Biden Should Use His Final Months in Office to Commute Federal Death Penalties

President-elect Donald Trump has chilling plans to use his second term to expand federal capital punishment. This expansion continues the killing spree that Trump began in the last six months of his first presidency, during which he oversaw more executions than any president in the last 120 years. His plans for a second term include sentencing more people to death, expanding the category of crimes that carry the death penalty and killing the 40 people currently on federal death row.

President Joe Biden can and should act now to finish the death penalty reform work his administration began in 2020. To thwart Trump’s plans and correct the racial injustice inherent in capital punishment, the federal government should commute the sentences of all people on death row.

The ACLU has long fought to end the death penalty. We know that their cruel practices are incompatible with the core values ​​of our democratic system. Trump’s return to the White House and his unprecedented, extreme and inhumane stance on the death penalty only threatens to make an already brutal system even more dangerous.

Already Trump’s was called Unconstitutional expansion of the death penalty to include non-homicide crimes, such as drug-related crimes. He also reportedly requested the death penalty. punishment for Those who leak information against him to the press or undermine him politically. He proposed bringing back firing squads, the guillotine, and execution by noose, symbols and tools of our country’s sordid legacy of lynching and racial terror.

Trump’s promise to expand the death penalty further magnifies the systemic inequities that already plague our death penalty system. Like state death penalty systems, the federal death penalty is error-prone, racially biased, and a drain on public resources. more than half Those sentenced to federal death row in 2024 include people of color, some of whom were convicted by all-white juries. People with serious mental illnesses, intellectual disabilities, brain injuries and histories of trauma are overrepresented on death rows across the country, including in the federal case. Moreover, as long as the death penalty exists, we face the risk of innocent people being executed, as evidenced by the 200 people sentenced to death who have been exonerated since 1973.

Biden made history in 2020 as the first president to openly oppose the death penalty. Under his leadership, the Department of Justice (DOJ) recognized the disparate impact of the death penalty on people of color and the staggering number of people sentenced to death and subsequently acquitted over the past five decades. While Biden has stopped short of fulfilling his promise to end the death penalty, he could still save lives and help build a legacy rooted in racial justice by commuting all federal death sentences to life in prison.

Research shows that the death penalty does not keep our communities safer. Actually, research consistently that the death penalty does not deter murder and Murders are lower in states without the death penalty.

Trump has consistently ignored these facts. Instead, during his final term, he embarked on a killing spree, executing 13 people in rapid succession without regard for serious miscarriages of justice. Of the 13 people Trump executed in his last term, two were Black men convicted as teenagers, one was a woman with mental illness who suffered a lifetime of horrific sexual abuse and torture, the other was a mentally disabled man, and also a 67-year-old who could not understand why he was sentenced to death due to Alzheimer’s disease a man The majority of the 13 people executed were people of different ethnic backgrounds; among them were seven Blacks and one Native American.

These executions, especially of people with mental illness and mental disabilities, demonstrate that no procedure eliminates the fundamental flaws of the death penalty.

The ACLU is calling on President Biden to commute the sentences of all people on federal death row before he leaves office. Commuting federal death sentences would correct the legacy of racial bias inherent in capital punishment and make impossible Trump’s brutal plans for a new killing spree. If Biden does this, he will not only strip Trump of the power to oversee another execution, but will also help put the United States on a different path. By setting an example of empathy and desire to root out injustice, he could lead future administrations to build on his legacy and eventually end the death penalty.

Our work is not limited to federal transition efforts. The Eighth Amendment bans cruel and commonplace punishment, including Trump’s proposals to apply the death penalty to non-homicide crimes such as drug trafficking and to use methods such as hanging or guillotine. The ACLU stands ready from day one to oppose efforts to expand the death penalty and a return to inhumane methods of killing.

At the state level, the ACLU will build on our ongoing work against the death penalty. We will continue our litigation in the following states: in kansas And North Carolina To invalidate the death penalty based on racist administration, including the selection of jurors, under laws more protective than the U.S. Constitution (such as state racial justice laws and constitutions).

“The death penalty is a morally bankrupt and inevitably racist institution. President Biden came into office promising to abolish the federal death penalty because of its fundamental flaws. “The way it can fulfill this commitment and prevent irreversible miscarriages of justice is by easing the federal fight.” — Yasmin Cader is ACLU deputy legal director and director of the Trone Center for Justice and Equity.

President Biden can commute all federal death sentences, save lives, prevent irreversible miscarriages of justice, and build a legacy of racial justice and compassion before the end of his term as president. Encourage him to do this today.