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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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Trouble on death row

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On New Year’s Day, 2010, convicted murderer Leeland Mark Braley was found hanged dead in his cell on death row at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Jackson. His apparent suicide, currently under investigation by the Department of Corrections, marked the third non-execution death on the row since October 2009. Since Braley’s death, new restrictions, meant to enhance security within the prison, have been placed on inmates’ privileges including the revocation of contact visits with family and loved ones for all prisoners.

Advocates for the inmates and their families, however, say the restrictions, especially the elimination of nearly all physical contact with anyone from outside the prison walls, goes beyond the limits of humane punishment or reasonable security measures.

Click here to read this feature in full.

Source: The Sunday Paper, January 31, 2010
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