Death Penalty News

Catholic Mobilizing Network urges president in final days to decide in line with Catholic teaching against death penalty Catholic Mobilizing Network, a group that advocates for the abolition of capital punishment in line with Catholic teaching, issued a statement Nov. 6 urging President Joe Biden to take action on the practice during the remainder of his presidency while 40 lives on death row "hang in the balance."

Kamala Harris, once openly opposed to the death penalty despite political costs, now avoids the topic as a candidate. Meanwhile, Donald Trump advocates tougher criminal policies, though presidential authority in this area is limited. A few blocks from downtown Richmond, Virginia, the intersection of Spring Street and Belvidere Street now presents a completely different view. Where once stood a grim, old brick building, there is now a modern building with a glass facade reflecting the sun shining on Virginia’s capital. Trees along the wide Belvidere Street give the neighborhood a promenade-like feel, with the James River flowing nearby along the memorial for American war dead.

The VP was once a vocal opponent of the practice. Freddie “Khalil” Owens. Marcellus “Khaliifah”  Williams. Emmanuel Littlejohn. Travis Mullis. Alan Eugene Miller. All five men were executed within one week in five different states, a period political scientist Austin Sarat condemned as “the worst execution spree in three decades.”

11 executions scheduled before 2024 ends, and a Trump win could see federal executions resume in 2025 Washington's governor is set to attend an event at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla on Wednesday to mark the facility officially shutting down its death chamber. That same governor, Jay Inslee, issued a moratorium on executions early in his term, in 2014. Since the death penalty was reinstated in the U.S. in the 1970s — after an eight-year pause due to legal wrangling over the issue — Washington has executed five people, but none since 2010.

Trump sat down with DailyMail.com for an interview at his Mar-a-Lago home. He talked about the campaign and his plans for day one in the White House. Donald Trump says he will end the Justice Department moratorium on executions on his first day in office, and use the full force of the law to go after major drug dealers and cop killers. The Trump campaign sees crime, in general, and Kamala Harris's record as a prosecutor in California, in particular, as areas where they can inflict damage on her presidential bid.

It's the first time the party has not opposed the practice nationally since 2016 and the first time since 2004 that it has been omitted entirely. The Democratic Party has omitted the death penalty from its national platform for the first time in 20 years, following back-to-back cycles of opposing the practice outright. The news came on Aug. 19, when the delegates to the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago voted to approve the new document, which is to guide the party’s electioneering for the next four years. 

Former President Donald Trump has signaled he will continue his administration’s aggressive pursuit of the death penalty if he is elected, while Vice President Kamala Harris has gone mum on the issue.  Trump made his most detailed comments yet on capital punishment since launching his campaign during remarks at the Arizona border on Thursday, at the same time that Harris has come under scrutiny for her silence on the matter.

Donald Trump announced new death penalty policies he would implement against illegal migrants during a campaign event along the U.S.-Mexico border Thursday. The former president traveled to Cochise County, Arizona, to highlight the stark differences between his and Vice President Kamala Harris’s im migration agenda. During the 70-minute address, Trump and the media stood cooking in the scorching southwest sun as the ex-president spoke and brought victims of migrant-related crimes to the podium to share their agonizing personal stories.

As California’s attorney general, Kamala Harris successfully defended the death penalty in court, despite her past crusade against it.  As a new senator, she proposed to abolish cash bail — a reversal from when she chided San Francisco judges for making it “cheaper” to commit crimes by setting bail amounts too low.  And now, as vice president and the Democratic presidential nominee, Harris’ campaign insists that she does not want to ban fracking, an oil and gas extraction process, even though that was precisely her position just a few years ago when she first pursued the White House.

On July 29, 2024, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed the state’s first execution warrant of 2024, scheduling an execution date for Loran Cole in just thirty days, on August 29, 2024. Mr. Cole’s execution warrant comes nearly ten months after Florida’s last execution, which was the last of the state’s six executions carried out in 2023. 

Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed execution warrants for six Florida inmates, the most in any year in the state since 2014. He was also running for president.  DeSantis had signed off on just two executions — both in 2019 — to that point. The sudden step up, along with legislation he signed lowering Florida’s death penalty jury requirement, seemed to signal a new approach to capital punishment. 

When Gov. Ron DeSantis was seeking the Republican presidential nomination last year, he ratcheted up the pace of executions, overseeing six – the most in Florida in almost a decade.  But by the time DeSantis’ presidential bid ended in January, his fervor for executions had abated, continuing into a layoff that is now prompting questions about just what powered last year’s surge. 

A conservative plan for Donald Trump’s potential second term calls for the swift execution of everyone on federal death row, continuing the historic federal execution spree that took place during the Trump administration. Buried in a 2023 plan from the Heritage Foundation, dubbed Project 2025, former Trump Department of Justice official Gene Hamilton urges a second-term Trump to “do everything possible” to execute the remaining 40 people on federal death row, arguing the White House should push for these killings “until Congress says otherwise through legislation.”

Buried on page 554 of the plan is a directive to execute every remaining person on federal death row — and dramatically expand the use of the death penalty. During the final six months of Donald Trump’s presidency, his administration carried out an unprecedented execution spree, killing 13 people on federal death row and ending a 17-year de facto federal execution moratorium.

"This Justice Department is far more reluctant to use the death penalty, certainly than the Trump administration was, and far more cognizant of the problems, but it's not willing to throw away the death penalty altogether." WASHINGTON - Just a few months after he took office, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a moratorium to halt federal executions -- a stark contrast after his predecessor carried out 13 in six months. Under Garland's watch and a president who vowed to abolish the death penalty, the Justice Department took on no new death penalty cases. That changed Friday as federal prosecutors said they would seek capital punishment for a white supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. The decision doesn't change the halt on federal executions, but Garland's first approval of a new capital prosecution opens a new chapter in the long and complicated history of the death penalty in the U.S.

The Florida governor approved the executions of six people this year, and the state imposed five new death sentences. Florida governor and 2024 presidential candidate Ron DeSantis made a return to capital punishment in his state a key element of his "tough on crime" campaign messaging this past year, and the result was an overall increase in the use of the death penalty in the United States, according to a new annual report.

Former president and frontrunner for GOP nomination also warns ‘this country will die’ if Joe Biden wins election Donald Trump called for shooting store robbers on Friday in a bleak speech to California Republicans –and warned “this country will die!” if Joe Biden remained president. During the address to GOP members, Trump also railed that wealthy Beverly Hills residents smell because of water denials, and repeated election fraud lies, according to the Associated Press. “We will immediately stop all of the pillaging and theft. Very simply: If you rob a store, you can fully expect to be shot as you are leaving that store,” Trump said, spurring applause. “Shot!”

Louisiana residents should speak out before Gov. Edwards leaves office in January 2024. Louisianans have a chance to prevent innocent people from being executed on death row. At least 190 innocent people have been exonerated from death row nationwide and 12 in Louisiana alone. There are currently 57 defendants on Louisiana’s death row, including Innocence Project client Jimmie “Chris” Duncan , who has maintained his innocence in the 1993 death of his girlfriend’s baby. Gov. John Bel Edwards, who opposes the death penalty, has the authority to grant clemency to everyone on Louisiana’s death row. Attorneys for 55 of these defendants have requested modified sentences of life without parole. To avoid further injustice, residents of Louisiana must urge the Louisiana Parole Board to hold clemency hearings now and recommend clemency to the Governor so that the Governor can commute death sentences to life in prison before he leaves office in January 2024.

Should Payton Gendron be executed for his racist massacre of 10 Black people last year at a Buffalo supermarket? Should he be strapped to a gurney and a fatal chemical cocktail pumped into his veins, shutting down his heart? Or should he spend the remainder of his life behind bars with no opportunity for freedom? It would likely be decades; he is now only 20 years old. Locally, the decision is being closely monitored by those who suffered the most — the families of the murdered victims. "The victims in this case will have differing views on this issue," the defense lawyers for Gendron wrote in court papers. "Some may support a capital prosecution. Others may, instead, prefer the criminal case to be resolved expeditiously with a sentence of life without parole while they pursue civil remedies to bring accountability to others."

This election cycle is shaping up differently, as capital punishment rises to the forefront of GOP politics. The death penalty has long been the “dirty secret” of America. Politicians have steered away from addressing the topic publicly while using it behind the scenes to advance agendas. According to The Associated Press, capital punishment has not been a major campaign issue in a presidential election in 30 years.