Senators, Members of Congress Urge Attorney General to Stop Seeking Death Sentences

Seventeen U.S. Senators and four Members of Congress who are lead­ing the effort to abol­ish the fed­er­al death penal­ty have called on U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland (pic­tured) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to stop seek­ing the death penal­ty in pend­ing and future fed­er­al murder trials. 

In sep­a­rate let­ters sent to Garland on August 9, 2021, the chairs of both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, along with leg­isla­tive spon­sors of death-penal­ty repeal bills and numer­ous oth­er Democratic leg­isla­tive col­leagues, urged the Attorney General to go beyond the lim­it­ed freeze on exe­cu­tions he announced on July 1, 2021 by for­mal­ly end­ing fed­er­al death penalty prosecutions.

“By refus­ing to seek the death penal­ty and add more pris­on­ers to death row,” the Senate let­ter said, ​“you can reduce the risk that a future admin­is­tra­tion will car­ry out fed­er­al exe­cu­tions” at the rate they were con­duct­ed dur­ing the Trump administration’s unprece­dent­ed exe­cu­tion spree in his final six months in office. Calling cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ​“a deeply flawed and inhu­mane prac­tice,” the House let­ter said, ​“it is incum­bent on the Department of Justice to halt all par­tic­i­pa­tion in the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem and we urge the Department of Justice to pro­hib­it attor­neys from seek­ing the death penalty.”

The Senate let­ter was signed by 17 U.S. Senators, led by Judiciary Committee Chair Richard Durbin (D – Illinois), Judiciary Committee mem­bers Patrick Leahy (D – Vermont) and Cory Booker (D – New Jersey), and for­mer Democratic pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates Bernie Sanders (I – Vermont), Amy Klobuchar (D – Minnesota), and Elizabeth Warren (D – Massachusetts). Eleven oth­er Democratic U.S. Senators also signed.

The House of Representatives let­ter was signed by Representatives Adriano Espaillat (D – New York) and Ayanna Pressley (D – Massachusetts), who have both spon­sored bills to abol­ish the fed­er­al death penal­ty, along with House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D – New York) and Judiciary Committee mem­ber Cori Bush (D – Missouri).

The House Letter

The House mem­bers com­mend­ed Garland for the Department of Justice’s recog­ni­tion of ​“the sub­stan­tive and pro­ce­dur­al defects of the death penal­ty,” call­ing the July 1 mora­to­ri­um on fed­er­al exe­cu­tions ​“a cru­cial first step to end­ing the death penal­ty once and for all in the United States.” However, the Representatives wrote, ​“this action alone is insuf­fi­cient. … Capital pun­ish­ment is a deeply flawed and inhu­mane prac­tice that the Department of Justice can and must discontinue.”

The House let­ter not­ed the ​“known defi­cien­cies” in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment that Garland had ref­er­enced in his July 1 mem­o­ran­dum, “‘includ­ing arbi­trari­ness in its appli­ca­tion, dis­parate impact on peo­ple of col­or, and the trou­bling num­ber of exon­er­a­tions’” in cap­i­tal cas­es. “[R]acism,” they wrote, is inex­tri­ca­bly embed­ded in the his­to­ry and appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty, result­ing in the dis­pro­por­tion­ate killing of Black peo­ple” and of defen­dants con­vict­ed of killing white vic­tims. Those who are con­vict­ed of killing white vic­tims are ​“exe­cut­ed at a rate 17 times greater than those con­vict­ed of killing Black vic­tims,” the Representatives wrote.

The Representatives called ​“the injus­tices of state-sanc­tioned mur­der … unam­bigu­ous,” and urged the Biden Administration to ​“ful­fill its cam­paign promise and take bold action to abol­ish the death penal­ty and cre­ate a more just legal sys­tem. … There are no pro­ce­dur­al reforms that will elim­i­nate the arbi­trari­ness, anti-Blackness, or imper­fect­ness of the death penal­ty. This can only be accom­plished by putting an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment,” they wrote. ​“Without such bold and defin­i­tive action, future admin­is­tra­tions may reverse [the Garland mora­to­ri­um] and cru­el­ly exe­cute Americans with­out any recourse.”

The Senate Letter

The Senators com­mend­ed Garland for DOJ’s ​“recent deci­sions to impose a mora­to­ri­um on fed­er­al exe­cu­tions pend­ing a review of death penal­ty poli­cies and pro­ce­dures and to with­draw sev­er­al notices of intent to seek the death penal­ty” that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion had autho­rized. Characterizing these actions as ​“impor­tant steps toward end­ing the injus­tice of the death penal­ty,” the Senators urged Garland ​“to take the addi­tion­al steps of with­draw­ing all pend­ing death notices, and autho­riz­ing no new death notices, while your review proceeds.” 

Echoing Garland’s July 1 mem­o­ran­dum, the Senators expressed ​“seri­ous con­cerns about arbi­trari­ness in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty, its dis­parate impact on peo­ple of col­or, and the alarm­ing num­ber of exon­er­a­tions in cap­i­tal cas­es.” Those con­cerns, they wrote, sup­port halt­ing the death penal­ty entire­ly dur­ing the review process, ​“includ­ing pro­hibit­ing fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors from seek­ing the death penal­ty,” rather than sim­ply review­ing ​“the pro­ce­dures for car­ry­ing out the death penalty.”

The Senators not­ed that Vice President Kamala Harris had been one of the orig­i­nal cospon­sors of the Senate bill to abol­ish the fed­er­al death penal­ty, and expressed their hope that the Administration would sup­port the abo­li­tion bill. “[B]ut while the Administration reviews cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment pol­i­cy,” they sug­gest­ed to Garland, ​“you can take an impor­tant step toward the goal of elim­i­nat­ing the fed­er­al death penalty.”

The let­ters came a week after a New York Times report that the Justice Department had qui­et­ly with­drawn Trump admin­is­tra­tion notices of intent to seek the death penal­ty in sev­en cas­es. However, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in sev­er­al oth­er cas­es indi­cat­ed that the mora­to­ri­um announce­ment had not changed the way in which they were going about deter­min­ing whether to seek the death penalty.