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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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U.S. judge issues order staying execution of Orlando Hall; federal prosecutors ordered to file any motion to vacate stay

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A federal judge on Thursday halted the U.S. Justice Department's plan to execute Orlando Hall, an African American, by lethal injection in the evening, after an appeals court this week found the government's death penalty protocol violates federal law.

"The court is deeply concerned that the government intends to proceed with a method of execution that this court and the Court of Appeals have found violates federal law," U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote in her opinion.

Chutkan's ruling came after a federal appeals court issued a divided opinion on Wednesday which found that the Justice Department had violated the law by executing people using the drug pentobarbital without a prescription.

The appeals court declined, however, to stay Hall's execution at that time.

The federal Bureau of Prisons declined to comment on the lower court's ruling.

Hall, 49, is the subject of three separate legal battles to delay his execution, in what would be the eighth one carried out this year under the Trump administration after a 17-year hiatus.

Chutkan's ruling is expected to be appealed by the government.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has issued an order directing federal prosecutors to file any motion to vacate the district court's order staying  Orlando Hall's execution by 6:45 p.m. Eastern. 

If he is executed, Hall would become the 2nd African American to die by lethal injection in recent months.

He was convicted by an all-white jury for his role in the 1994 kidnapping, rape and murder of the 16-year-old sister of two Texas drug dealers whom he suspected had stolen money from him. 

Source: Reuters, Staff, November 19, 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
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