Emilio Viano, president of the International Society of Criminology, and professor at the American University in Washington, sends us this interesting note about the situation of the death penalty in the USA and President Biden's policy regarding it, in which we had high hopes. By Michael Tarm and Alana Durkin Richter of the Associated Press

AP EXPLAINS: Biden's inaction on the death penalty

By MICHAEL TARM and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

Associated Press enero 19, 2023

"In Boston, the Justice Department is pressing judges to uphold the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the city's marathon bomber. In New York, it is asking jurors to impose the same sentence on a man who killed eight people in an attack on a bike path.

President Joe Biden promised in his campaign that he would work to abolish the federal death penalty, but he has not taken any steps in that direction. The Justice Department continues to push for the death sentence in certain cases, even though it has imposed a moratorium that means there likely won't be any executions at the federal level in the near future.

In a document filed Tuesday, federal prosecutors said they will not seek it for Patrick Crusius, a 24-year-old man accused of fatally shooting nearly two dozen people in a racist attack at a West Texas Walmart in 2019.

Activists fighting for the abolition of capital punishment say that the administration's sending of contradictory signals and the silence of Biden—the first president to have openly opposed death sentences—send the message that the Democratic president has not fulfilled his campaign promises that gave them so much hope.

Others say his inaction makes it likely that a future president will resume federal executions, as President Donald Trump did in 2020 after a 17-year hiatus. With 13 death penalty executions at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, during his last six months in power, the Republican president oversaw more federal executions than any other president in the country in more than 120 years.

“The Biden administration does not seem to understand that inaction, if continued, will lead to executions,” said Robert Dunham, who heads the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. "The Biden administration's executions will be carried out by a future administration. But they will be Biden executions."

In an email Wednesday, the White House said the president "has long spoken about his concerns about how the death penalty is applied and whether it is consistent with the values ​​fundamental to our sense of justice and fairness," and he supports the attorney general's decision to impose the moratorium.

"The Department of Justice makes independent decisions about which cases go to trial. It would be inappropriate for us to weigh in on specific ongoing cases, but we believe it is important that victims, survivors and their families receive justice," he said.

Here's a look at the death penalty under the Biden administration:

WHAT ABOUT ONGOING DEATH PENALTY CASES?

Under Merrick Garland, the Justice Department has not sought the death penalty in any new cases. It has also withdrawn requests for the death penalty that had been brought by previous governments against more than two dozen defendants.

But federal prosecutors this month opened a death penalty trial in New York against Sayfullo Saipov, who is accused of using a truck in 2017 to run over pedestrians and cyclists on a bike path on the banks of the Hudson River. The decision to seek his execution was made during the Trump administration, but Garland allowed his prosecutors to continue trying to get it done.

Justice Department lawyers also seek to uphold the death sentence imposed on Tsarnaev for the 2013 attack that left three people dead near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Tsarnaev is again trying to avoid execution after the federal Supreme Court reinstated his capital sentence last year.

Dunham praised the Biden White House for not wanting to interfere in the Justice Department's day-to-day decision-making, but argued that there is nothing inappropriate about the presidency setting a general policy on executions.

“What they don't seem to understand is that if you make a policy, that's not interfering,” Dunham said last week. “That is establishing a principle under which decisions are made.”… “They have completely failed to establish policy guidelines on the death penalty.”

WHAT ACTIONS HAS BIDEN TAKEN?

Despite his campaign promise, Biden himself has not issued any formal guidance or policy statements on federal capital punishment. During the campaign he also pledged to work to end the death penalty in all states. Already in the presidency, he has not spoken about that either.

The most notable step taken by his administration on executions was the suspension announced by Garland in 2021 of federal executions that had been restarted by Trump. The Justice Department will not issue orders to execute anyone, at least while the moratorium is in effect. But that doesn't stop the department from trying to enforce the death penalty. Nor does it prevent federal prosecutors from continuing to combat legal actions taken by inmates who are scheduled to be executed in order not to be executed.

Garland's moratorium is similar to one ordered in 2014 by President Barack Obama following a botched state execution in Oklahoma. Death penalty opponents say Obama's failure to take broader action on federal executions left the door open for Trump to restart them.

Trump administration officials argued that carrying out the executions was a matter of following U.S. law and bringing long-delayed justice to the victims' relatives.

WHAT DOES THE REVIEW OF PENDING SENTENCES DURING THE MORATORIUM INVOLVE?

The Justice Department has not offered details, including goals or timelines. When asked how long the moratorium could last, Joshua Stueve, a department spokesman, would only say in an email that the review is underway. Garland has said the review would examine protocols established by Trump's attorney general, William Barr. Lawyers for inmates on the execution list criticized the protocols, saying they allowed for hasty executions. What the review does not entail is an assessment of whether the federal death penalty should be eliminated entirely.

In September, the Justice Department issued a public notice seeking comment on changes to Trump's protocols, including one that allowed execution methods other than lethal injection, such as firing squads.

HAVE ANY TRUMP-ERA PROTOCOLS BEEN REScinded?

No, although they have no practical function while the moratorium remains in force. In a recent letter, Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley and Sen. Dick Durbin urged the Justice Department to quickly rescind all of Trump's protocols, including one authorizing the use of state facilities and personnel in federal executions, saying those orders were “hopelessly flawed.” Another authorizes the use of a single drug, pentobarbital, to replace a cocktail of three that was used in the 2000s, the last time federal executions were carried out before the Trump administration.

A replacement had to be found after drug companies began banning executioners from using their products, telling them they were created to save lives, not end them. Barr's Justice Department chose pentobarbital even though there was some evidence that the drug produces pulmonary edema, a painful sensation similar to drowning as the lungs fill with fluid.

Most critics of the death penalty responded to the moratorium and review with, at best, muted praise, saying it is a first step. Dunham also noted that the focus on protocols has limited impact, including the fact that any changes can be overturned by a future administration. As they stand now, he noted, “Biden's reforms are not worth much more than the paper they are written on.”

WHAT DO OPPOSITORS OF THE DEATH PENALTY WANT TO BE DONE?

They say Biden should use his presidential powers to commute all federal death sentences to life in prison, which would prevent such death sentences from being reinstated later.

There is also a bill to eliminate capital punishment from federal law and issue life sentences for the more than 40 inmates still scheduled to be executed. Biden has given no indication that he supports any of those measures. The topic is delicate for him. In 1994, the then-senator pushed a bill through Congress that added 60 additional crimes for which someone could be executed. Some inmates executed during the Trump administration were sentenced under those provisions.

Eliminating the federal death penalty would mean preserving the lives of murderers like Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who fatally shot nine black members of a South Carolina church during a Bible study session in 2015. Justifying that could be politically uncomfortable for Biden. Capital punishment has been a politically sensitive issue in the past, but it is less so now after public support for executions has declined in recent decades. Currently approximately 50% of the population supports it, according to most polls.

By MICHAEL TARM and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER