Former State and Federal Judges, Prosecutors, and Law Enforcement Officials and Families of Murder Victims Urge Federal Government to Call Off Executions

Hundreds of for­mer state and fed­er­al judges, pros­e­cu­tors, law enforce­ment and cor­rec­tions offi­cials, and fam­i­ly mem­bers of homi­cide vic­tims have signed on to a series of let­ters urg­ing the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to halt the five fed­er­al exe­cu­tions sched­uled for December 2019 and January 2020. In four sep­a­rate let­ters addressed to President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr, 175 fam­i­ly mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims, 65 for­mer state and fed­er­al judges, 59 cur­rent and for­mer state and fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors and law enforce­ment offi­cials, and 26 for­mer cor­rec­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als offered diverse per­spec­tives on why the sched­uled exe­cu­tions should not take place.

Family mem­bers of mur­der vic­tims were the largest group to urge the admin­is­tra­tion to call off the exe­cu­tions. When Attorney General Barr announced on July 25 that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment would resume exe­cu­tions after a 16-year hia­tus, he attempt­ed to jus­ti­fy that deci­sion as being a ser­vice to vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. Barr said at the time, ​“we owe it to the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies to car­ry for­ward the sen­tence imposed by our justice system.”

The 175 vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers dis­agreed. Calling for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, they wrote: ​“The death penal­ty does not pre­vent vio­lence. It does not solve crime. It does not pro­vide ser­vices for fam­i­lies like ours. It does not help solve the over 250,000 homi­cide cold cas­es in the United States. It exac­er­bates the trau­ma of los­ing a loved one and cre­ates yet anoth­er griev­ing fam­i­ly. It also wastes many mil­lions of dol­lars that could be bet­ter invest­ed in pro­grams that actu­al­ly reduce crime and vio­lence and that address the needs of fam­i­lies like ours.”

The oth­er groups did not advo­cate death-penal­ty abo­li­tion, but crit­i­cized sys­temic flaws in the fed­er­al death penal­ty as cur­rent­ly admin­is­tered and said the exe­cu­tions should be halt­ed. The let­ter from fed­er­al and state judges argued that ​“there are too many prob­lems with the fed­er­al death penal­ty sys­tem, and too many unan­swered ques­tions about the government’s new­ly announced exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dure, to allow exe­cu­tions to pro­ceed.” The judges wrote that, from their expe­ri­ence on the bench, “[r]acial bias, geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties, and defi­cient coun­sel played out­sized roles in the deci­sions to seek and impose the death penalty.”

The let­ter from law enforce­ment offi­cials and pros­e­cu­tors — signed by police chiefs, for­mer state attor­neys gen­er­al, for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors, and cur­rent and for­mer dis­trict attor­neys — said “[t]he fed­er­al death penal­ty sys­tem is marked by many of the same trou­bling flaws found in the state death penal­ty sys­tems,” list­ing the same con­cerns as the judges, as well as the ​“alarm­ing fre­quen­cy” of wrongful convictions.

The cor­rec­tions offi­cials spoke direct­ly to the effect of exe­cu­tions on prison per­son­nel who must car­ry them out. ​“The psy­cho­log­i­cal toll of car­ry­ing out a death sen­tence is well-doc­u­ment­ed,” they wrote. ​“Those of us who have par­tic­i­pat­ed in exe­cu­tions have expe­ri­enced the trau­ma first-hand, while oth­ers of us have seen the toll it has tak­en on col­leagues. We believe the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is com­pound­ing the risk to cor­rec­tions staff by sched­ul­ing these exe­cu­tions so close togeth­er.” Their let­ter empha­sized the risk pre­sent­ed by the new pro­to­col, the rushed time­line of exe­cu­tions, and staffing short­ages in the fed­er­al Bureau of Prisons. ​“Our col­leagues at the Bureau are pro­fes­sion­als, but it is incum­bent on lead­ers to avoid putting pub­lic ser­vants in posi­tions where they face a real risk of harm or error. We hope you will recon­sid­er the sched­uled exe­cu­tions to ensure the safe­ty and well­be­ing of fed­er­al corrections officers.”

The U.S. gov­ern­ment has sched­uled five exe­cu­tions to take place over a five-week peri­od between December 9, 2019 and January 15, 2020, includ­ing three that were set for the five-day peri­od from December 9 – December 13. In a sep­a­rate request, Earlene Peterson has asked President Trump to com­mute the death sen­tence of Daniel Lewis Lee, who is sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed December 9 for the mur­ders of Peterson’s daugh­ter, son-in-law, and grand­daugh­ter. A fed­er­al court has stayed the December 11 exe­cu­tion of Lezmond Mitchell.

The vic­tims’ fam­i­ly let­ter includ­ed indi­vid­u­als in high-pro­file cas­es — such as Bud Welch, whose daugh­ter, Julie, was killed in the Oklahoma City bomb­ing, and sev­er­al fam­i­ly mem­bers of peo­ple killed in the 9/​11 ter­ror­ist attacks — as well as numer­ous fam­i­ly mem­bers of vic­tims in cas­es in which pros­e­cu­tors did not seek the death penal­ty or in which the mur­der remains unsolved. The let­ter empha­sizes that “[t]he cur­rent sys­tem divides mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies by cher­ry-pick­ing cas­es to receive the dis­pro­por­tion­ate atten­tion and resources of a cap­i­tal tri­al.” This, it says, ​“sends the hurt­ful mes­sage that some mur­ders are worse than oth­ers and some vic­tims mat­ter more than oth­ers, even while most of us nev­er receive the ser­vices we need in the wake of violence.” 

Both the judges and the pros­e­cu­tors urged the Attorney General to under­take a sys­temic review of the fed­er­al death penal­ty to redress sys­temic arbi­trari­ness in its imple­men­ta­tion. The judges wrote, ​“just as only 2% of America’s coun­ties pro­duce a major­i­ty of state death sen­tences, we see the same geo­graph­ic con­cen­tra­tion in the fed­er­al sys­tem. Only three states – Texas, Missouri, and Virginia – account for near­ly half of all cur­rent fed­er­al death sen­tences. And as America grap­ples with a reck­on­ing on racial injus­tice, we see that peo­ple of col­or make up 55% of those on fed­er­al death row.” They called the racial dis­par­i­ty ​“espe­cial­ly stark in the states with the most fed­er­al death sentences.”

In addi­tion to its racial dis­par­i­ties, the judges wrote that, “[o]verwhelmingly,” those sen­tenced to death in the fed­er­al sys­tem ​“are poor, suf­fer from men­tal ill­ness, and/​or were sub­ject­ed to relent­less trau­ma in their devel­op­men­tal years. In oth­er words, the fed­er­al death penal­ty is not imposed on ​‘the worst of the worst.’ Instead, just as in the states, it is applied in a biased man­ner against the most vulnerable populations.”

The pros­e­cu­tors raised sim­i­lar con­cerns and also ques­tioned the deci­sion to divert lim­it­ed fed­er­al law enforce­ment resources to cost­ly cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions and appeals. ​“Death penal­ty cas­es are extreme­ly expen­sive,” they wrote, ​“requir­ing many more human and finan­cial resources than cas­es where the death penal­ty is not pur­sued. There are rea­son­able ques­tions about whether these resources could be bet­ter used on oth­er pub­lic safe­ty pri­or­i­ties, such as ensur­ing that law enforce­ment offi­cers through­out the coun­try have access to need­ed equip­ment and tech­nol­o­gy, and expand­ing units devot­ed to resolv­ing cold cases.”

They pros­e­cu­tors said they ​“are deeply con­cerned that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment plans to pro­ceed with exe­cu­tions despite seri­ous ques­tions about the fair­ness and reli­a­bil­i­ty of the sys­tem that con­demned” the pris­on­ers slat­ed to die. They wrote, “[w]e urge you to pre­vent this injus­tice by with­draw­ing the sched­uled exe­cu­tion dates, and order­ing that no fed­er­al exe­cu­tions occur until a com­pre­hen­sive review of the sys­tem can be completed.”