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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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Mother asks Europe to save son from Belarus execution

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Dmitry Konovalov
and Vladislav Kovalyov
(Reuters) - Lyubov Kovalyova, a Belarussian receptionist, was listening to the radio at work in April when she heard that her son had confessed to helping plan a terrorist attack - a bomb in a metro station in the capital Minsk which killed 15 people.

Eight months later, after a two-month trial, her son - who says he is innocent - and a childhood friend were condemned to death, a sentence delivered in Belarus by a pistol shot at an unannounced time.

In a race to gain a reprieve, Kovalyova is taking her case to European institutions, and is also campaigning to abolish the death penalty in her country, the only one in Europe still to practise it.

She met the EU sub-committee on human rights last week. On Monday she spoke in Strasbourg to the Council of Europe, an international organisation promoting human rights and the rule of law. On Tuesday she was scheduled to appear at the European Parliament in Brussels.

"The focus now is to secure the life of my son," Kovalyova said at the weekend. "The ultimate goal is to get a moratorium on the death penalty."


Source: Reuters, January 24, 2012

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Death Penalty News: 'Don't kill my son. He is not guilty of bombing ...
Dec 03, 2011
There is only one person who can stop the execution of Lyubov Kovalyova's 25-year-old son, Vladislav. Unfortunately for her, it is Alexander Lukashenko, the ruthless dictator who has ruled Belarus since 1994. He is not ...
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Death Penalty News: Belarus death-row bomber Vladislav Kovalyov ...
Dec 11, 2011
“In the appeal, he wrote he was not guilty of this heinous crime,” his mother, Lyobov Kovalyova, told reporters on Friday. The 11 April attack killed 15 people and injured hundreds of others. Kovalyov, 25, was found guilty of ...
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Death Penalty News: Belarus sentences two to death for Minsk ...
Nov 30, 2011
"I know that my son and Dima are not guilty," said Lyubov Kovalyova, Vladislav Kovalyov's mother, in a video released this week. "I ask just for one thing – that you do not kill my son, and instead find those that are really guilty." ...
http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/
Location: Belarus
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