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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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Louisiana's longest-serving death row prisoner walks free after 30 years

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Louisiana Death Row
(CNN) -- There are many ways to measure 30 years, but for Glenn Ford, the yardstick is simple.

"My sons -- when I left -- was babies. Now they grown men with babies," he said, speaking as a free man for the first time in nearly three decades.


"My mind's going all kinds of directions, but it feels good," Ford, 64, told reporters outside the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

According to the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana, a judge ordered that Ford be freed Monday after prosecutors petitioned the court to release him.

New information corroborated what Ford had said all along: that he was not present at nor involved in the November 5, 1983, slaying of Isadore Rozeman, the project said.

"We are very pleased to see Glenn Ford finally exonerated, and we are particularly grateful that the prosecution and the court moved ahead so decisively to set Mr. Ford free," said Gary Clements and Aaron Novod, Ford's attorneys.

They have argued his trial was compromised by the unconstitutional suppression of evidence and by inexperienced counsel.

Ford had been on death row since 1984, making him one of the longest-serving death row prisoners in the United States.


Source: CNN, March 12, 2014
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