Death Penalty News

WASHINGTON (AP) — Since Joe Biden ran away with the Democratic presidential nomination in March, leading progressives have accepted him — sometimes grudgingly — as their party's leader. But, in the final weeks of the campaign, the Supreme Court vacancy is threatening to inflame old divides. Some leading activists on the left are pressing Biden to endorse expanding the number of high court justices should he win the White House and Democrats take control of the Senate. But Biden, who ran a relatively centrist primary campaign, hasn't embraced those calls, worried they may intensify the nation's partisan split. There's little indication that large swaths of progressives will abandon Biden or back third-party candidates, moves that wounded Democrat Hillary Clinton's 2016 bid. But activists insist they will keep pressure on Biden to pursue dramatic reforms to the Supreme Court if Republicans move forward with a plan to quickly approve President Donald Trump's pick...

Democrats Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are widely known as the most liberal lawmakers vying to be the party’s presidential nominee in 2020. Both believe in healthcare, higher education, and childcare for all. They often cite that the country lags behind most other countries of the world in areas of maternity health, infant mortality, economic and wealth inequality, and many other societal measures of health and well-being. However, as far as international standards go, Warren and Sanders are both out of touch in their belief in permanent punishment and life imprisonment in the U.S. criminal justice system. In June 2019, the New York Times interviewed Sanders, Warren, and the slew of other Democratic presidential candidates running at the time about their stances across many foreign policy and domestic issues, including the death penalty. Just about all of the candidates interviewed affirmed that they opposed the death penalty. Warren and Sanders took their stances a step ...

Replacing the death penalty with death in prison is not true progress. Late last week, a clip of an interview from the New York Times with Sen. Elizabeth Warren made the rounds on social media . In it, Warren spelled out her position against the death penalty, citing the evidence of wrongful convictions and racism associated with capital punishment. Then she added: “I think that people who have committed truly heinous crimes should die in prison. I think that is how we give them the maximum, maximum punishment that we can: keep them in prison for all their days.” Warren’s answer echoes a similar response by Bernie Sanders , who thinks those who commit “horrific” crimes should “spend the rest of their days” in prison. This position is widely accepted as the progressive stance on the death penalty: Nearly every person vying to be the Democratic presidential nominee agrees that life without parole should replace the death penalty. But answers like Warren’s and Sanders’ re...

Four Democratic senators seeking the party’s presidential nomination threw their support behind a bill that would abolish the federal death penalty, just days after the Justice Department announced it would restart executions after a nearly two-decade hiatus. Senator Cory Booker, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced the legislation to ban federal capital punishment, which is co-sponsored by rival presidential candidates Senators Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and other Senate Democrats. The bill is a response to Attorney General William Barr’s order Thursday that the executions be scheduled for five death-row inmates convicted of murdering, torturing, and raping children and the elderly. “Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding.  The Justic...

William Barr’s decision amounts to playing politics with death. Attorney General William Barr’s decision to reinstate the federal death penalty is a cynical political ploy aimed at energizing President Trump’s base in parts of the country that still believe in the widely discredited policy of state executions. The United States has the grim distinction of being one of the few countries in the world that still permits the government to kill its own people in the name of justice. America is joined in this regard by China, North Korea, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. “The government should not be in the business of killing people,” said Sister Helen Prejean, the pioneering Catholic nun who has spent decades fighting against the death penalty. “Capital punishment is a failed, morally bankrupt policy.” The death penalty is also not effective as a deterrent against crime, according to leading criminal justice experts. A landmark 2009 University of Colorado study found that “the co...

Joe Biden has reversed a major sticking point from his time in the Senate. The former vice president has joined up with nearly every Democrat running for president, revealing that he supports ending the death penalty nationwide.  Biden previously supported the death penalty, but in his criminal justice plan unveiled Tuesday, he said he'll work to abolish the death penalty at both the state and federal levels. RELATED |  Joe Biden: I’ll Scrap Federal Death Penalty Biden unveiled a sweeping criminal justice platform on Tuesday, which acknowledges that "too many people are incarcerated in the United States — and too many of them are black and brown."  So he's pledged to "root out the racial, gender, and income-based disparities in the system" while rerouting criminal justice toward "redemption and rehabilitation." Part of that plan includes eliminating the death penalty because "over 160 individuals who’ve been sentence...

Dan Vasquez used to push the lever on the gas chamber, or the “coughing box,” as it was known on death row. As California's state executioner he stared into the eyes of condemned men while they passed to the next world. “They try to hold their breath, but it seeps in through the pores,” he told The Sunday Telegraph. “It takes seven seconds. The head rolls forward, and then they flatline. One told me 'Everyone will dance with the grim reaper'.” It is 25 years since Mr Vasquez, now retired, poisoned someone with hydrogen cyanide. He is still a supporter of the death penalty. But even he now admits its days are probably numbered. “Does it stop murders? No. Is it a deterrent? No,” he said. “If the politicians get more votes by opposing it, then they’re going to do that. Maybe it will be abolished.” Across America in 2019 that is exactly what is happening. Last week New Hampshire became the latest state to repeal its death penalty in what campaigners haile...

Experts say the discussion on capital punishment has focused too much on politics, not nearly enough on policy. Several Democratic presidential contenders have taken to Twitter recently to express their enthusiastic approval of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) announcement earlier this month that he plans to suspend executions in the state. “Inspired!” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), calling the death penalty “immoral” and “ineffective.” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) wrote that capital punishment is “immoral, discriminatory, ineffective, and proven to be unequally applied.” And Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), said the announcement was “very good news.” Ending the death penalty is one of the few issues that has received the unanimous support of the current field of Democratic presidential candidates. It hasn’t always been so. Former President Bill Clinton, a supporter of the death penalty during his presidency, was roundly criticized while he was governor of Arkansas for carr...

Bernie Sanders Sanders received the award for being the first presidential candidate in nearly 30 years to declare his opposition to the death penalty. BEVERLY HILLS, CA — Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was honored for his opposition to the death penalty in Beverly Hills on Sunday, one day after expressing optimism about creating "a government which works for all of us." Sanders received the Abolition Award at the 26th annual Death Penalty Focus Awards Dinner at The Beverly Hilton for being the first presidential candidate in nearly 30 years to forcefully declare his opposition to the death penalty and playing a key role in getting the Democratic Party to adopt abolition of capital punishment as a plank in its platform, organizers said. "Senator Sanders was instrumental in getting the Democratic Party to adopt abolition of capital punishment as a plank in its official platform last summer," said DPF President Mike Farrell. "I can't think of an...

Death row cell, San Quentin prison, California Voters in California will decide to abolish capital punishment or put in place measures to allow more killings As the only fully westernised country to use capital punishment, the US is a glaring outlier in the developed world. Seen from elsewhere — particularly Europe — it is jarring that a country which wants to be seen as a standard bearer for human rights still puts prisoners to death. Executions have been in decline across the country. Since 1999, when the number peaked at 98, the highest since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, they have fallen steadily. The figure was 28 last year, the lowest in more than two decades. The number of death sentences handed down has dropped even more precipitously, from a peak of 315 in 1996 to 49 in 2015, as prosecutors reacted to a change in public mood. Waning confidence in the infallibility of prosecutions has been a significant factor in a string of repeals. Illinois abolis...