Editorial Boards Say Moratorium to Study Execution Practices is Not Enough, Biden Should Commute Federal Death Row

Major U.S. edi­to­r­i­al writ­ers have crit­i­cized the Biden administration’s June 30, 2021 announce­ment of a tem­po­rary mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions while the Department of Justice reviews Trump admin­is­tra­tion changes to U.S. exe­cu­tion prac­tices, say­ing that the pause for a lim­it­ed pol­i­cy review fails to ful­fill the President’s cam­paign pledge to work to end the fed­er­al death penalty. 

In edi­to­ri­als between July 5 and July 8, the Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and CNHI Pulitzer Prize-win­ning edi­to­ri­al­ist Jeff Gerritt, now edi­tor of the Sharon Herald in Pennsylvania, say a review of reg­u­la­tions and poli­cies imple­ment­ed as part of the Trump administration’s unprece­dent­ed spree of 13 fed­er­al civil­ian exe­cu­tions in just over six months is not enough. To uphold Biden’s pledge, they write, the admin­is­tra­tion should halt cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions and com­mute the sen­tences of all of the pris­on­ers on fed­er­al death row. 

In a July 6 edi­to­r­i­al reprint­ed in numer­ous papers across the coun­try, the Post-Dispatch said that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s fed­er­al exe­cu­tion mora­to­ri­um ​“should be the first step toward full death-penal­ty abo­li­tion.” The edi­to­r­i­al board wrote that ​“tem­porar­i­ly halt­ing all pend­ing fed­er­al exe­cu­tions is a nec­es­sary start, but Biden should move quick­ly beyond it: He should com­mute all cur­rent and future fed­er­al death sen­tences on his watch to life in prison with­out parole. He should push for leg­is­la­tion abol­ish­ing the fed­er­al death penal­ty going for­ward. And he should use the fed­er­al pow­er of the purse to incen­tivize state gov­ern­ments to follow suit.”

The Washington Post edi­to­r­i­al board wrote on July 5, that ​“Attorney General Merrick Garland has put the death penal­ty on pause. But President Biden has pledged to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. So why just a pause?” Saying “[a] pause on the death penal­ty isn’t enough,” the Post wrote: ​“Mr. Biden was elect­ed after clear­ly stat­ing his views to the American peo­ple, and the law gives him the pow­er to com­mute sen­tences to life with­out pro­ba­tion or parole. While Mr. Biden should work with Congress to erad­i­cate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fed­er­al exe­cu­tions going for­ward, he can erad­i­cate fed­er­al exe­cu­tions for those liv­ing today with the sen­tence loom­ing over them. The American peo­ple gave him a man­date to get out of the busi­ness of state-spon­sored killing — not mere­ly to press the pause button.”

In his edi­to­r­i­al in the Sharon Herald, also dis­trib­uted as a col­umn across the CNHI net­work of 89 local news out­lets, Gerritt wrote: ​“Given the death penalty’s sys­temic prob­lems, the review [of exe­cu­tion poli­cies] is irrel­e­vant. It’s time to end gov­ern­ment-spon­sored killing, not debate whether lethal injec­tion, elec­tro­cu­tion, gas, or the fir­ing squad is more cruel.”

While Biden would have to obtain the coop­er­a­tion of a ​“hyper-par­ti­san and divid­ed Congress” to repeal cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Gerritt wrote, he does not need con­gres­sion­al assis­tance to com­mute the sen­tences of all fed­er­al death row pris­on­ers. ​“Such deci­sive action would, in effect, end the fed­er­al death penal­ty for a gen­er­a­tion, and send an unequiv­o­cal mes­sage to the 27 states with death penal­ty laws … that this ves­tige of bar­barism should end.”

The Post edi­to­r­i­al joined with Gerritt in ques­tion­ing the DOJ’s lim­it­ed review of the Trump exe­cu­tion poli­cies, writ­ing, ​“Certainly, flawed and painful modes of exe­cu­tion make a cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment cru­eller still. But that should be beside the point. Killing by gov­ern­ment is immoral, inef­fec­tive and unpop­u­lar. It also has been applied in a racist man­ner, with respect to the race of both vic­tims and perpetrators.” 

The Post-Dispatch cit­ed ​“the vir­tu­al inevitabil­i­ty” of exe­cut­ing the inno­cent and ​“the shift in pub­lic opin­ion away from use of the ulti­mate pun­ish­ment” as rea­sons why the cur­rent mora­to­ri­um should be just a first step toward full death-penal­ty abo­li­tion. It sharply cri­tiqued Trump for ​“shame­less­ly politi­ciz­ing” cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and car­ry­ing out an his­tor­i­cal­ly anom­alous 13 fed­er­al exe­cu­tions, ​“more than in any sim­i­lar span of time since the late 1800s.” The Post-Dispatch was espe­cial­ly crit­i­cal of the six exe­cu­tions ​“con­duct­ed after Trump lost reelec­tion to an oppo­nent who had vowed to cease all exe­cu­tions, leav­ing the unseem­ly impres­sion Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion was try­ing to get as much killing done as pos­si­ble before his suc­ces­sor could stop it.”

“Most nations in the advanced world long ago end­ed the bar­bar­ic prac­tice of killing their own cit­i­zens as pun­ish­ment for crimes,” the Post-Dispatch edi­to­r­i­al board wrote. ​“On this most cen­tral of jus­tice issues, it’s time for America to final­ly join the modern world.”