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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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Zimbabwe abolishes Death Penalty, prisoners on death row to be resentenced

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President Emmerson Mnangagwa has signed into law the Death Penalty Abolition Act.

Zimbabwe currently has over 60 prisoners on death row who will now have their sentences commuted. The last execution in the country was nearly two decades ago in 2005.

Parliament had pushed to amend the Criminal Law Code, Criminal Procedure Law and the Defence Act which allowed the death penalty in cases of murder committed under aggravating circumstances.

International bodies such as Amnesty International have called for the removal of the death penalty, arguing it violates the right to life.

Mnangagwa had since expressed he is against capital punishment, sharing his own experience when his death sentence for blowing up a train during the 1960s war was commuted to 10 years in prison.

“Abolition of death penalty Notwithstanding any other law – no court shall impose sentence of death upon a person for any offence, whenever committed, but instead shall impose whatever other competent sentence is appropriate in the circumstances of the case;

“the Supreme Court shall not confirm a sentence of death imposed upon an appellant, whenever that sentence may have been imposed, but instead shall substitute whatever other competent sentence is appropriate in the circumstances of the case: no sentence of death, whenever imposed, shall be carried out,” reads part of the act.

“The Commissioner-General of the Prisons and Correctional Service shall do everything within their respective competences to ensure that, as soon as practicable after the fixed date, every prisoner under sentence of death is brought before the High Court to be sentenced afresh for the offence for which the death sentence was imposed upon him or her.”

In Africa, 24 countries including Zambia have fully abolished the death penalty.

Source: newzimbabwe.com, Staff, December 31, 2024

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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: Zimbabwe
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