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As execution day nears, advocates for Texas Jew on death row say hopes are dimming
(JTA) — A Chabad rabbi is planning a trip to Texas’ death row to lead a final ritual confession, and Alan Dershowitz is trying to call the governor, as advocates for a Jewish man set to be executed on Tuesday are losing hope that he will avert his sentence.
The inmate, Jedidiah Murphy, killed 79-year-old Bertie Lee Cunningham during a carjacking in 2000 in Dallas County. He is due to die by lethal injection on Tuesday, Oct. 10, which is World Day Against the Death Penalty.
His case has mobilized Jewish opponents of the death penalty, including Dershowitz, the emeritus Harvard law professor and political commentator; Cantor Michael Zoosman, a former prison chaplain who runs L’Chaim, a Jewish anti-death penalty group; and Rabbi Dovid Goldstein, a Chabad rabbi in Houston who has advocated for Murphy for years.
But those advocates and Murphy all recognize that his opportunities to obtain clemency are running out. With days to go before the execution date, Murphy has written a thank-you letter to his supporters, parts of which Dershowitz shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Please relay my sincere thanks to Professor Dershowitz for all that he has been putting into this,” Murphy wrote in the letter. “Should they deny clemency, chances are high that my time will be short.”
Since 1982, Texas has executed 583 people, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty — a far larger number than any other state.
Texas executed five men in 2022 and has executed the same number so far in 2023. Four more executions, including Murphy’s, are scheduled before the end of the year. If they are carried out, this year will see the most executions in the state since 2019, when Texas also carried out nine death sentences.
It is possible to avoid a death sentence with just days to go. Exactly four years ago, Randy Halprin, who was also Jewish and scheduled to be executed on Oct. 10 of that year, was granted a stay of execution on the grounds that the judge who presided over his trial was antisemitic and used anti-Jewish slurs. Last year, Halprin was granted a new trial.
In Murphy’s case, Dershowitz told JTA he was pessimistic about the prospects for a commutation. He has sought a conversation with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, but so far has not secured one.
In legal filings on Murphy’s behalf, Dershowitz has focused on the exacerbating circumstances that the prosecution cited to argue for the death penalty, including a kidnapping prior to the murder. But Murphy was never charged for that kidnapping, and there is evidence of an alibi.
Dershowitz has also argued that the jury’s conclusion that Murphy would again commit violence has been belied by his decades in prison without incident. The Texas Observer reported that Murphy has completed chaplaincy department programs and wants to be a field minister in prison.
“Hope is running out, obviously,” Dershowitz said. “And it would be a wasted, wasted life. This is a man who could do good in prison, helping to counsel other people and using his religious faith as a way of helping other people.”
Goldstein, who in 2016 led Murphy through a bar mitzvah ceremony that included the laying of tefillin, or phylacteries, is now preparing for the possibility on Monday of conducting a much grimmer ritual with the prisoner — viddui, the traditional Jewish confession before death.
Zoosman says he communicates daily with Murphy.
“He’s hoping for the best but aware of the possibility of the worst, and I think we stand with him, supporting him as best we can,” Zoosman told JTA.
Murphy, was 25 when he shot and killed Cunningham and used her stolen credit cards to buy cigarettes and liquor. He recently told The Forward that he was high on cocaine and does not remember the incident. He has confessed to the crime. He did not respond to an email request for comment from JTA.
Murphy was abused as a child by his birth father and his adoptive father, and abandoned by his birth mother, who was Jewish, according to the Forward. The Observer reported that he sought mental health care in the year or so before murdering Cunningham, and doctors diagnosed him with mental dissociative identity disorder, major depression and alcohol dependency. They said he posed a threat.
The facility where Murphy is being held, the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, is named for a San Antonio man with Jewish heritage. The Observer reported that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has agreed to forgo the practice of embalming Murphy after his death, deferring to Jewish injunctions against tampering with a dead body.
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The post As execution day nears, advocates for Texas Jew on death row say hopes are dimming appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
The post Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
The post Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
The post Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.