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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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Louisiana serial killer Derrick Todd Lee dies while awaiting execution

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Derrick Todd Lee
Derrick Todd Lee
A Louisiana serial killer linked to the gruesome murders of 7 women died Thursday as he awaited execution, officials said.

Derrick Todd Lee's cause of death was not immediately released.

The 47-year-old was moved from the Louisiana State Penitentiary's death row to a hospital Saturday for unknown medical reasons.

An autopsy will be performed by the West Feliciana coroner's office, Pam Laborde, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety and Corrections, told the Advocate.

Lee - who was connected to 7 murders between 1998 and 2003 in the Baton Rouge and Lafayette - appealed his death sentence earlier this year. The Louisiana Supreme Court rejected his bid in September, putting him 1 step closer to execution.

A date had not been set for the execution.

Lee was sentenced to death in 2004 for killing and mutilating LSU graduate student Charlotte Murray Pace in her Baton Rouge home in 2002. The 22-year-old was raped, bludgeoned and stabbed more than 80 times, officials said.

He received a separate life sentence for the 2002 killing of 21-year-old Geralyn Barr DeSoto, of Addis.

Authorities suspect Lee killed 5 other women - Trineisha Dene Colomb, Randi Mebruer, Pam Kinamore, Carrie Lynn Yoder and Gina Wilson Green - between 1998 and 2003, but he was never tried in those cases.

The 6-year killing spree petrified Southern Louisiana, Sinquefield said.

"For a period of time, you had 600,000 people in South Louisiana that were terrified. People afraid to go out of their homes, taking extra security precautions," he told the newspaper.

Source: New York Daily News, January 21, 2016

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Location: Louisiana, USA
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