Prosecutors Call for Ending Federal Executions

Saying ​“our nation’s long exper­i­ment with the death penal­ty has failed,” a coali­tion of near­ly 100 crim­i­nal jus­tice offi­cials is call­ing on the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to halt the five exe­cu­tions cur­rent­ly sched­uled for December 2020 and January 2021 and to end its use of the death penalty.

In a joint state­ment released on December 3, 2020, 95 cur­rent and for­mer pros­e­cu­tors, U.S. Attorneys, police chiefs, and sher­iffs wrote that the U.S. death penal­ty process ​“is bro­ken, impli­cates sys­temic racism and con­sti­tu­tion­al con­cerns, and dis­tin­guish­es our coun­try from many oth­er demo­c­ra­t­ic nations in the world.” The jus­tice offi­cials urged the gov­ern­ment to grant clemen­cy to the four men and one woman who the Trump admin­is­tra­tion seeks to exe­cute dur­ing the tran­si­tion peri­od before Joe Biden is inau­gu­rat­ed as President on January 20, 2021.

“This President can set an exam­ple by show­ing mer­cy and con­vert­ing the pend­ing death sen­tences into sen­tences of life in prison with­out the oppor­tu­ni­ty for parole,” the state­ment says. ​“Granting clemen­cy will not only help restore pub­lic trust in the legal sys­tem, but will also show the pub­lic that com­pas­sion is nev­er the wrong choice.”

Signatories to the state­ment include 60 cur­rent elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors, includ­ing many from for­mer­ly high-use death penal­ty juris­dic­tions, such as Philadelphia, Dallas, and St. Louis. ​“Many have tried for over forty years to make America’s death penal­ty sys­tem just,” they wrote. ​“Yet the real­i­ty is that our nation’s use of this sanc­tion can­not be repaired, and it should be ended.”

The joint state­ment was spear­head­ed by the orga­ni­za­tion, Fair and Just Prosecution, which describes itself as ​“a nation­al net­work of elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors work­ing towards com­mon-sense, com­pas­sion­ate crim­i­nal jus­tice reforms.” Miriam Krinsky, the organization’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, crit­i­cized the death penal­ty as ​“a cru­el, inef­fec­tive, unjust pun­ish­ment. It is ripe with racial bias, is often used against the most vul­ner­a­ble among us, leaves us no chance to cor­rect wrong­ful con­vic­tions, and does noth­ing to improve pub­lic safe­ty,” she said. ​“Rushing to exe­cute peo­ple in the midst of a pres­i­den­tial tran­si­tion and at a time when COVID-19 is surg­ing would seri­ous­ly under­mine the public’s already-dam­aged trust in the jus­tice sys­tem, and thus erode public safety.” 

The statement’s sign­ers argue that inequitable appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty hurts pub­lic safe­ty. ​“Public safe­ty is inex­tri­ca­bly tied to the community’s trust in the fair­ness and moral author­i­ty of our jus­tice sys­tem,” it says. Jim Bueerman, for­mer Chief of Police of Redlands, California and for­mer President of the National Police Foundation, said that the arbi­trary and ​“often racial­ly-biased … use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment under­mines efforts to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties by fur­ther erod­ing the frag­ile bonds of trust between law enforce­ment and the peo­ple we serve.” When that trust is under­mined, the state­ment ways, “[o]ur jobs get hard­er, as do the jobs of oth­ers who seek to keep our communities safe.”

The state­ment takes direct aim at the myth that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is reserved for ​“the worst of the worst” cas­es. ​“We also now know that we have not exe­cut­ed the worst of the worst, but often instead put to death the unluck­i­est of the unlucky – the impov­er­ished, the poor­ly rep­re­sent­ed, and the most bro­ken. Time and again,” it states, ​“we have exe­cut­ed indi­vid­u­als with long his­to­ries of debil­i­tat­ing men­tal ill­ness, child­hoods marred by unspeak­able phys­i­cal and men­tal abuse, and intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties that have pre­vent­ed them from lead­ing inde­pen­dent adult lives.” 

The five pris­on­ers sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed before the end of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion reflect that real­i­ty, the jus­tice offi­cials say. Brandon Bernard was just 18 when he was an accom­plice in the crime for which he was sen­tenced to death. Alfred Bourgeois and Corey Johnson both have IQ scores in the clin­i­cal­ly accept­ed range for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Lisa Montgomery was the vic­tim of extra­or­di­nary phys­i­cal and sex­u­al abuse and is seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill. Dustin Higgs did not kill any­one but was sen­tenced to death while his more cul­pa­ble co-defen­dant received a life sentence.

The state­ment also ques­tions the pro­pri­ety of car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions in the midst of a pan­dem­ic. ​“At a time when the coun­try is strug­gling through a dead­ly pan­dem­ic, spend­ing scarce resources to car­ry out fed­er­al exe­cu­tions and forc­ing defense lawyers to risk their lives to defend clients on death row is sim­ply unthink­able,” it says.