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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 City Bombing Victim's Father Says Executions are Not Part of the Healing Process

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Bud Welch, father of Julie Welch who was killed in the Oklahoma City Bombing, recently appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show, just a few days before the 15th anniversary of the bombing in Oklahoma.

Welch, who is the president of Murder Victims' Familes for Human Rights, has been a long-time opponent of the death penalty and has said that executions are more often "staged political events" instead of a part of the healing process for victims.

When asked how he came to oppose the death pealty for Timothy McVeigh, Welch told Maddow, "I reached that point probably about a year after the bombing - close to a year. All my life, I had always opposed the death penalty. I just thought it was something that society should not be doing. And after Julie‘s death, I was so full of revenge and hate that I had to get retribution in some way. So I was for the death penalty probably for the first year. And after recognizing that killing Tim McVeigh was not part of my healing process, then I was able to move forward."

Read the full transcript of the interview here.

Sources: The Interview, The Rachel Maddow Show, April 16, 2010; The Death Penalty Information Center, April 20, 2010
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