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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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Texas: Jonathan Green's Execution Halted

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HUNTSVILLE — Condemned murderer Jonathan Green (left) has been spared from execution after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to look more closely at arguments he was delusional and too mentally ill to be put to death.

The Associate Press says the order from the state’s highest criminal appeals court came less than four hours before the 42-year-old Green could have received lethal injection Wednesday evening for the abduction, rape and strangling of a 12-year-old girl near Houston 10 years ago.

Green already had been taken to the death house in Huntsville when he received word of the reprieve.

Green was convicted in the death of Christina LeAnn Neal, who disappeared while walking home in the rural community of Dobbin on June 21, 2000. A onetime star running back for Montgomery High School, Green was accused of grabbing the girl shortly after she left a friend's house that was about 100 yards away from his residence. Neal's body was found in a gray blanket stuffed into a laundry bag behind a chair in his home.

Source: Houston Chronicle, June 30, 2010
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