CHICAGO (AP) – Joe Biden, the first U.S. president to openly oppose the death penalty, has discussed the possibility of instructing the Justice Department to stop scheduling new executions, officials told The Associated Press.
Doing so would put an end to an extraordinary execution by the federal government, all during a pandemic that erupted within the prison walls. and infected journalists, federal employees and even dead.
Officials were aware of the private discussions with Biden, but were not allowed to talk about them publicly.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki, when asked Friday about Biden’s plans on the death penalty, said she had nothing to anticipate on the issue.
An action to stop scheduling new executions could immediately remove pressure from Biden by opponents of the death penalty. But they want it to go much further, from obstructing the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, to ending the death penalty in U.S. statutes.
A look at the steps Biden could take and the challenges he would face:
Q: WHY THE COMMITMENTS TO ACTION NOW?
A: Although the coronavirus pandemic and election coverage dominated the news last year, many Americans who paid close attention to the resumption of federal executions under President Donald Trump were dismayed by its magnitude. and the apparent rush to carry them out.
The executions, from July 14 and will end four days before Biden takes office on January 20, they were the first federal executions in 17 years. They were held more in the last six months under Trump than in the previous 56 years together.
Executions went on for inmates whose lawyers claimed they were too mentally ill or intellectually disabled to understand why they were sentenced to death.
Lawyers for Lisa Montgomery, convicted of killing a Missouri pregnant woman and cutting off her baby, said her mental illness was triggered in part by years of horrific sexual abuse during her childhood. On January 13, she became the first federally executed woman in almost 70 years.
Q: WOULD A DECISION TO STOP PROGRAMMING EXECUTIONS END THE PRACTICE?
A: Biden cannot guarantee any federal execution during his presidency simply by telling the Justice Department to never schedule any. But that would not stop a future president who supports the death penalty from restarting them.
Barack Obama, for whom Biden served as vice president, established an informal moratorium on executing federal executions when he was president, ordering a review of enforcement methods in 2014 following an execution of failed states in Oklahoma.
But Obama never took any steps to end federal executions once and for all. That left the door open for Trump to pick them up. Critics with the death penalty want Biden to close that door suddenly.
Q: WHAT IS THE RANGE OF OPTIONS IN THE OFFERS?
A: The surest way to prevent a future president from starting executions again is to sign a bill that removes the federal death penalty. This would require Congress to pass this bill.
Thirty-seven members of Congress urged Biden in a Jan. 22 letter to support the federal Death Penalty Act, sponsored by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., And Sen. Dick Durbin, D -Ill.
But Biden should convince Republicans. Of the 22 states that have imposed the death penalty on their statutes, none have managed to pass the required laws without bipartisan support.
Biden could immediately turn to his presidential powers and do what Obama did not do: move the death sentences of 50 prisoners who are still in death row to Terre Haute to life imprisonment. None of the death sentences could ever be restored.
The commutations themselves would not prevent prosecutors from asking for death sentences in new cases. This would require an instruction from Biden’s Justice Department to never authorize prosecutors to look for them.
Death penalty action has called on Biden to order the destruction of the Terre Haute death chamber building. Demolishing the desolate installation without windows, he argued, Abe Bonowitz, director of the Ohio-based group, would symbolize Biden’s commitment to stop federal executions once and for all.
Q: DID TRUMP EXECUTIONS REENERGIZE OPPONENTS OF THE PENALTY FOR DEATH?
A: The government’s dizzying pace and relentless drive in the courts to make them effective encouraged opponents and also attracted new adherents to their cause, said Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Center .
“Trump demonstrated more graphically than at any other time what the abuse of the death penalty would be like,” he said. “It has created a political opportunity, which is why opponents of the death penalty want the president to go while the iron is hot.”
Death penalty action, which staged protests outside the U.S. prison in Terre Haute during the executions, saw the number of people giving, signing petitions or requesting information increase from 20,000 to 600,000 over the past six months.
Bonowitz said interest rose after reality TV star Kim Kardashian called on Twitter for Trump to commute the death penalty for Brandon Bernard. Bernard was executed anyway on December 10th.
Q: WILL YOU GET A LICENSE ON THE LICENSE IF YOU WANT TO END THE PENALTY OF THE FEDERAL DEATH?
A: Yes, and not just advocates of the death penalty in the Republican Party. It could also come from some members of his own party who will see offers to abolish the death penalty as a politically losing problem.
Cleaning up the death row would also mean saving the lives of murderers like Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who in 2015 shot dead nine black members of a South Carolina church during a Bible study. Biden would be in the awkward position of having to explain to the families of the victims why Roof killers and others should not die.
While support for the death penalty in general has dropped to just over 50% in recent years, many Americans may not want to rule out the possibility of a death sentence in terrorism cases such as the bombing of the Boston Marathon. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted in that attack, which killed three people and injured hundreds.
The Supreme Court is currently studying an appeal by the Trump administration that sought to reverse the ruling of a lower court that handed down Tsarnaev’s death sentence. The Biden administration may have to decide soon whether to continue with this appeal or inform the high court that the government now accepts the lower court’s decision.
Q: ARE THERE PLACES OF WHAT I COULD OFFER?
A: Biden hasn’t talked much about the death penalty since he was president. And he did not make the death penalty a prominent feature of his presidential campaign.
In a campaign website on criminal justice reform, Biden pledged to “pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and encourage states to follow the example of the federal government.” He offered no details.
Biden may also feel compelled to do something important about the death penalty, given his past support. He played a central role as a senator in passing a 1994 crime bill that greatly expanded the number of federal crimes for which someone can die. Several prisoners executed under Trump were convicted and convicted under the provisions of this bill.
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Associated Press writer Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.
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