Articles of Interest: The New York Times Editorial Board Argues United States ​“Does Not Need the Death Penalty”

In an August 31, 2024, edi­to­r­i­al from The New York Times, the newspaper’s edi­to­r­i­al board writes that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is ​“immoral, uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and use­less as a deter­rent to crime,” and asserts that President Joseph Biden should fol­low through with his cam­paign pledge to end the fed­er­al death penal­ty. The Times believes ​“it would be an appro­pri­ate and humane finale to his pres­i­den­cy for Mr. Biden to ful­fill that pledge and try to elim­i­nate the death penal­ty for fed­er­al crimes.” Since 2000, pub­lic sup­port for the death penal­ty has steadi­ly declined, as have the num­ber of new death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions. In 2000, there were 85 exe­cu­tions across the United States, com­pared to just 24 exe­cu­tions in 2023. While a small major­i­ty, about 55%, of Americans gen­er­al­ly sup­port the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, as of October 2023, half of Americans believe the pun­ish­ment is no longer used fair­ly. 

Although President Biden has not pro­mot­ed leg­is­la­tion to abol­ish the death penal­ty, The Times edi­to­r­i­al board notes that he could direct the Department of Justice (DOJ) to no longer pur­sue new death sen­tences and could com­mute the death sen­tences of pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on fed­er­al death row to life sen­tences with­out parole. The Times board writes that ​“Mr. Biden was right to iden­ti­fy cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a moral affront, and he should help rel­e­gate this prac­tice to history.”

In the U.S., the death penal­ty is still avail­able in 27 states, in the mil­i­tary, and at the fed­er­al lev­el. In 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a mora­to­ri­um on fed­er­al exe­cu­tions fol­low­ing a six-month exe­cu­tion spree dur­ing for­mer President Donald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion when 13 fed­er­al­ly death-sen­tenced peo­ple were exe­cut­ed. The mora­to­ri­um put all fed­er­al exe­cu­tions on hold while the DOJ con­ducts inter­nal reviews of its poli­cies and pro­to­cols. Despite this pause, AG Garland’s office con­tin­ues to active­ly defend death sen­tences and has autho­rized a new death penal­ty case in the 2022 Topps Supermarket mass shoot­ing in Buffalo, NY. Several oth­er states have exe­cu­tion mora­to­ri­ums in place, either to inves­ti­gate their exe­cu­tion pro­to­cols or because they lack access to cer­tain lethal injec­tion drugs. In response to dif­fi­cul­ty obtain­ing nec­es­sary lethal injec­tion drugs, some states have begun search­ing for alter­na­tive meth­ods of exe­cu­tion. In January 2024, Alabama exe­cut­ed Kenneth Smith and car­ried out the first exe­cu­tion in the U.S. by nitro­gen hypox­ia. The edi­to­r­i­al board writes that while there is no doubt Mr. Smith was con­vict­ed of a ​“bru­tal” crime, ​“the ques­tion is whether death by asphyx­i­a­tion is what Americans in Alabama and else­where should accept as jus­tice and human­i­ty in the 21^st century.”