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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.

Japan Court Rejects Retrial for 1992 Murder of 2 Girls

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Fukuoka, June 5 (Jiji Press)--A Japanese court Wednesday turned down a request for a retrial for the 1992 murder of two girls in the southwestern prefecture of Fukuoka, for which a death row convict had been executed.

Fukuoka District Court thus denied the second retrial request over the so-called Iizuka incident, in which two primary school first graders in the Fukuoka city of Iizuka were killed. 

Michitoshi Kuma was ruled guilty of the murder and put to death in 2008 at age 70.

The defense is set to appeal against the latest decision. 

So far, no decision has been made in Japan to grant a retrial of a convict already executed.

During court examinations of the retrial petition, the defense claimed it had new evidence, including fresh eyewitness accounts denying Kuma's involvement. But the court concluded that the accounts are incredible.

According to the defense, a female witness changed her testimony that she saw the two girls at the scene where the two were allegedly abducted on their way to school in the morning of the day the incident occurred.

Source: nippon.com, Staff, June 5, 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: Fukuoka, Japan
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