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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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Appeals court overturns injunction against executions in California

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Holding cell at San Quentin's
still unused new death chamber
A state appeals court Monday removed one of the few remaining impediments to the resumption of executions in California, helping clear the way for the lethal injection of an inmate later this month.

"We are acting with the assumption that without any stay in place ... that the execution will go forward," said Chief Assistant Atty. Gen. Dane Gillette.

The state is scheduled to execute Albert Greenwood Brown, convicted of raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl in 1980, on Sept. 29. But a federal judge could still delay executions, and another inmate has challenged a new lethal injection protocol.

The state has not executed anyone in nearly five years.

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose halted the execution of Michael Morales in 2006 after his lawyers argued that the lethal injection procedures could expose the condemned to excruciating pain before death. Fogel has scheduled a conference on the case for Tuesday.

In 2007, a task force appointed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger revised the execution procedures. A Marin County judge then blocked them on the grounds they were written without public participation.

After that ruling, the California Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections redrafted the protocols and submitted them for public examination. A state office approved them in July.

Monday's decision by a court of appeal in San Francisco overturned the Marin County judge's injunction.

Source: L.A.Times, September 20, 2010
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