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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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Maryland: Death-row inmate John Booth-El found dead in his cell

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A man who spent more than two decades on death row was found dead in his cell at North Branch Correctional Institution in Cumberland Sunday morning, a state corrections spokesman said.

Corrections staff at the prison found John Booth-El, 60, unresponsive not long after an officer had spoken with him earlier in the morning, according to Mark Vernarelli, the spokesman. Booth was pronounced dead shortly afterward, despite attempts to revive him, Vernarelli said.

The death appears to have been from natural causes, Vernarelli said. The State Medical Examiner will make an official determination after an autopsy.

Booth-El was housed in a single cell, like other inmates with death sentences, Vernarelli said.

Booth-El had been on death row since he was convicted in 1990 of fatally stabbing his neighbors, Irvin and Rose Bronstein, during a robbery of their Northwest Baltimore home in May 1983. His death sentence has been overturned three times, only to be reimposed.

Source: Baltimore Sun, April 27, 2014
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