Local
Georgia to execute first female prisoner since 1945
Kelley Renee Gissendaner, the only woman on death row in the state of Georgia, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on March 2 in the state prison in Jackson, according to The Washington Times. She was convicted, along with a man named Gregory Owen, for the murder of her husband in 1997. Owen is not on death row but is serving a life sentence instead. Georgia has not executed a woman since 1945 and Gissendaner will be the sixteenth woman put to death since 1976’s Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty.
National
LAPD kills man on Skid Row
Police shot and killed a man during a struggle outside of a Los Angeles homeless shelter on March 2, according to CNN. The incident was caught on a video, which shows police officers approaching a man and tackling him. The man fought back and officers tased him — one shouting “Drop the gun” — before shooting him five times. The video was taken by a bystander named Anthony Blackburn, who said he was inclined to shoot the video because he said he expected there would be police brutality.
Global
Man arrested under suspicion of murdering Bengali writer
Farabi Shafiur Rahman was arrested March 2 at a bus stop in the Jatrabarhi area of Bangladesh’s capital city, Dhaka, because because he was suspected of being involved in the murder of Avijit Roy, according to BBC. Roy, a prominent atheist writer, was killed on Thursday while visiting Bangladesh with his wife. Roy’s family said that he had been harassed by Rahman on Twitter and Facebook. Rahman is thought to be involved with a group called Hizb ut-Tahrir, a pan-Islamic group which has been banned in Bangladesh.
