A coalition of former prison officials, relatives of homicide victims, civil rights advocates and religious leaders is urging President Joe Biden to empty federal death row before he cedes the White House to President-elect Donald Trump, who staunchly supports capital punishment.
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Letters to Biden that were made public Monday ask him to commute all federal death sentences to life without parole, invoking the president’s Catholic faith and public opposition to capital punishment, and criticizing the death penalty as arbitrary, unfair and biased.
“We need clear and lasting steps that will ensure that the next administration will not execute the people currently facing death sentences in the federal system,” states one of the letters, signed by a collection of current and former prosecutors, police chiefs and attorneys general.
Forty people are on federal death row, including the gunman who killed nine Black parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber and the attacker who gunned down 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. All three were sentenced to death when Biden served as president or vice president.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...mc_magnet-deathrowstories_inline_collection_9
Supporters of capital punishment say delaying executions for decades, or not carrying them out at all, can retraumatize the victims’ relatives. They also argue that not carrying out death sentences is a betrayal of the court process through which the punishments were handed down and lets horrific crimes go unpunished.
When Trump’s first administration moved to resume executions, then-Attorney General William P. Barr said the government owed it to “the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
Robert Blecker, who wrote a book on the death penalty and taught criminal law and constitutional history at New York Law School, cautioned against mass commutation, saying Biden’s administration should take the time to examine each case and circumstance.
“The essence of executive prerogative is to be discriminating — to discriminate the worst of the worst of the worst from the less bad,” Blecker said.
And if Trump revives the federal death penalty, Blecker said, there should be the same careful individual review.
Trump’s first administration restarted federal executions after a nearly two-decade pause, carrying out 13 lethal injections, some in the days before Biden was sworn in. The president-elect’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment about whether Pam Bondi, his pick for attorney general, would seek to resume federal executions if she is confirmed.
Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what's true, false or in-between in politics.
Letters to Biden that were made public Monday ask him to commute all federal death sentences to life without parole, invoking the president’s Catholic faith and public opposition to capital punishment, and criticizing the death penalty as arbitrary, unfair and biased.
“We need clear and lasting steps that will ensure that the next administration will not execute the people currently facing death sentences in the federal system,” states one of the letters, signed by a collection of current and former prosecutors, police chiefs and attorneys general.
Forty people are on federal death row, including the gunman who killed nine Black parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber and the attacker who gunned down 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. All three were sentenced to death when Biden served as president or vice president.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nati...mc_magnet-deathrowstories_inline_collection_9
Supporters of capital punishment say delaying executions for decades, or not carrying them out at all, can retraumatize the victims’ relatives. They also argue that not carrying out death sentences is a betrayal of the court process through which the punishments were handed down and lets horrific crimes go unpunished.
When Trump’s first administration moved to resume executions, then-Attorney General William P. Barr said the government owed it to “the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
Robert Blecker, who wrote a book on the death penalty and taught criminal law and constitutional history at New York Law School, cautioned against mass commutation, saying Biden’s administration should take the time to examine each case and circumstance.
“The essence of executive prerogative is to be discriminating — to discriminate the worst of the worst of the worst from the less bad,” Blecker said.
And if Trump revives the federal death penalty, Blecker said, there should be the same careful individual review.
Trump’s first administration restarted federal executions after a nearly two-decade pause, carrying out 13 lethal injections, some in the days before Biden was sworn in. The president-elect’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment about whether Pam Bondi, his pick for attorney general, would seek to resume federal executions if she is confirmed.
