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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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North Carolina death penalty foes demand commutations

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Capital punishment opponents want Gov. Roy Cooper to commute the sentences of everyone on North Carolina’s death row before he leaves office next year.

Activists will gather Aug. 19 in Raleigh to commemorate the anniversary of the state’s last execution and demand Cooper commute all incarcerated people sentenced to death before the end of his term in 2024. 

A ceremony at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church will include memorials to 43 people executed under North Carolina’s modern death penalty as well as death row exonerees and relatives of murder victims. 

“On Aug,19, we will solemnly remember the violence our state has carried out and demand that it never happen again,” said Noel Nickle, executive director of the N.C. Coalition for Alternatives for the Death Penalty. “We are going to continue asking Gov. Cooper to lead North Carolina to a future without executions.”

Activists will march to Central Prison, where North Carolina’s death row is located, as part of a campaign calling on the term-limited Cooper to commute death sentences to prison terms before he leaves office.

Samuel Flippen was the last person executed in North Carolina when he was killed by lethal injection on Aug. 18, 2006, at Central Prison. 

Since then, litigation over execution procedures and the Racial Justice Act put executions on hold. 

There is no official moratorium on executions and 137 people are on death row.

Twelve people have been exonerated from the death penalty after winning appeals based on evidence of racial bias in capital trials.  

Source: thecharlottepost.com, Herbert L. White, August 18, 2023


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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: North Carolina, USA
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