Democrats Unveil Legislation to Abolish the Federal Death Penalty
In 2020, the federal government executed 10 prisoners. That’s more prisoners than all the states together put to death last year. With this statistic in hand, and noting the three inmates scheduled for execution in January, Democrats revealed legislation that would end federal capital punishment. A total of 13 federal executions have taken place during the Trump administration; no president in more than 120 years has overseen as many.
The proposal was revealed on January 11, 2021, by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA). Pressley said they “are urging Congress to act immediately to pass it. State-sanctioned murder is not justice.”
The Justice Department resumed federal executions in July of 2019 after two decades of abstaining. Former Attorney General William Barr and Justice Department officials said at the time that they were providing justice for “staggeringly brutal murders” while carrying out the will of judges and juries.
Durbin said, “Here we are in the closing hours of the Trump administration, when they are in a mad dash to give pardons for federal crimes committed by their friends, and an equally mad dash to try to execute these people who have been on death row for years, if not decades. That is just unconscionable.” Durbin becomes chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee shortly.
On a sobering note, on Tuesday, January 13, 2021, by 1:31 a.m., Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row, was killed via lethal injection. At midnight on January 12, the Supreme Court ended a day of legal challenges. She was the first woman on federal death row in nearly 70 years to be executed. Corey Johnson was executed on January 14. Dustin Higgs was executed on January 16.
Both Trump and Barr are proponents of capital punishment. Opponents of federal capital punishment claim the Justice Department is hurrying the executions before Mr. Biden gets in the way.
Transition spokesman T. J. Ducklo said, “the president-elect opposes the death penalty, now and in the future, and as president will work to end its use.” According to the president-elect’s website, “Biden will work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to following the federal government’s example. These individuals should instead serve life sentences without probation or parole.”
Ending federal executions is part of Mr. Biden’s larger criminal justice reform package, which has an additional focus on rehabilitation for convicts.
Pressley, optimistic about the possibility of getting the legislation passed, wrote a letter last year to the incoming administration, requesting that executive action be used to end all federal executions. “I’m calling on him to use that full authority with the stroke of a pen to halt all federal executions and save lives. He should also require the Department of Justice to no longer seek the death penalty for future cases, and permanently dismantle the Terre Haute facility where those federal executions take place.” Pressley believes that passing the legislation is crucial and to ending capital punishment at the federal level with the force of law. She believes this move will prevent its reinstatement by a future president.
Durbin noted that the Senate Judiciary Committee has played a leadership role on “issues of the moment,” calling it “the focal point of a national conversation on issues of justice.” This has not been true in the last few years. He hopes that as chairman, he can help restore the role of the committee in the new Congress “on a bipartisan basis.”
Gallup polls reveal that support for capital punishment is at its lowest point over the past five decades, with Democrat and independent support declining. Republican support for capital punishment has remained steady.
The execution of Brandon Bernard, who spent more than half of his life on death row for a crime he committed when he was 18, was a “very significant flashpoint” in the debate about capital punishment, according to Pressley. In the last days of his life, he pleaded with Trump to grant clemency, to no avail. Pressley noted an outpouring of support for ending federal capital punishment in the days around Bernard’s execution.
Durbin also noted a change in public sentiment: “Because of DNA and other methods of investigation, we have discovered that many people who have been sentenced to death were innocent. One-hundred seventy-three people in the last few years have been exonerated on death row. We got it wrong. The system of justice failed.”
Capital punishment has long been thought to be racially disparate. Studies have shown that defendants who were convicted of killing Black victims were sentenced less harshly than those who were convicted of killing white victims. “While we’re in the midst of this national reckoning on racial justice, abolishing the death penalty must be a part of that discourse but also our legislative actions,” Pressley said.
Durbin said, “If we truly believe that all lives matter, and Black lives matter, and brown lives matter and the lives of poor people matter, it’s time for us to make sure that our system of justice reflects that.”
