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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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A dozen more Australians face death penalty abroad

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Twelve Australians – including two grandmothers – are facing possible execution overseas, far more than previously known.

The imperiled dozen are in addition to three Australians already sentenced to death – Pham Trung Dung in Vietnam, and Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan in Bali.

Sukumaran and Chan could be killed by an Indonesian firing squad within weeks, with a spokesman for Attorney-General H.M. Prasetyo saying a freshly-lodged judicial review will not stop their executions.

However, Fairfax has learned that 12 other Australians have also been detained for serious offences or charged with crimes that carry the death penalty and could soon join the grim wait for the executioner.

Until now, only two cases of Australians in the predicament were known.

They were Peter Gardiner, the dual Australia-New Zealand man caught with 30 kilograms of methamphetamine in China and Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto, a 51-year-old grandmother, caught with 1.5 kg of the drug in Malaysia.

Fairfax understands that a 71-year-old grandmother is among the other 10 Australians facing execution.

The Department of Foreign Affairs declined to provide any details on the other cases but it is understood the bulk of them, if not all, involve drug trafficking in Asia.

"These figures are subject to revision and represent the best of our knowledge. As a matter of policy we do not disclose the names or locations of these consular clients," a DFAT spokesman said.


Source: The Sydney Morning Herald, Tom Allard, January 31, 2015

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