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Activists Call on President Biden to End the Federal Death Penalty Before Leaving Office

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A conversation with Death Penalty Action Co-founder and Executive Director Abe Bonowitz. Now that Joe Biden is a lame duck president, activists are holding him accountable to make good on his promise to end the federal death penalty during his remaining six months as president. Biden’s election campaign in 2020 had pledged to end the federal death penalty and incentivize the remaining 27 states that still allow executions to do the same. While he made history as the first president in the United States to openly oppose the death penalty, there has been no movement to actually end federal executions during his nearly four years in office.

Alabama opposes defense attorneys’ request to film nitrogen execution

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The state of Alabama asked a judge Friday to deny defense lawyers’ request to film the next execution by nitrogen gas in an attempt to help courts evaluate whether the new method is humane.

The request to record the scheduled Sept. 26 execution of Alan Miller was filed by attorneys for another man facing the death penalty, Carey Dale Grayson.

They are challenging the constitutionality of the method after Alabama carried out the nation’s first execution by nitrogen gas in January, when Kenneth Smith was put to death.

“Serious constitutional questions linger over Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia protocol. To date, the only instance of a judicially sanctioned execution—that of Kenneth Eugene Smith—using nitrogen did not proceed in the manner defendants promised,” lawyers for inmate Carey Dale Grayson wrote. Grayson is scheduled to be executed in November with nitrogen gas.

Witnesses to Smith’s execution described him shaking on the gurney for several minutes as he was put to death by nitrogen gas. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall declared the execution was a “textbook” success. Attorneys for Grayson wrote that, “one way to assist in providing an accurate record of the next nitrogen execution is to require it be videotaped.”

Courts have rarely allowed executions to be recorded.

The lethal injection of a Georgia man was recorded in 2011. The Associated Press reported that video camera and a camera operator were in the execution chamber. Judges had approved another inmate’s request to record the execution to provide evidence about the effects of pentobarbital. A 1992 execution in California was recorded when attorneys challenged the use of the gas chamber as a method of execution.

The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker, Jr. to deny the request.

“There is no purpose to be served by the contemplated intrusion into the state’s operation of its criminal justice system and execution of a criminal sentence wholly unrelated to this case,” state attorneys wrote in the court filing.

Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Q. Hamm wrote in a sworn statement that he had security and other concerns about placing a camera and videographer in the death chamber or witness rooms. He also said that he believed a recording, “would severely undermine the solemnity of the occasion.”

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, September 16, 2024

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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



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