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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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US executions face more uncertainty as expert refuses to defend drug protocols

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The decision of America’s leading expert on lethal injection drugs to stop offering court testimony has left at least one state without a single witness to defend its execution procedures from legal challenges.

The New Republic reported this week that Dr Mark Dershwitz, citing potential impacts to his profession as a board-certified anesthesiologist, would no longer act as an expert witness on behalf of lethal injection protocols. Dershwitz, also a doctor of pharmacology and professor at the University of Massachusetts medical school, has testified as an expert witness in more than 20 states and for the federal government. In June, he withdrew himself as a witness in a case challenging the execution of Montana’s two death-row inmates – convicted murderers Ronald Smith and William Jay Gollehon.

Smith, a Canadian, was sentenced to die for the 1982 murders of two men who picked him up while hitchhiking, and Gollehon for the 1992 murder of an inmate while incarcerated on two other counts of homicide.

The doctor was Montana’s only witness in a case brought against the state by the Montana American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Smith and Gollehon challenging the state’s execution procedures.

“At this point in time, we do not have another expert witness to replace him,” said Anastasia Burton, deputy communications director for the Montana attorney general. The case is now scheduled to move forward next summer. Previously, it was meant to be heard in September.


Source: The Guardian, Jessica Glenza, August 22, 2014
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