News

IN MEMORY OF BOBBY RAY HOPKINS

On February the 12th 2004 at 8:18 p.m., Bobby Ray Hopkins, an African-American death row inmate, was pronounced dead after being executed by lethal injection, in Hunstville (Texas). Eleven days later, Bobby Ray Hopkins would have made thirty seven. He had spent about ten years in Texas death row, after having been sentenced to die for a murder on two young white ladies.

Bertel M. Sparks

In discussing "Trial by Jury vs. Trial by Judge" I do not purport to be discussing any new thing. The desirability or undesirability of trial by jury has been discussed in one way or another for generations.

On such a subject we could talk about the law relating to the respective functions of the jury and the judge. We could go into a technical discussion of when, under existing law, a jury trial is proper and when some other form of proceeding is proper. We could attempt to discriminate between the function of the judge and the function of the jury under existing law.

The Real-Life Cases in Dead Man Walking

• Frontline's "Reporter's Notes" on the Cases
• Newspaper accounts of the crimes and executions of Patrick Sonnier and Robert Lee Willie

The Interviews
A victim of Willie; the investigating sheriff; the dead girl's mother; Sister Prejean

By Paul Robinson

THE family of a Leeds man facing the death penalty for murder in Pakistan have offered to pay as much as £135,000 in "blood money" in a desperate bid to save his life. The YEP understands that is the small fortune which Mirza Tahir Hussain's loved ones were prepared to hand over to his victim's relatives if they would spare him, a practice common in Islamic law.
Yesterday, though, the family of Jamshed Khan - the taxi driver killed by Mr Hussain during a holiday in Pakistan in 1988 - announced that they were not prepared to do a deal.
Calling for the execution to go ahead as soon as possible, they insisted they "wanted justice" and "would never compromise."