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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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Longest tenured Tennessee death row inmate dies of natural causes

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Tennessee death chamber
Tennessee death chamber
NASHVILLE -- A Sullivan County man sentenced to death in 1978, making him the longest tenured Tennessee inmate on death row, died in the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on Wednesday of natural causes, according to his former defense attorney Larry Dillow.

Donald Wayne Strouth, 55, was found guilty, along with Jeffrey Stuart Dicks, of murdering James Keegan, the owner of a used clothing store in downtown Kingsport.

Strouth was convicted and sentenced to death.

Subsequent appeals by Strouth were denied over the years, including by the Tennessee Supreme Court. 

The state recently set an execution date for him: March 15, 2016.

The date was set for 2016 to allow the courts time to deal with an ongoing lawsuit filed by 11 inmates. 

The lawsuit wants Tennessee to turn over details about their planned executions after a 2013 law sealed details of their execution so the inmates can make sure the executions are not cruel and unusual punishment.

But Strouth died from an apparent heart attack Wednesday, more than 30 years after receiving the death sentence.

Source: Time News, May 15, 2015

Report an error, an omission: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com
Location: Tennessee, USA
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