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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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CHINA HEARS DEATH ROW DEFENSE BY VIDEO FOR FIRST TIME

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April 25, 2008: China's top court interrogated a death penalty defendant via a video link for the first time since a key legal reform aimed at cutting wrongful executions, Xinhua news agency said.

The reform, prompted by public outcries over a series of high-profile and wrong death sentences in recent years, had nevertheless greatly increased the workload of the top court, Chinese media have said.

"The Supreme People's Court judges have had to travel to places across the country to meet the defendants. It is both time-consuming and costly," Xinhua quoted an unnamed official from the top court as saying.

The top court questioned Jiang Huaquan, sentenced to death for drug trafficking in the southeastern province of Fujian, from Beijing through a video link, Xinhua said. "Distance interrogation can not only ensure face-to-face communication but also ... boost efficiency of the final review work maximally," the official said.

The questioning process would be recorded and judges would still travel to detention centres to personally meet defendants when necessary, the official said.

Source: Reuters, 25/04/2008
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