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CHICAGO (AP) – Joe Biden, the first sitting U.S. president to openly oppose the death penalty, has discussed the possibility of instructing the Justice Department to stop scheduling further executions, officials told the Associated Press.
If he does, it would end a string of extraordinary executions by the federal government, all during a pandemic that has raged inside the prison walls. and infected journalists, federal employees and even those put to death.
Officials were aware of the private discussions with Biden but were not allowed to speak publicly about them.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki, when asked about Biden’s death penalty plans on Friday, said she had nothing to preview on the matter.
Measures to stop scheduling further executions could immediately relieve Biden of death penalty opponents. But they want it to go much further, from bulldozing the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana, to removing the death penalty entirely from US laws.
A look at the steps Biden could take and the challenges he would face:
Q: WHY PUSH IT FOR ACTION NOW?
A: As 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 at their scale and the apparent eagerness to complete them.
The executions, from July 14 and ending four days before Biden’s inauguration on January 20, the first federal executions took place in 17 years. More people have taken place in the past six months under Trump than in the previous 56 years combined.
Executions took place for detainees whose lawyers claimed were too mentally ill or intellectually disabled to fully understand why they were being put to death.
Lawyers for Lisa Montgomery, who was convicted of killing a pregnant Missouri woman and cutting the baby off, said her mental illness was in part triggered by years of horrific sexual abuse as a child. On January 13, she became the first federally executed woman in almost 70 years.
Q: A DECISION TO STOP THE SCHEDULE OF EXECUTIONS TERMINATE THE PRACTICE?
A: Biden cannot guarantee any federal execution during his presidency by simply telling the Department of Justice never to schedule any. But that would not prevent a future president who supports capital punishment from reviving them.
Barack Obama, for whom Biden was vice president, imposed an informal moratorium on carrying out federal executions when he was president, ordering a review of execution methods in 2014 after a botched state execution in Oklahoma.
But Obama never took steps to end federal executions for good. This left the door open for Trump to take them back. Critics of the death penalty want Biden to slam that door.
Q: WHAT IS BIDEN’S RANGE OF OPTIONS?
A: The surest way to prevent a future president from restarting executions is to sign a bill to abolish the federal death penalty. This would force Congress to pass such a bill.
Thirty-seven members of Congress urged Biden in a Jan. 22 letter to support the federal death penalty prohibition law, sponsored by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., And Senator Dick Durbin, D- Ill.
But Biden would have to convince Republicans. In the 22 states that have removed the death penalty from their statutes, none have succeeded in passing the required laws without bipartisan support.
Biden could immediately lean on his presidential powers and do what Obama did not do: commute the death sentences of 50 inmates still on death row in Terre Haute to life in prison. None of the death sentences can ever be reinstated.
Commutations by themselves would not prevent prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in new cases. That would require an instruction to Biden’s Justice Department never to allow prosecutors to search for them.
Death Penalty Action called on Biden to order the demolition of the Terre Haute Death Chamber building. The demolition of the dark, windowless facility, argued Abe Bonowitz, director of the Ohio-based group, would symbolize Biden’s commitment to stop federal executions for good.
Q: DID TRUMP’S EXECUTIONS REENERGIZE OPPONENTS OF THE DEATH PENALTY?
A: The breakneck pace and relentless government pressure in the courts to get them done has galvanized opponents – and also attracted new adherents to their cause, said Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Center .
“Trump has demonstrated more graphically than at any time what the abuse of the death penalty would look like,” he said. “It created a political opportunity, which is why opponents of the death penalty want the president to strike while the iron is hot.”
Death Penalty Action, which staged protests outside the US penitentiary in Terre Haute during the executions, has seen the number of people donating, signing petitions or asking for information rise from 20,000 to 600,000 in the past six months .
Bonowitz said interest increased after reality TV star Kim Kardashian pleaded on Twitter for Trump to serve Brandon Bernard’s death sentence for life. Bernard was still executed on December 10.
Q: WILL BIDDERS BE PUSHBACKED IF HE SEEKS TO END THE FEDERAL DEATH PENALTY?
A: Yes, and not just supporters of the death penalty within the Republican Party. It could also come from some members of his own party who will see the offers to abolish the death penalty as a politically losing issue.
Cleaning up death row would also mean sparing the lives of killers such as 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 placed in the awkward position of having to explain to the families of the victims why Roof and other killers shouldn’t die.
While support for the death penalty as a whole 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 Boston Marathon bombing. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was convicted of the attack, which killed three people and injured hundreds.
The Supreme Court is currently reviewing an appeal from the Trump administration seeking to overturn a lower court ruling dismissing Tsarnaev’s death sentence. The Biden administration may soon have to decide whether to pursue this appeal or tell the high court that the government now accepts the lower court’s decision.
Q: Are there any clues as to what the bidder might do?
A: Biden has not spoken at length about the death penalty since he became president. And he did not make the death penalty an important feature of his presidential campaign.
On a campaign webpage on criminal justice reform, Biden pledged to “pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty federally and to urge states to follow the lead of the federal government.” He offered no details.
Biden may also feel compelled to do something big on the death penalty, given his past support. He played a pivotal role as a senator in passing a 1994 crime bill that dramatically increased the number of federal crimes for which a person can be put to death. Several inmates executed under Trump have been convicted and sentenced 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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Follow Michael Tarm on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mtarm
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