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Activists Call on President Biden to End the Federal Death Penalty Before Leaving Office

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A conversation with Death Penalty Action Co-founder and Executive Director Abe Bonowitz. Now that Joe Biden is a lame duck president, activists are holding him accountable to make good on his promise to end the federal death penalty during his remaining six months as president. Biden’s election campaign in 2020 had pledged to end the federal death penalty and incentivize the remaining 27 states that still allow executions to do the same. While he made history as the first president in the United States to openly oppose the death penalty, there has been no movement to actually end federal executions during his nearly four years in office.

India | Execution can never be right... even for the worst of crimes

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Last week saw the hangings of the 4 men in Delhi who gang-raped a 23-year-old student on a bus in 2012. (The unnamed woman later died of her injuries.) 

The case shocked the world and sparked a revolution about female safety within India (although women there are still raped at the rate of 1 every 20 minutes. 

The family of the victim expressed their relief that the executions were finally happening after many delays, which is understandable. 

But is the death penalty ever the answer?

It was the first time in 5 years that capital punishment has been carried out in India. 

People either think that the death penalty is morally wrong, or they don’t. 

To my mind, the hangings in India are as fundamentally unethical as a lethal injection in a US jail. 

I say that, while feeling nothing but disgust and outrage at what those men did, and my heart breaks for the young woman and her family. 

I understand why people think that, for certain crimes, the death penalty is justified.

However, there can’t be a sliding ethical scale for the death penalty. 

The dial must stay stuck, or it’s meaningless. 

I would argue that it could never be justified, even for appalling crimes. 


Source: The Guardian, Opinion, March 22, 2020


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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: Delhi, India
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