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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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Texas | Execution date set for man convicted of brutally murdering 3-month-old son

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Travis Mullis was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2011, three years after sexually assaulting, choking and stomping to death 3-month-old Alijah Mullis in Galveston.

An execution date was set for a Brazoria County man convicted of brutally stomping his infant son to death in 2011.

37-year-old Travis James Mullis will be executed on Sept. 24 in Huntsville, Judge Jeth Jones announced on Wednesday. Immediately following a trial to determine his death date, Mullis was transported to the Polunsky Unit in Livingston, where death row inmates await their pending fates.

On Sept. 24, Mullis will be transported to the Huntsville Unit, where he will be put to death by lethal injection.

Mullis had been found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2011, three years after he reportedly sexually assaulted and choked 3-month-old Alijah Mullis before crushing his skull and throwing the infant’s lifeless body onto a remote berm along the Galveston seawall.

During the court hearing on Wednesday, he was asked if there was any objection to the sentencing, but Mullis and his defense were silent, according to court documents.

Peter Walker, Mullis’ defense attorney said the death date sentence was “troublesome” because of his past with mental illness. The trial also revealed the man was sexually abused as a child, according to the Galveston County Daily News.

Walker said the case was unique because there has been no constitutional review regarding his conviction and sentence, according to The Daily News.

The last person convicted in Galveston County to face the death penalty was Robert Shields, who was put to death in 2005 for beating and killing a Friendswood woman after breaking into her home.

In an interview, Shields said he didn’t kill Paula Stiner, but admitted to being in her home when she died. Shields declined to make a final statement before his death at 6:15 p.m., according to the Texas Execution Information Center.

Source: houstonpublicmedia.org, Staff, May 23, 2024

_____________________________________________________________________








"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: Galveston, TX, USA
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