One of the most grotesque actions of Trump’s rogue DOJ was the AG’s decision to reinstate the federal death penalty. Recall:
Since the federal death penalty was reinstated by the US Supreme Court in 1988, executions carried out by the national or federal government in the US have remained rare.
Before Mr Trump took office, only three federal executions had taken place in this period.
All were carried out under Republican President George W Bush, and included inmate Timothy McVeigh, convicted of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. Since 2003, there have been no federal executions at all.
In July 2019, Mr Barr announced the scheduled executions of five death row prisoners, despite prevailing practices and public opinion.
“Congress has expressly authorised the death penalty,” the country’s top legal official said in a statement at the time. “The justice department upholds the rule of law – and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
The selected inmates had been convicted of murdering or raping children and the elderly, Mr Barr said.[…]
The 10 inmates executed in 2020 have led to a single-year total unmatched in modern history.
“We’d have to go back to 1896 to find another year where there were 10 or more executions,” Ms Ndulue said.
The Trump administration has also chosen to carry out federal executions in the midst of a political transition, with a lame-duck president, for the first time in more than a century.
Incumbent presidents have typically deferred to their successors, allowing presidents-elect to set the course.
In an interview with the Associated Press, Mr Barr defended the post-election executions.
“I think the way to stop the death penalty is to repeal the death penalty,” he said. “But if you ask juries to impose it, then it should be carried out.”
But it is a controversial choice, especially as the incoming Biden administration has said it will work to end the death penalty.
These bloodthirsty monsters went out of their way to kill as many people as possible in the final days of the administration. They killed thirteen in the final six months.
Luckily, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced last week that they are going to suspend all executions:
Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a temporary stop Thursday to scheduling further federal executions.
In a memo to senior officials, he said serious concerns have arisen about the arbitrariness of capital punishment, its disparate impact on people of color, and “the troubling number of exonerations” in death penalty cases.
“The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States but is also treated fairly and humanly,” he said.
Court fights over the traditional three-drug memo for carrying out lethal injections, and a shortage of one of those drugs, brought federal executions to a halt for nearly two decades.
It’s hard to believe we still have this barbaric law on the books anywhere in the US. But you would think that since the federal government had only executed three people (under a GOP president of course) in over three decades, the Trump administration would have been a little bit more restrained. But no. They went for it.These 13 killings must be added to the Trump body count.
Let’s hope that Biden and the Democrats can ban the practice. In the meantime, Garland is doing the right thing with this moratorium.