Democratic Legislators Introduce Death Penalty Repeal Bills, Urge President Biden to Commute Federal Death Sentences

Democratic mem­bers of the U.S. House and Senate have called on incom­ing President Joe Biden (pic­tured) to take quick action on his cam­paign pledge to end the fed­er­al death penal­ty. Legislators intro­duced three bills to abol­ish the fed­er­al death penal­ty and urged the President to issue exec­u­tive orders to halt fed­er­al exe­cu­tions and com­mute the death sen­tences of those on fed­er­al death row. 

Citing the more than 170 peo­ple exon­er­at­ed from U.S. death rows since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment resumed in the U.S. in the 1970s, Biden’s offi­cial cam­paign plat­form on crim­i­nal jus­tice advo­cat­ed repeal­ing the fed­er­al death penal­ty. With his inau­gu­ra­tion, he became the first pres­i­dent to have been elect­ed after sup­port­ing doing away with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. ​“Because we can­not ensure we get death penal­ty cas­es right every time,” the joe​biden​.com web­site said, ​“Biden will work to pass leg­is­la­tion to elim­i­nate the death penal­ty at the fed­er­al lev­el, and incen­tivize states to fol­low the fed­er­al government’s example.”

Senator Richard Durbin (D – Illinois), the incom­ing chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Representatives Adriano Espaillat (D – New York) and Ayanna Pressley (D – Massachusetts), all of whom had intro­duced death-penal­ty abo­li­tion bills in pri­or ses­sions of Congress, announced that they were again advanc­ing bills to end the fed­er­al death penal­ty. Espaillat’s bill, the Federal Death Penalty Abolition Act of 2021, was intro­duced and referred to the House Judiciary Committee on January 4, 2021. Pressley’s repeal bill was intro­duced and referred to the House Judiciary Committee on January 11. Durbin, whose bill is co-spon­sored by every Democratic Senator who was a can­di­date for pres­i­dent in 2020, planned to rein­tro­duce the bill when the Senate con­vened for 2021. 

In an inter­view with NPR, Durbin called President Trump’s ​“mad dash” to exe­cute three pris­on­ers in the last week of his pres­i­den­cy and his exe­cu­tion of 13 fed­er­al pris­on­ers in six months ​“uncon­scionable.” Other Democratic law­mak­ers called for imme­di­ate action in the wake of the unprece­dent­ed fed­er­al exe­cu­tion spree to pre­vent sim­i­lar con­duct by a future pres­i­dent. ​“After four years or eight years or how­ev­er long President Joe Biden is in his seat, we don’t want the next per­son to come in and to be able to do what the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is cur­rent­ly doing,” Rep. Cori Bush (D – Missouri) said. A pres­i­dent has the pow­er to place a mora­to­ri­um on fed­er­al exe­cu­tions and com­mute fed­er­al death sen­tences, even with­out con­gres­sion­al action. Bush is one of 45 rep­re­sen­ta­tives who signed a let­ter to Biden ask­ing him to ​“end the use of the fed­er­al death penal­ty on [his] first day in office.” 

The law­mak­ers’ let­ter calls the death penal­ty ​“unjust, racist, and defec­tive.” ​“The bar­bar­ic pun­ish­ment denies the dig­ni­ty and human­i­ty of all peo­ple, but it is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly applied to peo­ple who are Black, Latinx, and poor,” they state. ​“While elim­i­nat­ing the death penal­ty will not fix our bro­ken crim­i­nal legal sys­tem, it is a sig­nif­i­cant step toward progress.” 

Pressley told NPR Biden should take imme­di­ate exec­u­tive action on the issue. ​“I’m call­ing on him to use that full author­i­ty with the stroke of a pen to halt all fed­er­al exe­cu­tions and save lives,” she said. ​“He should also require the Department of Justice to no longer seek the death penal­ty for future cas­es, and per­ma­nent­ly dis­man­tle the Terre Haute facil­i­ty where those fed­er­al exe­cu­tions take place.” 

Eight U.S. Senators have also asked the Inspector General to open an inves­ti­ga­tion into the Trump administration’s ​“fren­zied and unprece­dent­ed” spree of exe­cu­tions dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial tran­si­tion peri­od. The spree, the sen­a­tors said in a let­ter from Senator Elizabeth Warren (D – Massachusetts), co-signed by Senators Durbin, Edward Markey (D – Massachusetts), Amy Klobuchar (D – Minnesota), Cory Booker (D – New Jersey), Chris Van Hollen (D – Maryland), Bernie Sanders (I – Vermont), and Sherrod Brown (D – Ohio), ​“marks a break with both mod­ern his­to­ry and decades-old prac­tice.” ​“The rever­sal of long-stand­ing DOJ poli­cies and pro­to­cols,” the sen­a­tors say, ​“rais­es numer­ous con­cerns about the fair­ness and appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty by the Trump Administration.” They ask the Inspector General to review the pol­i­cy ratio­nale for the resump­tion of exe­cu­tions, whether there is a pat­tern of racial bias in the appli­ca­tion of the fed­er­al death penal­ty, whether steps were tak­en to ensure exe­cu­tions were con­duct­ed as humane­ly as pos­si­ble, what the costs of the fed­er­al exe­cu­tions were, and whether the admin­is­tra­tion took appro­pri­ate steps to pro­tect those involved from the spread of COVID-19.