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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Florida executes Oscar Ray Bolin
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Oscar Ray Bolin
RAIFORD — Oscar Ray Bolin, convicted of murdering three Tampa-area women in 1986, was executed by lethal injection Thursday at Florida State Prison.
Bolin, 53, was pronounced dead at 10:16 p.m., 11 minutes after the execution began. Scheduled for 6 p.m., Bolin’s execution was delayed by the U.S. Supreme Court as it considered a last-minute appeal.
The delay stretched into the night before a decision was reached just before 10 p.m.
About 40 people were inside the execution chamber when the curtain opened at 10:04 p.m. Bolin was strapped to a gurney with a white sheet pulled up to his chin and his arms exposed. His hands were restrained by heavy leather straps.
Bolin looked straight at the ceiling during the procedure.
When asked by a prison official if he had any last words, Bolin replied “No sir.”
The execution phase began at 10:05 p.m. and Bolin was expressionless. A minute later his eyes closed.
Bolin was still and his mouth went slack and opened slightly.
Minutes later a prison official shook Bolin and called his name but he did not respond in any way.
He appeared to stop breathing and at 10:15 p.m. a doctor came in, checked his eyes and his pulse and placed a stethoscope on his chest to check his heart beat. A minute later, Bolin was pronounced dead.
Gov. Rick Scott signed a death warrant for Bolin in October for the murder of Teri Lynn Matthews, who was abducted from a Land O’ Lakes post office, raped, beaten and stabbed to death on Dec. 5, 1986.
After a series of convictions and appeals, Bolin was convicted in 2001.
Matthews’ body was found on the same day she died near railroad tracks in rural Pasco County.
Bolin also was sentenced to death for the 1986 killing of 17-year-old Stephanie Collins, last seen alive in the parking lot of a Carrollwood drugstore in November that year.
Collins’ body was found a month later — the same day as Matthews’ — off Morris Bridge Road in Hillsborough County.
Bolin also murdered Natalie Blanche Holley, 25, who in January 1986 was abducted after she left work at Church’s Chicken in North Tampa. She was stabbed to death and her body was found the next day in a Lutz orange grove. Bolin was sentenced to life in prison for Holley’s murder.
In 1990, Bolin, an Indiana native, was serving a sentence of up to 75 years in an Ohio prison for raping a woman near Toledo when he was extradited to Florida to face the murder charges.
The new husband of Bolin’s ex-wife had called an anonymous tip line to report Bolin’s involvement in the crimes.
Bolin claimed that an Ohio inmate confessed to Matthews’ murder. That inmate committed suicide, but a DNA test was performed. The results excluded the inmate, but did not exclude Bolin.
Nearly 40 people witnessed the execution.
On Thursday, Bolin awoke at 6 a.m. and visited with his wife Rosalie for three hours.
He also met with a catholic spiritual adviser for two hours and was “calm and in good spirits,” said McKinley Lewis, communications director for the depth of corrections.
His last meal was served at 10 a.m.
Bolin ate half of a medium-rare rib-eye steak, half of a baked potato with sour cream, a few bites of a salad with thousand island dressing, garlic bread, some lemon meringue pie and half a bottle of Coke, Lewis said.
Sometime before 6 p.m. he was brought into a 6-by-9-foot holding cell to await his execution.
Source: The Tampa Tribune, Geoff Fox, January 8, 2016
Video: Over and over, Oscar Ray Bolin asserted his innocence the day before his scheduled execution in Florida's death chamber for the murders of three women in the late 1980's.
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Oklahoma executes Kevin Underwood by lethal injection for brutal 2006 murder Nearly two decades after Kevin Ray Underwood murdered his 10-year-old neighbor, he died by lethal injection Thursday morning at 10:14 a.m., according to media witnesses. By coincidence, it was his 45th birthday. Underwood was sentenced to death in 2008 for killing Jamie Bolin in Purcell two years earlier. He confessed to police that he lured Bolin into his house, beat her over the head, attempted to decapitate her and stashed her body in a plastic tub with hopes of later eating it.
President Biden used his clemency authority Monday to commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row to life without parole, in one of the most significant moves taken against capital punishment in recent presidential history. Biden did not commute the sentences of three men who were involved in cases of terrorism or hate-fueled mass murder, including Robert Bowers , convicted for the 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue; Dylann Roof , convicted for the 2015 mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston, S.C.; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev , convicted of the 2013 bombing at the Boston Marathon.
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.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — An ailing French national on death row for drug offenses has made a last-ditch plea to be returned home, Indonesian authorities said Friday, as the new administration of President Prabowo Subianto planned to give pardon to 44,000 inmates nationwide. Subianto has surprised the nation with the clemency plan, barely two months after he took office. Past Indonesian leaders have rarely used the presidential prerogative of giving amnesty. Serge Atlaoui, who had spent almost 20 years in Indonesian prison, won a last-minute reprieve in 2015 and was excluded from being executed by a 13-member firing squad.
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During the seven years I spent portraying President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet on The West Wing , I developed deep respect for the presidency and the monumental challenges its real-life officeholders confront every day. Recent news about President Biden’s exercise of his clemency power has drawn my memory to one of the most difficult “decisions” I made as President Bartlet—one that has stayed in my mind over the ensuing years—to deny clemency to a federal prisoner and allow his execution to proceed.
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China on Thursday upheld the death sentence for a child trafficker whose crimes shocked the nation and traumatised dozens of victims. Yu Huaying, 60, separated at least 17 children from their parents and sold them to other families during the 1990s. She was first handed the death penalty last year but appealed her sentence, a move that commonly results in clemency in China. But state media reported Thursday that a court in southwestern Guizhou province had rejected her appeal and upheld capital punishment.
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