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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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Texas executes Bobby Lee Hines

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Bobby Lee Hines
HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Convicted killer Bobby Lee Hines was executed in Texas death chamber Wednesday for strangling and repeatedly stabbing a suburban Dallas woman at her apartment 21 years ago.

Hines, 40, was 19 and on probation for burglary when prosecutors say he stabbed 26-year-old Michelle Wendy Haupt 18 times and strangled her with a stereo's electrical cord. Haupt had moved from the Pittsburgh area to Carrollton to work at a computer company in nearby Dallas, and Hines was staying next door at the home of a maintenance man for her apartment complex.

Hines was tried and convicted in March 1992, five months after the crime.

He initially was scheduled to die in 2003, but his execution was delayed for eight years until the courts resolved claims that he was mentally impaired and thus, ineligible for capital punishment. He was scheduled to die in May and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case, but the Dallas County district attorney's office again delayed the execution so that new DNA testing could be conducted. When those tests confirmed Hines' guilt, the punishment was reset for Wednesday.

Relatives and friends of Hines filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Tuesday against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, top agency officials and prison wardens and "all persons involved" in Hines' execution, contending their rights had been violated because Hines had been on death row more than two decades and that his lawyers had misled him and them. A federal judge in Houston dismissed the suit Wednesday.

Last week, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected an appeal from Hines, whose lawyer argued Hines' trial attorneys and attorneys early in his appeals failed to investigate and show how Hines had been abused by his father.

"Other death row inmates with substantially similar claims to Bobby's recently have had their executions stayed," appeals lawyer Lydia Brandt said. "Yet, Bobby faces execution because his former attorneys defaulted his rights to review. Bobby's situation reflects the gross injustice of the death penalty as applied in Texas."

"I'll be praying for Bobby," said William Hughey, now a state district judge in East Texas who was one of Hines' trial lawyers. "Even though I guess we get the rap nationally for the number of executions we have, I do believe our judicial system probably affords the broadest appellate base of any of the jurisdictions."

He recalled Hines, who declined to speak with reporters as his punishment neared, as a case "where it was clear his childhood had significant impact as to who he was and how he ended up."

Hines first was arrested at age 12 for auto theft and had other arrests for assault and burglary. He was on 10 years' probation when the slaying occurred.

Hine's execution was the 11th this year in Texas.

Source: AP, October 24, 2012
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