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Biden Fails a Death Penalty Abolitionist’s Most Important Test

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The mystery of Joe Biden’s views about capital punishment has finally been solved. His decision to grant clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shows the depth of his opposition to the death penalty. And his decision to leave three of America’s most notorious killers to be executed by a future administration shows the limits of his abolitionist commitment. The three men excluded from Biden’s mass clemency—Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers—would no doubt pose a severe test of anyone’s resolve to end the death penalty. Biden failed that test.
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Texas: Cleve Foster gets reprieve

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Cleve "Sarge" Foster
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked the first scheduled execution of a Texas death row inmate using pentobarbital.

Cleve Foster was to have been executed Tuesday evening for the 2002 slaying of a Sudanese woman in Fort Worth — the first Texas execution since the state switched to pentobarbital in its lethal three-drug mixture.

On Tuesday morning, the high court agreed to reconsider its January order denying the 47-year-old's appeal. That appeal raised claims of innocence and poor legal help during his trial and early stages of his appeals.

Foster's lawyers also argued that Texas prison officials violated administrative procedures when they announced the switch to pentobarbital from sodium thiopental.

There is a national shortage of sodium thiopental, which has been used already in executions in Oklahoma and Ohio.


Source: AP, April 5, 2011
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Iran: 27 executions in three days

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A woman, four Baluchis and eight Kurds were among those executed The total number of those executed since the beginning of September amounts to 75 The Iranian regime hanged at least 27 prisoners in three days, September 27-29, 2016, in Gohardasht, Orumiyeh, Minab and Khorrambad prisons. Among the eight prisoners hanged together in Orumiyeh, there was a woman by the name of Molouk Noori. Seven other prisoners were Kurds from Orumiyeh. Seven prisoners were hanged in the Central Prison of Minab (southern Hormuzgan Province). They aged between 25 and 30, and four of them were Baluchis. In another criminal measure, eleven prisoners were hanged in Gohardasht Prison (northwest of Tehran). Two of them had been relocated to Gohardasht in a sudden nightly transfer from Khorin Prison of Varamin. The number of those executed since the beginning of September thus amounts to 75. The families of those executed in Orumiyeh staged a protest outside Darya Prison which led ...
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Biden Fails a Death Penalty Abolitionist’s Most Important Test

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The mystery of Joe Biden’s views about capital punishment has finally been solved. His decision to grant clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row shows the depth of his opposition to the death penalty. And his decision to leave three of America’s most notorious killers to be executed by a future administration shows the limits of his abolitionist commitment. The three men excluded from Biden’s mass clemency—Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers—would no doubt pose a severe test of anyone’s resolve to end the death penalty. Biden failed that test.
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Iran | Executions in Zahedan, Isfahan, Sari

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