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Activists Call on President Biden to End the Federal Death Penalty Before Leaving Office

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A conversation with Death Penalty Action Co-founder and Executive Director Abe Bonowitz. Now that Joe Biden is a lame duck president, activists are holding him accountable to make good on his promise to end the federal death penalty during his remaining six months as president. Biden’s election campaign in 2020 had pledged to end the federal death penalty and incentivize the remaining 27 states that still allow executions to do the same. While he made history as the first president in the United States to openly oppose the death penalty, there has been no movement to actually end federal executions during his nearly four years in office.

A killer’s words: Charles Lorraine writes his life story on Ohio Death Row

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Charles Lorraine soon after the 1986
slayings of Raymond and Doris Montgomery.
Ohio death row inmate Charles ''Chucky'' Lorraine called the elderly Warren couple he befriended and then murdered in 1986 ''the two nicest people you would ever want to meet.''

''But that night this happened, I was at a friend's house and they was getting high, smoking weed and drinking, and they were shooting drugs that was new to me. I never been around or saw anybody ever do that before,'' Lorraine wrote last May 15 when he reduced his life story to 17 typewritten pages.

He titled it ''Where I Went Wrong and How I Got to Where I am Today.''

Lorraine, 45, who has spent the last 25 years in prison awaiting execution, forwarded the autobiography to members of the Ohio Parole Board when he was preparing to present his case for clemency in November.

The hearing was recorded on video and viewed by Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, who successfully argued against clemency on Dec. 13 before the execution was halted by a federal judge, who declared the state was not following its own protocol for carrying out the death penalty.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear any arguments, leaving the case in the federal appellate court, where arguments are scheduled well into the summer.


Source: Tribune Chronicle, Feb. 26, 2012
Location: Ohio, USA
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