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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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Attorneys: Nebraska death row inmate John Lotter's IQ too low for execution

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John Lotter
LINCOLN (AP) — Attorneys for a Nebraska death row inmate whose case inspired the 1999 movie "Boys Don't Cry" say he should be found ineligible for execution because he has the intellect of a child.

John Lotter was sentenced to death for his role in the 1993 killings of Teena Brandon, who was a transgender man and went by Brandon, and two witnesses, Lisa Lambert and Philip DeVine, at a farmhouse in Humboldt, about 75 miles south of Omaha.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports that Lotter's lawyers filed a motion stating that recent IQ testing shows that Lotter, 46, is intellectually disabled and therefore can't be put to death under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling forbidding the execution of the intellectually disabled.

Nebraska law says an IQ of 70 or below is presumptive evidence of an intellectual disability. 

Court records show Lotter scored a 67 last year, which would be the equivalent IQ of an 8-year-old.

The judge will need to grant an evidentiary hearing to consider the issue.

Source: Omaha World Herald, April 3, 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
Location: Nebraska, USA
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