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Activists Call on President Biden to End the Federal Death Penalty Before Leaving Office

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A conversation with Death Penalty Action Co-founder and Executive Director Abe Bonowitz. Now that Joe Biden is a lame duck president, activists are holding him accountable to make good on his promise to end the federal death penalty during his remaining six months as president. Biden’s election campaign in 2020 had pledged to end the federal death penalty and incentivize the remaining 27 states that still allow executions to do the same. While he made history as the first president in the United States to openly oppose the death penalty, there has been no movement to actually end federal executions during his nearly four years in office.

U.S. Supreme Court rejects the appeal of a woman on Virginia's death row

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to halt the execution of a Virginia woman who planned the murders of her husband and stepson, meaning that the state is almost certain to execute its first woman in nearly a century.

Teresa Lewis, 41, admitted that she plotted the 2002 killings of her husband, Julian Lewis, and his son, Charles "C.J." Lewis, to collect insurance money. Lewis is scheduled to die by injection Thursday night.

In a two-paragraph order, the high court said Lewis's application to stay her death sentence was denied.

In recent days, Lewis's supporters have argued that she does not deserve to die because she is borderline mentally retarded, with the intellectual ability of about a 13-year-old, and had been used by a much smarter conspirator. It is unfair, they said, that she was condemned to death while the two men who fired the shots received life terms.


Source: The Washington Post, September 22, 2010
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