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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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EU Urges Belarus To Spare 2 On Death Row

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The European Union has sharply criticized Belarus for sentencing 2 men to death, and repeated its call for President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's government to abolish capital punishment.

Maja Kocijancic, spokeswoman for EU foreign-policy chief Federica Mogherini, said on January 23 that the Minsk city court sentenced Vyachaslau Sukharka and Alyaksandr Zhylnikau to death on January 20 after a retrial.

In December 2015, Sukharka and Zhylnikau were convicted of murdering 3 people and sentenced to life in prison. But in July 2017, the Supreme Court upheld an appeal by the prosecutor and the case was sent for retrial.

"The European Union holds a strong and principled position against the death penalty, which is a cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment and a violation of the right to life," Kocijancic said in a statement.

"The death penalty does not serve as a deterrent to crime, and errors, inevitable in any legal system, become irreversible."

"We expect the remaining death sentences in Belarus, which is the only country in Europe still applying capital punishment, to be commuted and a moratorium on the death penalty introduced as a 1st step towards its abolition," the statement said.

The EU and rights groups have urged Belarus to join a global moratorium on the death penalty for years.

According to rights organizations, more than 400 people have been sentenced to death in Belarus since it gained independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, January 24, 2018


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
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