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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.

Bali 9 Australian Renae Lawrence won’t get out next year, even with remission

Renae Lawrence
Renae Lawrence
Renae Lawrence, a member of the infamous Australian smuggling group the Bali Nine, has gotten six months knocked off her prison sentence, but that doesn’t mean she’ll get out next year, says the woman’s father.

Lawrence, who’s currently serving out her sentence in Bali’s remote Bangli prison, received a remission for good behavior in concurrence with Indonesian’s Independence Day. It is customary for the country to reduce sentences ever so slightly during special holidays for well-behaved Indonesian and foreign prisoners alike.

While it was reported that Lawrence could see a release date of next year if her recommendation for a remission went through, that won’t be the case for the 39-year-old, because she’s got a “subsidiary sentence”: an extra six months on top of her sentence that she must serve unless she pays a $100,000 fee.

“She won’t be getting out when they say she’s getting out because there’s a $100,000 fine she’s got to pay and we can’t pay that – we haven’t got it,” her father, Rob Lawrence told Australia’s 9 Network.

“She’s going to have to do the extra time to cut it out.”

Upon her ultimate release, Lawrence will keep under the radar says her father, unlike former fellow Australian inmate, Schapelle Corby who has become an Instagram sensation since being deported back to Oz from Bali in May, post-parole.

“She just wants to come home and get on with her life. She doesn’t want it to be like the Corbys,” Rob Lawrence said.

Lawrence was handed 20 years behind bars for her role in a 2004 heroin smuggling operation involving nine Australians called the Bali Nine. 

The group’s ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed by firing squad in April 2015.

Since being locked up, she has reportedly already gotten reductions of more than five years for good behavior.

Source: Coconuts Jakarta, August 18, 2017


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