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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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Japan Opens Execution Chambers to Local Media for First Time Next Week

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Japan will open its death chambers to local media for the first time next week, a month after two inmates were executed with the justice minister in attendance.

The media may only get a “sanitized” view of the Tokyo Detention Center, where hangings take place, Nobuto Hosaka, a former lawmaker and former secretary general of the Diet’s League for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, said in a press conference in Tokyo today. 

Foreign media and freelance journalists may be denied access, he said.

“Disclosing the facility is not going to lead to a great debate in Japan” about capital punishment, he said. 

Hosaka had visited the execution chambers at the Tokyo Detention Center in 2003 and 2007 with fellow Diet members.

On July 28, Minister of Justice Keiko Chiba announced the execution of Kazuo Shinozawa, 59, who murdered six people in a jewelry store heist, and Hidenori Ogata, 33, convicted of killing a man and a woman. 

The executions were the first in Japan in a year, and more than 100 inmates are on death row.

Source: Blomberg, August 20, 2010
Location: Tokyo, Japan
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