Former middle school teacher Carla Hughes was found guilty of two counts of capital murder for slaying her lover’s pregnant fiance. The jury who convicted the 28-year-old will decide if she will lose her life.

The jury is hearing testimony from both sides on Wednesday to determine if Hughes should die by lethal injection.

Hughes killed Avis Banks by shooting her four times and stabbing her body when Avis was already dead. Avis was carrying a child at the time of her death. Under Mississippi law murdering a pregnant woman counts as two murders.

Banks was 27-years-old at the time of her murder. Banks fiance, Keyon Pittman, admitted to having a sexual affair with Hughes. They taught at the same middle school.

Update: Woman Sentenced to Life in Prison

Troy Davis, the condemned Georgia inmate who maintains that he is not the man who murdered a Savannah Police officer 20 years ago, will stay alive long enough to try and prove his innocence, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday. Siding with Davis were Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Sonia Sotomayor, who was sworn in earlier this month, did not vote on the inmate’s petition. Stevens ordered a federal judge to “receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at trial clearly establishes petitioner’s innocence.” Davis, whose accusers have recanted their testimony against him in recent years, has found support among a diversity of high-profile figures, including the pope; former President Jimmy Carter; former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu; actors Susan Sarandon and Harry Belafonte; and a host of current and former lawmakers from across the political spectrum. In recent years, Davis has seen his execution halted three times. In June, his supporters delivered petitions bearing about 60,000 signatures to Chatham County, Ga., District Attorney Larry Chisolm, demanding a new trial. Although there was no physical evidence tying the then 19-year-old Davis to the 1989 killing of Officer Mark MacPhail, he was convicted and condemned to death on the testimony of witnesses. Over the past 18 years, seven of the nine witnesses have withdrawn their claims. As expected Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the high court’s only African-American, objected to the court’s decision Monday, calling it a “fool’s errand.” Wrote Scalia, “Petitioner’s claim is a sure loser. Transferring his petition to the [federal] District Court is a confusing exercise that can serve no purpose except to delay the state’s execution of its lawful criminal judgment.” Last October, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene, and a federal appeals court in Georgia granted a temporary stay of execution.

North Carolina Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue signed into law Thursday the state’s Racial Justice Act into law, making North Carolina the second state to allow statistical data on race to be used when determining whether or not to put someone to death. Under the law, nobody can be executed because a judgment was sought or obtained on the basis of race, News 14 in Raleigh reports. “While our criminal justice system will continue to have the death penalty, racial disparities have no place, no place whatsoever, in North Carolina’s criminal justice system,” said Perdue, who actually supports the death penalty. Over the past three years, three Black death-row inmates have been exonerated and released from prison. It’s the type of mistakes that Black leaders, prisoner-advocates and anti-death-penalty activists say the new law could help prevent. “By passing the Racial Justice Act, we have infused antibody treatment into a system that is diseased with the infection of racism,” the Rev. Dr. William Barber, president of the N.C. NAACP, said. But not every body is pleased with the new law. Some prosecutors have argued that it will make it much tougher to put to death deserving criminals in North Carolina.

African Nation Gets Rid of Death Penalty
Lawmakers in Togo voted unanimously to abolish the death penalty, the BBC reports. While there are currently at least six prisoners on death row, the West African nation hasn’t executed anyone since 1978, reports the news service. “I think that it’s the best decision that we took in this year. … We don’t have the right to give death to someone if we know that death is not a good thing to give,” said Justice Minister Kokou Tozoun about the decision. Togo is the 94th country in the world to get rid of the death penalty, according to Amnesty International.
 
Eighty Jamaican Schools are Closed
Jamaican officials decided to keep 80 schools, located in the west-central region of the country, closed Wednesday as a safety measure, following the positive swine flu tests of two students, reports the BBC. Graduation ceremonies in the region of Manchester, where the cases appeared, were also canceled. The action is just precautionary, officials say, and they shorted student’s summer vacation by a week

Haitians Booted Out
The Obama administration says that it will not stop deporting Haitians, at least not for now. Many advocates for Haitian refugees had hoped that President Obama would have a more lenient policy toward undocumented Haitians than President Bush, but the Department of Homeland Security says it will not stop deporting the group and allow them to legally remain in the United States. “At this time, DHS intends to continue to coordinate the removal of Haitian nationals to Haiti,” wrote Susan Cullen, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Policy and Planning. Members of the south Florida congressional delegation, expressing disappointment with the administration’s position, say they will continue pushing the matter forward. “We obviously have seen that this issue has not moved forward,” said Lale Mamaux, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla).  “They’re bright people. They’re fair people,” said Randy McGrorty, chief executive officer of Catholic Charities Legal Services in Miami. “I remain optimistic the policy will change once they understand the need for change.”
 
Afghanistan Region Continues to Claim U.S. Lives
As of Monday, March 9, 2009, at least 589 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, The Associated Press reports, citing Defense Department figures. Of those, the military reports 434 were killed by hostile action, according to AP. In areas outside of the Afghanistan region – in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen – 67 other American military personnel lost their lives to the cause of Operation Enduring Freedom, according to the Defense Department. There were also four CIA officer deaths and one military civilian death.

Spare Him or Execute Him
Did murderer William Thompson, who has been housed in Florida’s death chamber for the past 32 years, already suffer enough, or does his admittedly heinous crime and initial sentence demand execution no matter how long he’s had to endure the harsh conditions of death-row confinement? U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens believes that his “experience during the past three decades has demonstrated that delays in state-sponsored killings are inescapable and that executing defendants after such is unacceptably cruel.” But in the eyes of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, “It is the crime and not the punishment imposed by the jury or the delay in execution that was ‘unacceptably cruel.’” Review the facts, then weigh in on who you think has a stronger argument. In 1976, Thompson and his co-defendant had held Sally Ivester and another woman in a motel room, demanding money from the victim’s families. The men became enraged when Ivester was only able to raise $25, instead of hundreds of dollars, as she had promised. They brutally beat Ivester, causing internal injuries and burned her with cigarettes. The other woman witnessed the savagery but was spared. The men pleaded guilty, but the Florida high court threw the sentence out because his lawyer had said his life would be spared if he accepted responsibility for the crime. Thompson pleaded guilty once again, only this time he got the death penalty. He then filed a series of appeals, all of which were rejected by one court or another. During a third penalty hearing, Stevens pointed out, five members of a state advisory jury recommended against lethal injection; still, the court imposed death. “As he awaits execution, petitioner has endured especially severe conditions of confinement,” said Stevens, “spending up to 23 hours per day in isolation in a 6- by 9-foot cell. Two death warrants have been signed against him and stayed only shortly before he was scheduled to die. The dehumanizing effects of such treatment are undeniable.”

A Georgia judge, saying he dreaded sentencing day, issued the death penalty Wednesday to a 36-year-old triple murderer. A jury had convicted and condemned to death De’Kelvin Martin for killing his girlfriend’s 12-year-old son and her grandparents in an angry rampage seven years ago. On Monday, Superior Judge John Groger scolded Martin for turning down the DA’s offer of life in prison without parole. He warned that a jury’s verdict of death would be a tragic end to his violent life. “Mr. Martin, I had hoped I would never have to do this,” Goger said. “The verdict, the jury and the evidence require me to impose … a sentence of death.” After sentencing, Martin’s lawyers – Maurice Kenner and Tom Clegg said they believe Martin suffers from schizophrenia, noting that their client reports hearing voices and hallucinates. “He believes that God is going to intervene and that at some point he will be released from prison to spread the gospel,” Clegg said. “He believes God has a specific plan for him and that he has been told this directly by God.”

Uganda Decides to Keep the Death Penalty
The Ugandan Supreme Court has turned down an appeal brought by more than 400 people on death row to get rid of the death penalty. However, many of the inmates did win one victory. The court also ruled that it was not reasonable to keep inmates on death row for more than three years, reports the BBC. So, those prisoners who have been on death row for more than three years will have their sentences commuted to life in prison. The country has not used the death penalty in about 10 years, but the court insisted that it deters murder. Four prisoners were in court for the ruling.
 

Nigerian Militants Attack a Tanker
Nigerian militants, from the country’s Niger Delta region, attacked a diesel tanker and kidnapped a Romanian worker, reports BBC. The tanker was carrying 4,000 tons of diesel from Lagos to Port Harcourt when its engine was blown up with dynamite. The tanker was seriously damaged.  Many militants in the region say they are fighting to get their fair share of wealth from Nigeria’s oil. Still, some groups get their money from extortion and oil theft. The violence has forced oil production in the nation to be cut by a fifth in the last few years.

Jamaica will keep the death penalty. On Tuesday, the Jamaican Parliament voted against banning the death penalty, reports The Associated Press. The measure was rejected with no problem; 34 parliament members voted to keep capital punishment and 15 voted against it. Even though the death penalty has been legal in the Caribbean island nation, the courts haven’t used the punishment, so the last execution in the country was about 20 years ago. But recently, with Jamaica’s soaring crime rate and an increase of crime against children (including the disturbing cases of a girl who was beheaded and a boy whose body was found cut up in a trash can), many people have demanded that courts start condemning people to death penalty again. Prime Minister Bruce Golding promised to resume death-penalty sentencing as a means to slow the nation’s crime rate, which is among the highest in the world. But people against it say the death penalty won’t do much to fight crime. “What has happened that will change the circumstance of one murder? It’s a complete waste of time; we should be focused on apprehending people who commit crimes, getting them before the courts and the courts ruling expeditiously on those matters,” the director for Jamaicans For Justice said. The island, with a population of 3 million people, already has had 1,240 murders so far this year, coming close to last year’s total of 1,400. In comparison, Chicago, which has a population of about 2.8 million had 443 murders in 2007.
Rapes are up in the Congo. Rapes are on the rise in the conflict-ridden Democratic Republic of Congo, says aid organization World Vision. The fighting between the government and rebels also has made it more likely for children to be recruited as soldiers, the group says. “A silent war has been waged against women and children. Women and girls in the hundreds have been targets of opportunistic and brutal rape, while children are also being targeted for recruitment or re-recruitment as child soldiers,” World Vision’s Africa advocacy director told CNN. The group took a survey of children at six refugee camps in the nation and found that 120 girls under 17 said they had been raped in October. Only five children reported rape in April and June, the group says. Fighting in the nation has forced about 250,000 people to leave their homes. The United Nations is set to send more than 3,000 more troops into the nation in the coming weeks to help the peacekeeping force currently there.

Prosecutors say Atlanta shooter should be put to death. Prosecutors in the Brian Nichols case say the courthouse gunman who killed four people during an escape attempt should be put to death.  “I want you to honestly consider imposing a sentence of death,” prosecutor Kellie Hill told jurors on Wednesday.  Nichols was convicted last week of murder for his 2005 shooting rampage, which left a judge, a sheriff’s deputy and two others dead in the wake of his escape attempt. Prosecutors said even a life sentence would leave the community at risk. Nichols’ attorneys had argued that he was innocent by reason of insanity and that mental illness had led the Atlanta man, who attempted to escape from custody as he awaited a re-trial on rape charges, to go off. But Hill described Nichols as a “conniving, vicious, remorseless and extremely, extremely dangerous person.”  His attorneys asked jurors to look into his background to see if he really deserved to be executed.  Officials say the sentencing phase could last until Thanksgiving.

Death penalty phase begins for Brian Nichols. An Atlanta judge is to begin to weigh arguments this week to determine whether Brian Nichols will be put to death. The Atlanta courthouse gunman was found guilty on Friday of killing four people in a shooting spree that began at a downtown Atlanta courthouse. Nichols, 36, was found guilty Friday in the fatal shootings of a judge, a court reporter, a deputy and a federal agent in the 2005 mêlée. He had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming he was gripped by a delusional compulsion that he was a slave rebelling against authority. But a jury soundly rejected his claims, finding him guilty of all 54 counts against him, including murder and aggravated assault.