Obama Discusses Death Penalty, Racial Profiling

[Stellar]

The president plans to pick up the pace of pardons and clemencies in his final term.

President Barack Obama called several aspects of the death penalty “deeply troubling” Thursday during an interview with The Marshall Project in which he also said he planned to speed up pardons and commutations and recalled moments when he suspected he had been racially profiled by police officers.

Asked by Editor-in-Chief Bill Keller if he was close to saying he is against capital punishment, Obama said that he was still struggling to resolve his own conflict. He said racial bias, wrongful imprisonment and botched executions had unsettled his long-held belief that the death penalty is appropriate for some heinous crimes.

“At a time when we’re spending a lot of time thinking about how to make the system more fair, more just, that we have to include an examination of the death penalty in that,” the president said. He has asked the Justice Department to conduct a review of the practice.

More: HuffPo

[thesquanderer]

1. Obama again a little slow to evolve, but he's getting there (n/t)

[Nye Bevan]

2. Oh come on Barack. Just do the right thing and say you're against it.

Commute all Federal death sentences to life without parole and urge all state governors to do the same thing. It's not like you have to worry about being re-elected.