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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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Oklahoma: Terry Lyn Short executed

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McALESTER (AP) - An Oklahoma man convicted of killing a university student from Japan by throwing a firebomb into his apartment complex has been put to death.

Terry Lyn Short was injected with a lethal combination of three chemicals Tuesday evening at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesman Jerry Massie says Short was pronounced dead at 6:08 p.m.

The 47-year-old Short was the first person executed in Oklahoma since Aug. 21, when Frank Duane Welch was executed for the killing of a Norman woman.

Executions had been put on hold across the country for part of the 10 months in between as the U.S. Supreme Court considered a challenge to the lethal injection procedure.

Short was convicted of killing 22-year-old Ken Yamamoto in 1995. Yamamoto lived one floor above Short's ex-girlfriend and died after Short threw a gasoline-filled bottle into her apartment that ignited the building.

Source: Associated Press
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