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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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California | Death row inmate Charles Edward Crawford dies of unknown causes at San Quentin State Prison

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An inmate on California’s death row died of unknown causes at San Quentin State Prison, corrections officials said Thursday.

Charles Edward Crawford II, 46, was found unresponsive in his cell on Wednesday morning, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a statement. 

He was taken to a hospital where he pronounced dead 12 hours later.

The Marin County Coroner’s Office will determine the cause of death.

Crawford was sentenced to death in Alameda County on June 7, 2002, for killing a 16-year-old San Jose girl and a Fremont man.

San Quentin, north of San Francisco, is California’s oldest prison. 

It houses the state’s death row as well as general population inmates.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, April 29, 2021


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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: San Quentin, CA, USA
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