Entries tagged with “President Joe Biden”
Issues
Jun 01, 2023
Uganda’s Controversial “Anti-Homosexuality Act” Includes Possibility of Death Sentence
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s (pictured) decision to sign the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 on May 29 has drawn widespread international criticism. The new law prescribes that people convicted of “aggravated homosexuality” may now be punished with a death sentence. Although same-sex relationships were already illegal in the country, the new law, which passed with the support of 341 out of 389 members of parliament, includes harsher punishments for “promoting” homosexuality and engaging in…
Issues
Mar 31, 2023
Bryan Stevenson Honored with the National Humanities Medal
Prominent death penalty attorney, founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson (pictured with President Joe Biden), was awarded the National Humanities Medal on March 21, 2023 at the White House. The president commended Stevenson for his long-term efforts to represent the impoverished and exonerate the wrongfully convicted, in addition to founding the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, both located in Montgomery, Alabama. The…
State & Federal Info
Federal Death Penalty
,Mar 13, 2023
Federal Jury Returns a Life Verdict in New York for Sayfullo Saipov
On March 13, 2023, a jury in the federal death penalty prosecution of Sayfullo Saipov in New York City concluded its deliberations without coming to a unanimous decision regarding sentencing. As a result, Saipov will be sentenced to life in prison without parole. On January 26, the jury had unanimously found the defendant guilty of murdering eight people in 2017 by deliberately ramming a truck onto a crowded Manhattan bike path. Neither Saipov nor his attorneys contested his involvement in the…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 11, 2022
In New Report, Amnesty International Urges President Biden to End the Federal Death Penalty and Commute All Federal Death Sentences
A new report by the human rights organization Amnesty International urges President Joe Biden to act upon his campaign pledge to work to abolish the death penalty by exercising his constitutional authority to commute the sentences of all federal death row prisoners. The report, titled The Power of Example: Whither the Biden Death Penalty Promise?, was released on June 27, 2022, just two days before the 50th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia, which…
Issues
Mar 31, 2022
More Than a Century After it Was First Proposed, President Biden Signs Historic Law Making Lynching a Federal Crime
After more than a century of efforts by civil rights leaders to make lynching a federal crime, President Joe Biden on March 29, 2022 signed into law historic anti-lynching legislation. Flanked by the bill’s sponsors, Vice President Kamala Harris, and family members of the late Ida B. Wells and Emmett Till in a ceremony on the White House lawn, Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act (pictured), officially denominating lynching a federal hate crime. The law allows for crimes — such as…
Issues
Victims' Families
,Federal Death Penalty
,Mar 07, 2022
Supreme Court Overturns Appeals Court Decision Reversing Death Sentence in Boston Marathon Bombing
The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned a federal appeals court decision that had reversed the death sentences imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured more than 250 others. In a 6 – 3 decision authored by Justice Clarence Thomas and joined by all members of the Court’s conservative supermajority, the justices reinstated Tsarnaev’s death sentences and remanded the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit to…
Research
Feb 28, 2022
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Nominated to U.S. Supreme Court
President Joe Biden has nominated federal appeals court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (pictured) to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice, fulfilling his campaign pledge to select an African American woman for the Court. If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court. Announcing Jackson’s nomination on February 25, 2022, President Biden said, “For too long, our government, our courts haven’t looked like America. I believe it’s time that we have a…
State & Federal Info
Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 13, 2021
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…
Research
Federal Death Penalty
,Jun 16, 2021
White House Reasserts Opposition to Death Penalty, Stresses Independence of Justice Department as DOJ Asks Supreme Court to Reinstate Death Sentence in Boston Marathon Bombing
As the Department of Justice filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court seeking reinstatement of the death sentence imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston Marathon bombing, the White House press office issued a statement stressing the independence of the Department over the cases it is pursuing and asserting that President Joe Biden has not backed away from his campaign promise to work to end the federal death penalty. On June 14, 2021, Department of Justice lawyers filed the government’s…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Mar 25, 2021
UN Human Rights Experts Urge U.S. Federal Government to Take Steps to End the Death Penalty
Describing capital punishment as an “inherently flawed” and “abhorrent practice,” United Nations human rights experts have called on President Joe Biden to take action to end the death penalty in the U.S. In a statement issued from the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland on March 11, 2021, the rights experts said the death penalty “serves no deterrent value and cannot be reconciled with the right to life.” A press release from the High Commissioner’s…
State & Federal Info
Federal Death Penalty
,Feb 09, 2021
More Than 80 Civil Rights and Advocacy Organizations Urge President Biden to End Federal Executions
A coalition of 82 civil rights and advocacy organizations have called on President Joe Biden to honor his campaign promise of “ensuring equality, equity, and justice in our criminal legal system” by taking executive action to end federal executions. The groups, led by The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, asked Biden to commute the sentences of everyone on federal death row, dismantle the federal death chamber, rescind the federal execution protocol and other guidelines issued by…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 28, 2021
Three Cases Illustrate Federal Death Penalty in Flux as Biden Team Takes Reins at DOJ
Developments in three federal capital cases at the transition between presidential administrations illustrate the choices that the new Biden Department of Justice will face in formulating its policy on the federal death penalty. The cases, each at a critical turning point in determining whether to move forward in a potentially capital prosecution, will shed light on the strength of the DOJ leadership’s commitment to implementing the president’s pledge to end the federal death penalty. On…
Research
Federal Death Penalty
,Jan 20, 2021
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…