ADVERTISEMENT 2
ADVERTISEMENT 3
Error: No articles to display
ADVERTISEMENT 1
ADVERTISEMENT 4
Children categories
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) —
Ohio's decision to delay executions another full year while it hunts for lethal injection drugs highlights an ongoing dilemma faced by the remaining death penalty states.
Although support for capital punishment continues, states are struggling to find a legal means to carry it out, and that has created an opening for opponents hoping to end the death penalty permanently.
"It really underscores the public's growing distrust and dissatisfaction with state corrections departments being able to administer the death penalty," Kevin Werner, who leads Ohioans to Stop Executions, said Tuesday.
Shortages and legal fights over drugs and their source are occurring in several states, among them Arkansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma. Yet capital punishment supporters say older methods such as hanging, electrocution and the firing squad are still viable options.
"We've got plenty of electric and plenty of rope," said state Sen. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican.
On Monday, Ohio Gov. John Kasich used reprieves to push back 11 executions scheduled for next year and one in early 2017. Ohio now has 25 inmates scheduled to die, including some in 2019.
Ohio's prison agency said it needs more time to find drugs. It hasn't executed anyone since January 2014.
Death penalty supporters acknowledge the shortage could be the wedge in the door that leads to abolition of capital punishment. In central Ohio, Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien complains the state has "a functional moratorium" in place.
Nebraska has no way to execute inmates because it lacks two of the three required lethal injection drugs for its protocol. Voters will decide next year whether to keep a legislative repeal of capital punishment in place.
Like Ohio, Nebraska has looked overseas for execution drugs, which the Food and Drug Administration opposes. Two years ago, a federal appeals court ruled in a case brought by death row inmates in Tennessee, Arizona and California that the FDA was wrong to allow sodium thiopental to be imported for use in executions.
Congress could easily correct that ruling to allow such importation, said Kent Scheidegger, executive director of the California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports capital punishment.
"It is preposterous that well-deserved and already excessively delayed sentences are further delayed due to a completely artificial shortage of lethal injection drugs," Scheidegger said.
Last week, the attorney general's office in Oklahoma announced no executions will be scheduled until at least next year as the office investigates why the state used the wrong drug during a lethal injection in January and nearly did so again last month.
This month, an Arkansas judge halted executions of eight inmates who are challenging a law that allows the state to withhold any information that could publicly identify the manufacturers or sellers of its execution drugs.
On Oct. 1, Virginia executed serial killer Alfredo Prieto but only after obtaining pentobarbital from the Texas prison system. Texas has continued to purchase supplies of compounded pentobarbital without saying how much it has or where it came from.
Other death penalty states also are looking at alternatives to lethal injection. Tennessee passed a law last year to reinstate the electric chair if it can't get lethal drugs, and Utah has reinstated the firing squad as a backup method.
Oklahoma approved nitrogen gas as an alternative method in April. But that's just as flawed as lethal injection because it confuses medicine with punishment, said Robert Blecker, a New York Law School professor who favors capital punishment for the worst offenders.
Blecker, author of "The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice Among the Worst of the Worst," notes there has never been a botched execution by firing squad.
"How we kill those whom we rightfully detest should in no way resemble how we put to sleep beloved pets and how we anesthetize ourselves," he said.
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Vice President Joe Biden will not run for president in 2016, he said Wednesday, ending a months-long flirtation with a third White House campaign and setting him on a glide path toward the end of his decades-long political career.
Biden's decision finalizes the Democratic field of White House candidates and bolsters Hillary Rodham Clinton's standing as the front-runner by sparing her a challenge from the popular vice president.
In an extraordinary appearance in the White House Rose Garden, Biden said he always knew that the window for a viable campaign might close before he could determine whether his family was emotionally prepared for another campaign so soon after the death of his son Beau in May. Biden said his family was prepared to back him, but that he nonetheless would not be a candidate.
"Unfortunately, I believe we're out of time," he said, flanked by President Barack Obama and Biden's wife, Jill.
Encouraged by Democrats seeking an alternative to Clinton, Biden had spent the past several months deeply engaged in discussions with his family and political advisers about entering the primary. Yet as the deliberations dragged on, Democrats began publicly questioning whether it was too late for him to run, a notion that hardened after Clinton's strong performance in last week's Democratic debate.
Notably, Biden did not endorse Clinton or any of the other Democratic candidates. Instead, he used the announcement to outline the path he said Democrats should take in the 2016 campaign, including a call for them to run on Obama's record. In what could have been a campaign speech, Biden deplored the influence of unlimited contributions on politics, called for expanding access to college educations and called on Democrats to recognize that while Republicans may be the opposition, they are "not our enemy."
"While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent," Biden said.
Wednesday's announcement was a letdown for Biden supporters who had pleaded with him to run, and in increasingly loud tones as his deliberations dragged on through the summer and into the fall.
For months, the 72-year-old Democrat made front pages and appeared on cable news screens as pundits mused about his prospects and Clinton's perceived vulnerability. A super political action committee, Draft Biden, was formed with the explicit goal of getting him into the race.
At the White House, aides and longtime Biden loyalists had prepared for a potential bid, putting together a campaign-in-waiting should he decide to jump in. Last week one of those aides, former Sen. Ted Kaufman, wrote an email to former Biden staffers laying out the potential rationale for a Biden run and promising a decision soon.
Biden spoke personally to many supporters. As speculation about his plans reached a fever pitch, he kept up an intense schedule of public appearances, seemingly testing his own stamina for an exhausting presidential campaign.
But he also continued to broadcast his reluctance amid doubts that he and his family were emotionally ready in the wake of Beau Biden's death.
In a September appearance on "The Late Show," Biden told host Stephen Colbert he was still experiencing moments of uncontrollable grief that he deemed unacceptable for a presidential aspirant. "Sometimes it just overwhelms you," he said, foreshadowing his ultimate decision.
Biden would have faced substantial logistical challenges in deciding to mount a campaign this late in the primary process.
Both Clinton and Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders have been in the race since April — giving them a powerful head start in fundraising, volunteers, endorsements and voter outreach. Top Democratic operatives and donors already committed to Clinton would likely have had to defect to Biden in order for him to have viable shot at the nomination.
Having decided against a final presidential campaign, Biden now approaches the end of his long career in politics.
A month after being elected to the Senate in 1972 at age 29, Biden's wife and baby daughter died when their car collided with a tractor-trailer. Biden considered relinquishing his seat, but instead was sworn in at the hospital where his sons, Beau and Hunter, were recovering.
Over six terms in the Senate, he rose to become chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees, developing broad expertise in global affairs and a reputation for a plainspoken, unpredictable approach to politics.
Biden twice ran for president. His most recent attempt in 2008 ended after he garnered less than 1 percent in the Iowa caucuses. His first run in 1987 ended even more quickly, following allegations he plagiarized in some speeches from a British politician.
He has not yet detailed his post-White House plans, but has told friends he has no plans to retire in a traditional sense. Although unlikely to again seek elected office, friends and aides say Biden has previously discussed starting a foundation, launching an institute at the University of Delaware or taking on a role as a special envoy and elder statesman if called upon by future presidents.
WASHINGTON (AP) —
The White House is threatening to veto Senate legislation cracking down on "sanctuary cities" that shield residents from federal immigration authorities.
The Senate is holding a procedural vote on the legislation Tuesday. The bill by Louisiana Sen. David Vitter would punish jurisdictions that prohibit the collection of immigration information or don't cooperate with federal requests, blocking them from receiving certain grants and funds.
Republicans have pushed the bill since the July 1 shooting of Kathryn Steinle in San Francisco. The man charged in the killing was in the country illegally despite a long criminal record and multiple prior deportations. The man, Juan Francisco Lopez Sanchez, had been released by San Francisco authorities despite a request from federal immigration authorities to keep him detained.
"Rather than reward cities, we must start enforcing our current immigration laws and strengthen our borders to keep Americans here safe at home," Vitter said.
Angry Democrats accused Republicans of aligning themselves with Donald Trump and his anti-immigrant views.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said the bill would threaten cities' ability to police and compared it to Republican presidential candidate Trump's comments earlier this year that some immigrants in the country illegally are "criminals" and "rapists."
"This vile legislation might as well be called 'The Donald Trump Act,'" Reid said.
San Francisco and hundreds of other jurisdictions nationally have adopted policies of disregarding federal immigration requests, or "detainers," which advocates say can unfairly target innocent immigrants and hurt relations between immigrant communities and law enforcement authorities.
The House passed legislation similar to Vitter's bill this summer, which the White House also threatened to veto. In its veto threat of the Senate legislation, the White House said the bill could lead to mistrust between the federal government and local governments.
The Obama administration has said that the best way to get at the problem is comprehensive immigration overhaul, something House Republicans have blocked for years.