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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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Executed Texas death-row inmate Rickey Lynn Lewis buried in Montpellier, France

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Danielle and René Sirven attend a posthumous ceremony
for Rickey Lynn Lewis in Montpellier, France 
Rickey Lynn Lewis had never set foot in France. Yet his ashes were buried today [Sept 27, 2013] in the French city of Montpellier (southern France).

Rickey Lynn Lewis, an East Texas man convicted of killing a man and raping his fiancee in 1990, was executed in Huntsville, Texas on April 9, 2013 after spending 19 years on Texas death row. 

Lewis always acknowledged the rape, but not the killing.

"If I hadn't raped you, you wouldn't have lived," he told the rape victim in the moments before the single lethal dose of pentobarbital was administered. "I didn't kill Mr. Newman and I didn't rob your house.

Lewis was adopted by Danielle and René Sirven, a French couple of anti-death penalty activists, in 2003. They stood by his side until the day of his execution by lethal injection in April 2013.

Danielle and René Sirven organized a posthumous ceremony in his memory on September 27 in the French city of Montpellier. The ceremony was attended by friends and fellow activists.

Source: France 3 Languedoc-Roussillon, September 27, 2013

Related article:
Death Penalty News: Texas executes Rickey Lynn Lewis
Apr 10, 2013
Six months after Lewis, 50, was paroled in early 1990 from a 25-year term for a third burglary conviction, he was arrested for shooting and killing 45-year-old George Newman, raping Newman's fiancée and stealing her truck ...
http://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/
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