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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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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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