USA | Advocates say DOJ federal execution moratorium ‘not enough’

Anti-death penalty advocates are criticizing the Biden administration’s moratorium on federal executions as inadequate, while some conservatives are calling the move “disgraceful.”

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the moratorium “does nothing” to abolish capital punishment.

“Simply put, if the administration doesn’t repeal or commute, it isn’t taking steps to end the federal #deathpenalty,” Mr. Dunham tweeted on Thursday. “It may be making reforms, but it isn’t fulfilling the Biden campaign pledge [to do so].”

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas said the administration’s moratorium was misguided.

“White supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine African Americans at a Bible study,” Mr. Cotton tweeted. “Merrick Garland just paused his execution. Disgraceful.”

The Witness to Innocence organization echoed Mr. Dunham’s sentiments, tweeting that the Justice Department’s action is a “step in the right direction, but not enough. Biden can and should commute fed death row.”

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced the moratorium Thursday night, just hours after John Hummel, who is convicted of killing his family, was executed in Texas.

The moratorium will be in place while the Justice Department conducts a review of policies and procedures implemented in the last two years by the Trump administration, which carried out the executions of 13 people, after 17 years without any federal executions.

Under the former president, officials barred the Food and Drug Administration from regulating execution methods and allowed one execution drug to be administered instead of three. The Trump administration also shortened the time period to notify prisoners of their death date, which some attorneys say made it harder to file an appeal.

Moreover, the Trump administration made it legal to use firing squads or a gas chamber for executions, a move that has been criticized as unreliable and inhumane.

Mr. Dunham criticized the scope of the new review as too “narrow.”

“If the DOJ review is as narrow as the memorandum suggests — i.e., it addresses only the things the Trump administration did to expedite executions and expand the methods available to kill federal prisoners — it barely even scratches the surface of #deathpenalty reform,” Mr. Dunham tweeted.

He said a moratorium for a “serious” review of the overall federal death penalty system “would have some symbolic value as opposed to this mini-moratorium/mini-study.”

Mr. Garland did not provide a timetable for the review, but said no prisoners will be sentenced to death or executed while it is being conducted.

“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 humanely,” Mr. Garland said in a press release. “That obligation has special force in capital cases.”

Since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976, a total of 1,534 people have been executed in the U.S. — the vast majority being state, not federal, executions — and there are 28 people scheduled to be executed over the next few years, four of which are scheduled for this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center website.

In March, Virginia became the 23rd state to abolish capital punishment.

Opponents of capital punishment argue it disproportionately targets minorities, is inhumane, is a cost burden to taxpayers and runs the risk of killing an innocent person.

Source: washingtontimes.com, Emily Zantwo, July 2, 2021

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

The doctor defending Louisiana’s controversial execution method

Dr. Joseph Antognini travels across the nation, being paid over $500 an hour by government officials who rely on him to vouch for their execution protocols. This [article] is part of “ Operating Capital ,” an ongoing Lens discussion about Louisiana’s resumption of executions. Earlier this month, Dr. Joseph Antognini, a California-based retired anesthesiologist, walked into the execution chamber at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He tried on the air-tight mask that prison staff plan to use to execute Death Row prisoner Jessie Hoffman , using nitrogen hypoxia, a method that Louisiana executioners have never before used.

Louisiana executes Jessie Hoffman Jr.

Louisiana used nitrogen gas Tuesday evening to execute a man convicted of murdering a woman in 1996, the 1st time the state has used the method, a lawyer for the condemned man said. Jessie Hoffman Jr., 46, was put to death at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, defense lawyer Cecelia Kappel said in a statement. He was the 1st person executed in the state in 15 years, and his death marked the 5th use of the nitrogen gas method in the US, with all the rest in Alabama. Hoffman was convicted of the murder of Mary "Molly" Elliott, a 28-year-old advertising executive. At the time of the crime, Hoffman was 18.

Indonesia | Lindsay Sandiford convinced she will be released soon

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Texas Death Row chef who cook for hundreds of inmates explained why he refused to serve one last meal

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Oklahoma executes Wendell Grissom

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South Carolina plans to carry out a firing squad execution. Is it safe for witnesses?

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Louisiana | Execution by nitrogen gas ‘ugly way to die’: MD

What is it like to be executed by nitrogen gas? Dr. Jonathan Groner, a medical ethicist who studies capital punishment, has not witnessed an execution using this method, but he speculates about what happens to an inmate who is given pure nitrogen to inhale through a mask. “They don’t go quietly, I will say that,” Groner, a professor of surgery at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, told “Banfield” on Wednesday. A federal judge this week halted the state of Louisiana’s plans to execute an inmate for the first time through “nitrogen hypoxia.” State officials plan to appeal the judge’s decision, which raised questions about whether using nitrogen gas is a cruel and unusual punishment.

Florida executes Edward James

Edward James received 3-drug lethal injection under death warrant signed in February by governor Ron DeSantis A Florida man who killed an 8-year-old girl and her grandmother on a night in which he drank heavily and used drugs was executed on Thursday. Edward James, 63, was pronounced dead at 8.15pm after receiving a 3-drug injection at Florida state prison outside Starke under a death warrant signed in February by Governor Ron DeSantis. The execution was the 2nd this year in Florida, which is planning a 3rd in April.

Louisiana's First Nitrogen Execution Reflects Broader Method Shift

Facing imminent execution by lethal gas earlier this week, Jessie Hoffman Jr. — a Louisiana man convicted of abducting, raping and murdering a 28-year-old woman in 1996 — went to court with a request: Please allow me to be shot instead. In a petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16 seeking a stay of his execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a protocol that had yet to be tested in the state, Hoffman requested execution by firing squad as an alternative.

Violent and sudden. What a firing squad execution looked like through my eyes

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — I’ve now watched through glass and bars as 11 men were put to death at a South Carolina prison. None of the previous 10 prepared me for watching the firing squad death of Brad Sigmon on Friday night. I might now be unique among U.S. reporters: I’ve witnessed three different methods — nine lethal injections and an electric chair execution. I can still hear the thunk of the breaker falling 21 years later. As a journalist you want to ready yourself for an assignment. You research a case. You read about the subject.

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