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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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After 30 Years on Death Row, an Innocent Man In Louisiana is About to Go Free

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Glenn Ford in 1984
A black man was convicted by an all-white jury in Louisiana 30 years ago following a capital trial that was constitutionally deficient in almost every way. Now he may be released from death row not because the courts remedied the injustices that swamped his case but because prosecutors believe another person committed the crime.

Prosecutors believe the recent account of a confidential informant who claims that one of other four original co-defendants in the case, arrested long ago along with Glenn Ford, was actually the person who shot and killed Rozeman. This is not news to Ford. For three decades, stuck in inhumane conditions on death row in the state's notorious Angola prison, he has insisted that he had nothing to do with the murder and that he was involved in the case only after the fact.

Any exoneration is remarkable, of course. Any act of justice after decades of injustice is laudable. It is never too late to put to right a wrong. But what also is striking about this case is how weak it always was, how frequently Ford's constitutional rights were denied, and yet how determined Louisiana's judges were over decades to defend an indefensible result.


Source: The Atlantic, March 11, 2014
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