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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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Child killer sentenced to death in Morocco

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Rabat, Morocco - A Moroccan man convicted of abducting, raping and killing a two-year-old girl has been sentenced to death, the official MAP news agency reported on Friday.

The 30-year-old man, himself the father of a little girl, was also ordered to pay the toddler's family 200 000 dirhams (about R240 000) in compensation, according to the verdict issued Thursday.

Last year Moroccan courts sentenced 10 people to death for various crimes, according to the newspaper L'Economiste. More than 100 people are on death row in the kingdom.

No executions have been carried out in the North African country since a moratorium was declared in 1993, but the death penalty has yet to be abolished.

Sources: Sapa-Agence France-Presse, October 26, 2013
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