USA - Biden Urged To Prevent Death Row Execution Spree Under Trump

USA - Biden - Trump

08 November 2024 :

November 7, 2024 - USA. Joe Biden Urged To Prevent Death Row Execution Spree Under Trump
President Joe Biden has been urged to take action to prevent a spree of federal executions after President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
13 inmates were put to death in an unprecedented run of federal executions in the final 6 months of Trump's 1st term.
Those executions went ahead even though experts said that mental health and other issues should have stopped many of them from taking place. The Trump administration spent millions to ensure they were carried out during the coronavirus pandemic.
After Trump won a 2nd term on Wednesday, the Rev. Sharon Risher sent Biden a letter urging him to take action, including by commuting the sentences of all inmates on federal death row, to prevent Trump from embarking on a second execution spree.
"We write to you today with renewed concern and urgency," Risher wrote in the letter, which Newsweek reviewed. "President-Elect Donald Trump's stated plan is to execute all remaining prisoners on the federal death row. It is vital that you deny him that opportunity by commuting every death sentence remaining on federal and military death rows."
The letter was signed by a coalition of about 350 organizations, including Amnesty International USA, Death Penalty Action, Equal Justice USA, Faithful America, Human Rights Watch and The Innocence Project.
Biden hasn't kept his promise to abolish the federal death penalty, but his Justice Department announced a moratorium on federal executions in 2021.
That moratorium could be swiftly lifted when Trump returns to the White House in January, but Risher's letter noted that it "is not too late to act decisively."
"We are grateful that under your administration there have been no additional executions of federal prisoners," she wrote. "As you are aware, this abhorrent and outdated punishment raises profound concerns, including the arbitrariness of its application, its inherent racial bias, and the alarming rate of innocence among those sentenced to death."
The letter urged Biden to make federal executions "impossible" during Trump's second term by immediately commuting the sentences of those on federal and military death rows; deauthorizing pending federal capital trial cases; rescinding the lethal injection protocol; and ordering the Federal Bureau of Prisons to demolish the federal execution chamber inside the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
The White House has been contacted for comment via email. A Trump spokesperson has also been contacted for comment via email.
Risher, the chair of Death Penalty Action, said she wants Biden to know that commuting the sentences of those on federal death row will help the families of murder victims.
Her mother, cousins and a friend were among those shot dead by white supremacist Dylann Roof in the 2015 shooting at a church in South Carolina.
"It is almost a decade later, and I'm very clear about why I oppose executions," Risher told Newsweek.
"Killing Dylann Roof would do nothing to help me heal, and in fact, just the experience of seeing his name in the news brings back all of the horror of his violence, returning us to the pain of that terrible day. Because he's on death row he gets to continue the terror he intended to create, because the focus is on him. If they execute him, he gets the limelight and another chance to spew his hate, and I say no."
Her message to Biden, she said, is "commute all of those sentences to death by incarceration rather than by an execution, and you will make those killers fade into obscurity. That's what will truly help us heal."
She added: "I want Joe Biden to know that I will stand by him when he signs those commutations, and I will explain to the world that what he is doing helps victim families far more than it helps those murderers."
Abraham Bonowitz, the executive director of Death Penalty Action, told Newsweek that although many death penalty opponents have been critical of Biden on the issue, "the truth is that he did the most pragmatic thing immediately upon taking office."
He said: "The President appointed an Attorney General who understood the Administration's position and knew not to set any death warrants. Anything more would have hurt his relationships with Congress, but that's all over now."
Biden now has the chance "to take away one of the things Donald Trump loves, which is the power to execute people," he added.
"If Biden commutes all of those death sentences, Donald Trump will never get to oversee another judicial execution. It would be a great legacy for Biden to live up to his own morals and save dozens of lives while leaving a stinging parting gift for Trump."