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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.

USA | Pittsburgh synagogue requests no death penalty for killer of their members

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The president of Congregation Dor Hadash made the request of Jewish US Attorney General Merrick Garland in a letter sent last week.

Don’t give the Pittsburgh synagogue gunman the death penalty.

That’s the request of one of the congregations based in the building targeted by the white supremacist who killed 11 worshippers in a 2018 attack.

The president of Congregation Dor Hadash, Bruce Herschlag, made the request of US Attorney General Merrick Garland in a letter sent last week, the WESA radio station reported Friday. 

Garland is Jewish.

Justice in the ongoing trial of Robert Bowers, 49, should be achieved “in a manner that is both consistent with our religious values and that spares us from the painful ordeal of prolonged legal maneuvering,” Herschlag wrote in the June 17 letter.

“The imposition of multiple life sentences would ensure that the perpetrator is never released. This is the outcome we desire.”

Bowers is on trial for the killings on Oct. 27, 2018 — the deadliest antisemitic attack on US soil. 

Then-President Donald Trump said Bowers should get the death penalty.

Source: jpost.com, Staff, June 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: Pittsburgh, PA, USA
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