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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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Former warden says California can’t afford death penalty

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Exterior of the new lethal injection facility at
San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif
From the time a death penalty case enters the court system in California, the count begins. There’s an estimated $40 million a year spent on death penalty cases at the county court level. Then $72 million a year goes for housing death penalty inmates in state prison. Another $58 million is spent on appealing death penalty cases to the state appellate court, and then $14 million is spent on federal appeals, including those that make it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.


To put it more simply, as U.S. 9th Circuit Judge Arthur Alarcon and Loyola Law School Professor Paula Mitchell did in a 2011 report titled “Executing the Will of the Voters: A Roadmap to Mend or End the California Legislature’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Death Penalty Debacle,” it’s cost $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since California’s reinstated the death penalty in 1978. 


Do the math: It’s slightly more than $4 billion spent on executing 13 people. And 725 inmates currently sit on death row. Do the math on that.



Source: Monterey County Weekly, August 9, 2012
Location: California
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Iran | Three prisoners executed in Ghezel Hesar Prison, Karaj

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At dawn on December 25, the death sentences of three prisoners were carried out in Ghezel Hesar Prison, Karaj. HRANA has identified the executed individuals as Hamed Pakdaman, Masoud Jalilian, and Hossein Mansouri-Nasb. Hamed Pakdaman was arrested approximately three years ago on charges of “enmity against God (Moharebeh) through armed robbery” and was subsequently sentenced to death by the judiciary.
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