Death Penalty News

The Department of Justice has scheduled three more federal executions as America prepares for a new administration, two of them just days before President-elect Joe Biden will take office. On Friday, Attorney General William Barr announced that the Bureau of Prisons will execute three more inmates currently on death row in December and January. The last execution is scheduled for January 15, just five days before Biden will be inaugurated to succeed President Donald Trump. Assuming all currently scheduled federal executions take place, the Trump administration will have put a total of 13 inmates to death, all over the course of just seven months. No presidential administration in modern history has come anywhere close to executing this many inmates in such a short period. You'd have to go back to the 19th century to see anything like this. RELATED |  Execution rescheduled for Lisa Montgomery, only woman on federal death row Earlier in the month, a group of Democratic lawmakers who...

The European Union expresses its deep concern over the latest federal death row execution in the United States on 19 November, the first-ever during a presidential transition. Since the decision of the U.S. administration to resume the federal death penalty in July, after a nearly two-decade hiatus, eight death row inmates have been executed and six more are scheduled for execution in December and January.  The European Union recalls its strong, unequivocal opposition to the death penalty at all times, and in all circumstances and urges the U.S. administration to reverse its decision and to halt all Federal executions. The EU considers the death penalty a cruel and inhumane punishment, which fails to act as a deterrent to crime.  It represents an unacceptable denial of human dignity and integrity while any miscarriages of justice are irreversible. The high number of executions in the US at the federal level is in contradiction with the sharp decline on the use of death penal...

It has been 131 years since a federal execution was carried out under a lame duck president, in 1889 under Grover Cleveland. Tuesday, Death Penalty Action (DPA) delivered a petition to the White House signed by thousands of citizens asking President Trump to stop the 3 remaining federal executions currently scheduled.  The petition was delivered ahead of the execution of Orlando Hall, who is scheduled to be killed on Thursday, November 19.  Other organizations are also submitting petitions in general and in the 3 specific cases, and last week Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Senators Durbin, Leahy and Booker wrote directly to the president. “The thousands of people who have signed this petition represent the millions who understand the death penalty is not necessary,” said Abraham Bonowitz, director of Death Penalty Action. “We can be safe from dangerous individuals and hold them accountable to their crimes without executions. It’s what we do in the vast majority of cases.” No federa...

WASHINGTON D.C. – Congressional lawmakers Friday called on Attorney General William Barr to suspend all federal executions until the incoming Biden-Harris administration is able to evaluate the cases. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, in a Congressional Letter to AG Barr, laid out their reasons why the Trump administration must not go forward with executions in the last weeks of the Trump presidency. Senator Patrick Leahy noted on Twitter that “capital punishment is too prone to error and too final. And it is beneath us as a nation.” In less than three months, the current Trump administration has gone through with seven executions. It is noted in the Congressional Letter to AG Barr that these executions are “more than the total number executed over the previous 6 decades.” The Department of Justice currently has scheduled an execution for next Thursday (Nov. 19) of Or...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Opponents of the death penalty in Ohio called on lawmakers Friday to enact a capital punishment ban during the lame duck legislative session lasting the next five weeks or so. The Senate legislation, one of several death penalty abolition bills over the years, was introduced in early March just as life turned upside down from the coronavirus pandemic. Though championed by Democrat Nickie Antonio in the GOP-controlled Senate, it has backing from Republicans concerned about the cost of capital punishment and the possibility of executing an innocent person. “It would be a compassionate, pragmatic and economically prudent step to abolish the death penalty,” Antonio, a Lakewood Democrat, said in a Friday news conference. “It’s a punishment that’s shown to be administered with disparities across economic and racial lines and it’s failed as a deterrent to violent crime.” Republican supporters of Antonio's legislation include Sens. Peggy Lehner of Kettering in suburba...