a group of 40 law enforcement officers, current and former prosecutors, and judges at the state and federal level have urged California lawmakers to enact a temporary halt to executions in the state while a commission examines the accuracy and fairness of the death penalty.

California executed Clarence Ray Allen, its oldest condemned prisoner, by lethal injection at San Quentin State Prison after last-ditch court appeals for a stay of execution failed.

California's Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has denied clemency to the oldest prisoner on California's Death Row, saying a murderer's life should not be spared because he is old and ill.

Wichai Somkhaoyai, and Bualoi Posit, the two Thai fisherman who raped and murdered British backpacker Katherine Horton should be spared the death penalty but locked up for life, the victim's mother said.

the FBI is reviewing the cases of all state and federal prisoners scheduled for execution to determine whether bureau fingerprint examiners made errors that led to death sentences.

it was reported that an eight-man Law Society committee would study judicial and death penalty systems in countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Hong Kong and India and compare it with Singapore's in order to prepare a report to be submitted to the Ministry of Law in October.

California is set to execute a 75-year-old blind man who has diabetes, suffered a heart attack in September and cannot walk unaided.

“The death penalty is a brutal and vindictive travesty of justice”, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, Terry Davis, said regarding the resumption of executions in the United States on 17 January.

the US Supreme Court for the first time heard an appeal by a death row inmate using new DNA evidence to proclaim his innocence and demand a retrial. The court's verdict, expected by mid 2006, will do more than seal the fate of convicted murderer Paul House: it will guide US courts as they weigh scientific evidence as new technology casts doubt on long settled cases.

the European Union has welcomed Kyrgyzstan's decision to prolong its moratorium on the death penalty.

a man was sentenced to death and his minor accomplice to 15 years imprisonment after the Minsk Regional Court, Belarus, found them guilty of committing three murders.

a soldier from the Democratic Republic of Congo was summarily executed in a stadium before hundreds of people for murder on the orders of a senior officer, local authorities said.