates.
The stoning of Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was a public execution carried out by the Al-Shabaab militant group on 27 October 2008 in the southern port town of Kismayo, Somalia. Duhulow's father and aunt stated that she was a 13-year-old girl and that she had been arrested and stoned to death after trying to report that she had been raped. Initial reports had stated that Duhulow was a 23-year-old woman found guilty of adultery; she was, however, under the age of marriage eligibility. The execution took place in a public stadium attended by about 1,000 bystanders, several of whom attempted to intervene but were shot by the militants.
Alfredo Rolando Prieto was a Salvadoran-American serial killer. After being initially convicted for a single murder, he would later be connected to eight other murders committed in Virginia and California between May 1988 and September 1990 via DNA profiling. Sentenced to death in both states, Prieto was executed by lethal injection in Virginia in 2015.
Michael Rian Torrence was an American serial killer responsible for the homicides of three people in South Carolina from February to March 1987, two of which were committed with the help of his brother and his brothers wife, Donna. Sentenced to death for one murder and two life terms, Torrence successfully volunteered for his execution, dropping all appeals against the wishes of his public defender, and was executed in 1996.