Biden Could Block Another Trump Execution Spree | EUROtoday

During his ultimate six months as president, Donald Trump’s administration carried out an unprecedented execution spreekilling 13 folks. When President Joe Biden changed Trump in 2021, he grew to become the primary U.S. president to publicly oppose the demise penalty. He pledged to work with Congress to abolish the federal demise penalty and known as for these on demise row to as an alternative serve sentences of life in jail with out the opportunity of parole.

But over the previous 4 years, Biden has made no obvious effort to whip up help for laws to abolish the demise penalty that has languished in Congress. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has pursued new demise verdicts and aggressively defended current demise sentences — together with circumstances riddled with the identical points the Biden administration has cited as causes to finish the follow. As it stands, there are 40 folks on federal demise row, a lot of whom have exhausted their appeals and face attainable execution by the incoming Trump administration, which, in response to the right-wing Project 2025 coverage docplans to execute each demise row prisoner.

With the stroke of a pen, Biden might commute each federal demise sentence to life in jail and block the incoming Trump administration from finishing up its said mass killing agenda. Now in his ultimate weeks in workplace, Biden faces mounting calls from lawmakers, activists, religion leaders and people condemned to die to take motion earlier than it’s too late. Even some victims’ relations, former corrections officers, prosecutors and retired judges have urged the president to empty the federal demise row.

“If I was lucky enough to be able to advise [Biden]I would tell him that it is completely consistent with respect for the Department [of Justice] for him to take a second look at those decisions and to make a statement about what it means to have the state kill people,” Rachel Barkow, a professor at New York University School of Law and a former member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, mentioned in an interview.

“I have no doubt in my mind how history will judge the death penalty,” Barkow mentioned.

Although Biden just lately made the politically fraught resolution to pardon his son Hunter Biden — who confronted potential jail time for federal felony gun and tax convictions — he has given no indication of his willingness to increase mercy to these dealing with potential execution. The White House cited the incoming Trump administration’s need for “retribution” as justification for Biden’s resolution to intervene in Hunter Biden’s case. Aside from his son, the president’s end-of-office clemency acts have up to now been restricted to almost 1,500 individuals who had already been launched into house confinement through the COVID-19 pandemic, and 39 folks convicted of nonviolent crimes.

When Biden first entered workplace, demise penalty abolitionists known as on the president to shortly use his clemency energy to empty demise row as a fail-safe for congressional inaction. “If you don’t commute the whole row, this can happen again,” former public defender and Wren Collective founder Jessica Brand advised HuffPost in January 2021, referring to the then-recent execution spree below Trump. “Someone who was at all outraged by how horrific and barbaric this has been should just commute the row.”

Instead, the Biden administration took a cautious, incremental strategy. The Department of Justice reinstated a moratorium on federal executions — a return to the established order earlier than Trump’s first presidency — and launched a evaluate into the federal government’s execution protocol and laws. The outcomes of these critiques haven’t been launched, and the DOJ declined to touch upon whether or not they can be completed earlier than Biden leaves workplace on Jan. 20.

At the identical time, Justice Department legal professionals continued to combat to uphold current demise sentences, a seemingly contradictory effort to Biden’s said objective of ending the federal demise penalty. When protection legal professionals have tried to introduce proof that their shopper has an mental incapacity, which might make them ineligible for a demise sentence, DOJ legal professionals have cited procedural points to dam them from elevating that proof in court docket, Ruth Friedman, the director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, mentioned in an interview. They have additionally labored to dam people on demise row from presenting proof that they’d ineffective trial legal professionals or that their trials had been tainted by racist practices.

“There’s a point at which, what does it mean to say you care about these things, that you really are concerned with the way federal death row is implemented and leave people to be executed nevertheless,” Friedman mentioned.

Last yr, the Justice Department up to date its Justice Manual with specs on when to hunt the demise penalty. The modifications articulated a excessive bar for in search of demise and directed the federal government to think about the energy of the proof, whether or not the defendant was already serving an extended sentence and the federal authorities’s curiosity within the case. “In evaluating whether capital punishment should be pursued, particular consideration should be given to cases involving the most harm to the nation, including through widespread impact to the community,” the revised guide states.

The up to date pointers would have excluded the general public presently on federal demise row from being prosecuted as demise penalty circumstances had the rules been in place on the time of their trial, a number of protection legal professionals famous in interviews.

“The Biden administration is saying, ‘We recognize that we don’t meet the standards that we think are narrow enough to apply the ultimate sanction — but we’re going to allow them to be executed anyways,’” Friedman mentioned. “That makes no sense. This is yet another reason why clemency is warranted.”

When Biden entered workplace in 2021, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) had already reintroduced laws to abolish the federal demise penalty that had stalled within the earlier Congress. But even with Democrats narrowly controlling each the House and Senate, the invoice failed to achieve traction. Less than half of the Democrats in every chamber signed on as co-sponsors to variations of demise penalty abolition laws launched in 2021 and once more in 2023.

“I wouldn’t say that the White House has been actively engaging people to support the bill,” Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), the sponsor of one of many demise penalty payments within the House, advised HuffPost earlier this yr. “I think their response to the death penalty issue was to implement this moratorium.”

The White House didn’t reply to a request for remark.

As Trump’s second term approaches, Democrats have been increasingly outspoken in calling on Biden to commute the sentences of those on federal death row.

“The Biden Administration paused federal executions because they don’t lead to safer communities and it’s impossible to ignore the number of people exonerated from death row due to racial bias, mental illness, or inadequate defense counsel,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), a former public defender, told HuffPost in a statement.

“The president has the singular power to commute federal death sentences to life in prison, and he can do it before January 20. President Biden should act quickly,” Welch said.

On Tuesday, Pressley, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and death penalty abolitionists held a news conference on Capitol Hill, calling on Biden to commute the sentences on death row. “State-sanctioned murder is not justice, and the death penalty is a cruel, racist and fundamentally flawed punishment that has no place in our society,” Pressley said.

The lawmakers were joined by Rev. Sharon Risher, whose mother and two cousins were killed in the 2015 mass shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. In an interview, Risher acknowledged her own complex emotions around the effort to save the life of the person who killed her loved ones.

“I don’t believe in the death penalty on a religious philosophical understanding. But as my mother’s child, if there was a way for him to get from this earth without being killed by the state, I would be first in line. But that’s not reality,” Risher told HuffPost. “I can’t pick and choose who to forgive. That’s not my job. My job is to make sure everybody gets a fair shake. That’s why with Dylann Roof — even for him, even for him — I would not want the federal government to kill him.”