Death Penalty News

WASHINGTON (AP) — The prospect that President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans will fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Supreme Court seat before the year is out has ignited a call for major changes on the court, including expanding the number of justices. Some Democratic senators, who had been averse to increasing the size of the nine-member court, said in the wake of Ginsburg's death that the Republican rush to fill the high court vacancy could be a breaking point. Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey said on Twitter that if Republicans don't allow the winner of the Nov. 3 presidential election to select the next justice, “we must abolish the filibuster and expand the Supreme Court.” But the sudden vacancy also is fueling tensions among Democrats. While some progressives are urging presidential nominee Joe Biden to embrace reforms including adding justices to the court, he has so far resisted embracing such a major change. Biden, who ran a relatively centrist primary campaign...

The following story was originally published in April 2019. “Capital punishment as seen in America has always been a discriminatory practice,” the 2020 presidential hopeful said. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and a 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful, has called for the abolishment of the death penalty. Buttigieg, while speaking at the 2019 National Action Network Convention in New York City, outlined his vision for reforming the criminal justice system if elected president, which includes ending capital punishment. “As we work to end mandatory minimums for nonviolent offenses, as we work to put an end to prolonged solitary confinement, which is a form of torture,” he said, “here too we must be intentional about fixing disparities that have strong and deeply unfair racial consequences.” He added: “Speaking of sentencing disparities, it is time to face the simple fact that capital punishment as seen in America has always been a discriminatory ...

DECORAH, Iowa — South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg has a message to countries with anti-gay laws on the books like Saudi Arabia and Russia: Better get used to dealing with a gay U.S. president. The gay 2020 presidential hopeful made the comments Saturday night during a town hall at Decorah High School in response to a question submitted by an audience member. The campaign staffer who read the question asked Buttigieg how he’d deal with international leaders from countries “like Saudi Arabia and Russia, where it’s illegal to be gay.” “So, they’re going to have to get used to it,” Buttigieg said. The audience, which was an estimated 1,000 people in a small town of 8,000, responded with roaring and sustained applause far greater than any other cheers throughout the evening. Other responses to Buttigieg’s lines about action on guns and removing President Trump from the White House were loud, but didn’t come close. "Saudi Arabia, one of the more than 70 countries wh...

Mayor Pete Buttigieg opposes the death penalty for prisoners, even if that prisoner happens to be Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks. “If you mean it, you mean it,” Buttigieg said in an interview with The Hill. “There are people who may deserve to die. I just don’t know anybody who deserves to kill them.” Mohammed is scheduled to face trial for 2,976 counts of murder before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Jan. 11, 2021. Buttigieg argued it was wrong to kill anyone who was “defenseless.” “I do believe that the moral consequence of killing somebody who is defenseless for any reason goes against certainly what I’ve been taught about the way we’re supposed to treat human life,” he said. Buttigieg has tried to sell himself to voters as a religious leader of conscience, despite his unwillingness to set any limits on abortion right up until the moment of birth. When discussing abortion during a radio interview ...

South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D) released a plan to combat domestic terrorism on Monday that would invest $1 billion to combat and prevent extremism and radicalization in the U.S. Buttigieg, who is running for president, would put more resources toward law enforcement, including increasing the FBI’s domestic counterterrorism field staff and training law enforcement about the connection between gender-based violence and domestic terrorism. The plan would also devote more resources toward tracking hate groups across the U.S.  The legislation would also enforce universal background checks on gun sales, ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and establishing a country-wide gun licensing system.   The presidential candidate's campaign said the public would need to be mobilized to put pressure on the Senate to pass gun control measures, in addition to ending the Senate filibuster "as we know it."  Because of the filibuster, it now ...

The federal government recently decided to resume executions of death row inmates following a 16-year hiatus. “Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals,” Attorney General William P. Barr said in a statement. “The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.” New data from YouGov finds that 46 % of Americans support the federal government’s decision to resume executions. Republicans are especially likely (86%) to support the government’s decision. Close to 1/2 of Independents also support (48%) it, while Democrats (28%) are the least likely to support it.  Men are considerably more likely than women to be in favor of the federal government’s decision.  While a slight majority (53%) of men are in favor, women are almost evenly split: 39 % are in support, 40 % are oppose...

As out presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg continues to struggle with black voters, his campaign released a plan to “dismantle racist structures and systems.” That includes eliminating the death penalty and legalizing marijuana. The New York Times reports that Buttigieg faces a difficult path to the Democratic presidential nomination if he can’t gain traction with black voters. The plan comes while Buttigieg deals with a racially sensitive test of leadership as mayor of South Bend, Ind. In addition to changes to capital punishment and marijuana laws, Buttgieg also wants to limit use solitary confinement in prisons and eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing. The plan also says he will be tightening the legal standard for police to use deadly force; creating a federal database of officers fired from police departments; and persuading states to disclose more data on law enforcment to see a correlation with race. A police-involved shooting in his hometown turned the sp...