Word: deathe
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Since the death of Michael Jackson on June 25, the pop star's life and history have become the subject of intense scrutiny. Now we can add a new item to the pile of Jackson resources: his Stasi file...
...move meant to ease the "mental anguish" of prison inmates and make it possible to put them to work, Kenya's president has commuted the sentences of the 4,000 people on death row to life imprisonment...
...Kenya requires judges to impose the death penalty on those convicted of armed robbery, murder and treason. But death row inmates find themselves relegated to criminal purgatory because no one has been hanged - the legally required method of capital punishment - since 1987. President Mwai Kibaki said that commuting all of the country's death sentences would help alleviate the "undue mental anguish and suffering, psychological trauma and anxiety" that comes with being consigned to death row for an "extended stay." (See pictures of violence in Kenya...
...Kibaki insisted during his announcement Monday that the decree does not mean courts will stop issuing death sentences. Indeed, judges will still be obligated to do so even for seemingly minor offenses, including cases of armed robbery where thieves have stolen chickens while wielding nothing more than wooden clubs. Still, the move allows Kibaki to sidestep a thorny political issue: While the death penalty remains popular among Kenyans, he has been loathe to incur criticism from human rights groups by signing execution orders...
...rights activists have welcomed the new decree, but are greeting Kibaki's justification with some skepticism. Just as likely a culprit for the inmates' "undue mental anguish" is the fact that conditions in Kenya's prisons are, by most accounts, absolutely horrifying. Rights groups have repeatedly documented cases of death, torture, malnutrition and severe overcrowding within Kenya's prison system. (Read: "In Kenya, Charges of High-Level Conspiracies...