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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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Former Alabama Death Row inmate Anthony Ray Hinton to be freed after new testing on bullets

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Anthony Ray Hinton
Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent nearly 30 years on Alabama's death row, will be freed Friday morning after prosecutors told a judge they won't re-try him for the 1985 slayings of two fast-food managers after new testing couldn't match crime scene bullets to a gun found in Hinton's house.

Chief Deputy Jefferson County District Attorney John Bowers and Assistant District Attorney Mike Anderton filed a motion late Wednesday afternoon to drop the prosecution of Hinton on the capital murder charges.

The charges are being dropped after "three experts found that they could not conclusively determine that any of the six bullets" were fired from a gun found in Hinton's home, the motion states.

Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Laura Petro on Thursday morning issued an order dismissing the case.

She also ordered the Alabama Department of Corrections to forward paperwork to the Jefferson County Jail, where Hinton has been awaiting his re-trial, so he can be released at 9:30 a.m. Friday.

Click here to read the full article

Source: AL.com, April 2, 2015

Report an error, an omission: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com
Location: Alabama, USA
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