The ill-named Timely Justice Act would require the governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days of a review of a capital conviction by the State Supreme Court. The state would then be required to execute the defendant within 180 days of the warrant. So if signed intolaw, 13 of Florida's 405 death row inmates will be immediately issued death warrants. The legislation aims to save money and time but, as Rania Khalek pointed out, at the possible expense of innocent lives:

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Dr. Kermit Gosnell, 72, was found guilty Monday of first-degree murder in the deaths of the babies who were delivered alive and killed with scissors.

In a case that became a flashpoint in the nation's abortion debate, former clinic employees testified that Gosnell routinely performed illegal abortions past Pennsylvania's 24-week limit, that he delivered babies who were still moving, whimpering or breathing, and that he and his assistants dispatched the newborns by "snipping" their spines, as he referred to it.

Prosecutors agreed to two life sentences without parole, and Gosnell was to be sentenced Wednesday in the death of the third baby, an involuntary manslaughter conviction in the death of a patient and hundreds of lesser counts.

Prosecutors had sought the death penalty because Gosnell killed more than one person, and his victims were especially vulnerable given their age. But Gosnell's own advanced age had made it unlikely he would ever be executed before his appeals ran out.

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The same jury now returns to the courtroom Thursday to decide whether she deserves to die for killing her one-time boyfriend on June 4, 2008 at his suburban Phoenix home.

The sheer brutality of the attack and previous testimony from the Maricopa County Medical Examiner that Travis Alexander did not die a quick death will be at the heart of the prosecution's argument that Jodi should receive the ultimate punishment for her crime.

Alexander was stabbed and slashed nearly 30 times, shot in the forehead and had slit his throat from ear to ear, leaving the motivational speaker and businessman nearly decapitated. His decomposing body was found in his shower about five days later by friends.

Arias spoke out about the verdict minutes after her conviction Wednesday, telling a TV station that she would "prefer to die sooner than later."

"Longevity runs in my family, and I don't want to spend the rest of my natural life in one place," a tearful Arias told Fox affiliate KSAZ. "I believe death is the ultimate freedom and I'd rather have my freedom as soon as I can get it."

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The court said the execution should be delayed until it rules further on the case.

Manning's lawyers had claimed DNA evidence would clear him of the killings.

The FBI has said in recent days that there were errors in an agents' testimony about ballistics tests and hair analysis in the case.

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If the measure is signed by Gov. Martin O'Malley, it will make Maryland the 18th state in the nation to do away with the death penalty.

A repeal bill won final passage from the House of Delegates on Friday. It already had been approved by the Senate.

The House advanced the legislation this week after delegates rejected nearly 20 amendments, mostly from Republicans, aimed at keeping capital punishment for the most heinous crimes.

If passed, life without the possibility of parole would be the most severe sentence in the state.

Supporters of repeal argue that the death penalty is costly, error-prone, racially biased and a poor deterrent of crime. But opponents say it is a necessary tool to punish lawbreakers who commit the most egregious crimes.

Maryland has five men on death row. The measure would not apply to them retroactively, but the legislation makes clear that the governor can commute their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

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The poll also finds that most of those surveyed agreed with the decision to try Tsarnaev in the federal court system, as opposed to a military tribunal, by a margin of 74-19 percent.

From the Post:

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A two-judge panel of the High Court also asked the central bank to freeze the assets of the owners of the five garment factories in the building, and use the money to pay the salaries and other benefits of their workers.

The order came after police produced the building owner, Mohammed Sohel Rana, and the factory owners in court. The order did not elaborate but it was implied that the salaries of the dead victims would be paid to their relatives.

At least 386 people were killed when the illegally constructed 8-story Rana Plaza collapsed on April 24. A total of 3,122 people were employed in the garment factories. It is not clear how many were working at the time, but some 2,500 people were pulled out of the rubble alive.

The collapse has become the deadliest disaster to hit Bangladesh's garment industry, which is worth $20 billion annually and supplies global retailers.

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As the Atlantic's Andrew Cohen wrote on the decision to once again see the inmate put to death at the hands of the state of Georgia:

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The Massachusetts U.S. attorney announced Monday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will be federally charged with "using a weapon of mass destruction against persons and property at the Boston Marathon." No one would seek to underplay the heinous act that killed three people and injured over 170. But the WMD charge already prompted some confusion, given the DIY nature of the tools used in the bombings. Nukes they were not.

Last month, before the marathon massacre, Wired's Spencer Ackerman explored the way in which the WMD designation has become so expansive that it is barely descriptive. "U.S. law isn’t particularly diligent about differentiating dangerous weapons from apocalyptic ones," wrote Ackerman in a post about possible WMD charges brought against Eric Harroun, a U.S. Army veteran who joined the rebellion in Syria. Ackerman noted:

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The tide is clearly turning against state-sanctioned killing in the name of the law. What many Americans do not know is that debates about the death penalty are as old as the nation itself. What follows are five facts that every American should know about capital punishment and its history in the U.S.

1. The history of capital punishment is the history of slavery's attempts to destroy free speech.

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ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland lawmakers approved a measure abolishing the death penalty on Friday, and the bill is expected to be signed by the Democratic governor who has long pushed for banning capital punishment in the state.

If the measure is signed by Gov. Martin O'Malley, it will make Maryland the 18th state in the nation to do away with the death penalty.

A repeal bill won final passage from the House of Delegates on Friday. It already had been approved by the Senate.

The House advanced the legislation this week after delegates rejected nearly 20 amendments, mostly from Republicans, aimed at keeping capital punishment for the most heinous crimes.

If passed, life without the possibility of parole would be the most severe sentence in the state.

Supporters of repeal argue that the death penalty is costly, error-prone, racially biased and a poor deterrent of crime. But opponents say it is a necessary tool to punish lawbreakers who commit the most egregious crimes.

Maryland has five men on death row. The measure would not apply to them retroactively, but the legislation makes clear that the governor can commute their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The state's last execution took place in 2005, during the administration of Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich. He resumed executions after a moratorium had been in place pending a 2003 University of Maryland study, which found significant racial and geographic disparity in how the death penalty was carried out.

Capital punishment was put on hold in Maryland after a December 2006 ruling by Maryland's highest court that the state's lethal injection protocols weren't properly approved by a legislative committee. The committee, whose co-chairs oppose capital punishment, has yet to sign off on protocols.

O'Malley, a Catholic, expressed support for repeal legislation in 2007, but it stalled in a Senate committee.

Maryland has a large Catholic population, and the church opposes the death penalty.

In 2008, lawmakers created a commission to study capital punishment after repeal efforts failed again. The panel recommended a ban later that year, citing racial and jurisdictional disparities in how the death penalty is applied.

In 2009, lawmakers tightened the law to reduce the chances of an innocent person being sent to death row by restricting capital punishment to murder cases with biological evidence such as DNA, videotaped evidence of a murder or a videotaped confession.

According to the Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services website, Maryland has executed only five inmates since 1976. There were three in the 1990s, and two when Ehrlich was governor.

In contrast, neighboring Virginia has executed 110 inmates since the U.S. Supreme Court restored capital punishment in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. However, Virginia's death row population has dwindled to eight from a peak of 57 in 1995, in part because fewer death sentences are being handed down in the state amid an increased acceptance of life without parole as a reasonable alternative.

The center said death sentences have declined by 75 percent and executions by 60 percent nationally since the 1990s.

Connecticut abolished the death penalty last year. Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York also have outlawed it in recent years.

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The committee argued that such a step, if adopted, would not violate Islamic law, allowing heads – or emirs – of the country's 13 local administrative regions to begin using the new method when needed.

"This solution seems practical, especially in light of shortages in official swordsmen or their belated arrival to execution yards in some incidents; the aim is to avoid interruption of the regularly-taken security arrangements," the committee said in a statement.

The ultra-conservative Gulf kingdom beheaded 76 people in 2012, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Human Rights Watch (HRW) put the number at 69.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia's strict version of Sharia, or Islamic Law. So far this year, three people have been executed.

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According to Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia is scheduled to execute seven men on Tuesday for crimes committed when they were under 18-years-old. The men, sentenced to death in 2009 for armed robbery, have been "beaten, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, forced to remain standing for 24 hours and then forced to sign 'confessions'," according to Amnesty.

As Reuters noted, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a 2006 report that it was "deeply alarmed" at the imposition of capital punishment by Saudi judges for crimes committed before the age of 18.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has decried the executions in recent years in Yemen of 15 male and female offenders aged under 18 when they committed their offenses. "The New-York-based group also called on the president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to reverse the execution orders of three juveniles on death row, whose appeals have been exhausted," the Guardian reported.

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Texas Tribune managing editor Brandi Grissom has followed Thomas' case closely. As she noted in an excellent feature for theTexas Monthly, "as he awaits execution, Andre and his tragic case force uncomfortable questions about the intersection of mental illness and the criminal justice system." Thomas is certainly not the only death row inmate to have been diagnosed with mental illness; more than 20 percent of the 290 inmates on Texas' death row are considered mentally ill, as Grissom noted. But the extremity of his situation has prompted fervid responses locally and nationally. "It's astonishing, just how many problems in the legal system [this case] exemplifies," said Levin in a phone interview.

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According to the Guardian Friday, the state's speedy attempt to see the ruling overturned is no accident -- it is part of "a legal scramble to carry out capital sentences before its supply of lethal injection drugs reaches its expiry date of 1 March." Via the Guardian:

Georgia confirmed to the Guardian that its entire supply of pentobarbital expires on 1 March. The expiration date leaves the state in a quandary: it still has 93 men and one woman on death row, including Hill, but with no obvious means by which to execute them.

Anti-death penalty campaigners are scathing about the unseemly haste with which Georgia appears to rushing to beat the deadline. "This highlights the nastiness of the process that the AG should be racing to kill prisoners ahead of an expiration date," said Sara Totonchi, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights.

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As Salon noted on Monday, all medical specialists who have examined Hill --  a death row inmate of 16 years -- have now concluded that he is unfit to face the death penalty. A 2002 Supreme Court ruling prohibits executions of "mentally retarded" prisoners as a breach of constitutional protections from cruel and unusual punishment. Hill has nonetheless twice been within hours of scheduled death since 2011 before an appeals court has ordered a stay. Georgia is noted by experts as having a problematically high bar for proving mental unfitness for execution.

The Guardian noted how Hill's case has prompted less public outrage than Georgia's execution in 2011 of Troy Davis -- a man put to death for murder despite the majority of witnesses in his trial recanting their original testimonies:

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The U.N.'s special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Christof Heyns, said Friday that it "is clear that it is unlawful to execute someone who was under 18 years old when they allegedly committed a crime."

On Wednesday, the Saudi Interior Ministry said Rizana Nafeek was given a death sentence and executed, despite appeals by the Sri Lanka government for a reprieve. The domestic worker had denied strangling the 4-month-old boy, who died when she was 17 years old.

Groups such as Human Rights Watch strongly condemned the execution. Heyns also said that "beheading is a particularly cruel form of execution."

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Police say they plan to push for the death penalty in the case.

A sixth suspect is believed to be a juvenile and is expected to be tried in juvenile court.

The five were charged Thursday with raping the 23-year-old woman for hours and beating her companion as the bus drove through the capital. The woman died Saturday in a hospital in Singapore from massive internal injuries.

The case has sparked outrage and protests across the country demanding greater protection for women.

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Bales' attorney Emma Scanlan, however, asserted that her client was not "lucid" at the time of the crime and was under the influence of alcohol, steroids and sleep aids. Another lawyer for Bales has complained that his client's post-traumatic stress disorder has not been sufficiently explored during the trial. Scanlan also claimed that her team had not been given enough time to ready themselves for the trial, before it even began.

There are some who have welcomed the possibility. In March, National Veterans Foundation founder Floyd Meshad told Reuters that, “It would probably be best for the military if they could execute Bales right now and send his pieces to Afghanistan.”

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Bales, 39, is accused of slipping away from his base at Camp Belambay in southern Afghanistan to attack two villages in March. 16 civilians, including nine children were killed. Several soldiers, testifying at Bales' ongoing preliminary hearing, said he returned to their base covered in blood.

"Terrible, terrible things happened," said prosecutor Major Rob Stelle, who argued that Bales' statements when apprehended showed the soldier to have "a clear memory of what he had done, and consciousness of wrong-doing."

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