Feds take lead in executing inmates

CHICAGO — For the f irst time, the U. S. government has carried out more executions in a year than all of the states that still put inmates to death, according to an annual report released Wednesday.

President Trump oversaw a resumption of federal executions this year after a 17- year pause, carrying out 10. That’s the highest yearly total since the 1800s, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The dwindling numbers of states that use capital punishment put seven inmates to death in 2020 before some halted executions until the COVID- 19 pandemic ends. States carried out 22 executions in 2019.

“We have never seen it before.... And it may be a long time before we ever see it happen again,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the center.

The Washington- based center does not take sides on the death penalty, he has said, but has criticized how states and the federal government carry it out, highlighting problems like racial bias and secrecy.

In July, U. S. prison officials carried out their f irst execution since 2003, putting Daniel Lewis Lee to death for killing an Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a whites- only nation in the Pacific Northwest.

Trump plans three more executions before the Jan. 20 inauguration of Presidentelect Joe Biden, who opposes the death penalty.

One of those to be executed is Lisa Montgomery, convicted of strangling a pregnant woman in 2004 and cutting the fetus out. If she is put to death Jan. 12 as planned, she will be the first woman executed by the federal government in some six decades.

Texas accounted for three of the seven state executions in 2020; Alabama, Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee each had one, the report says.

The report cited a 2020 Gallup poll in which 43% of respondents said they oppose the death penalty — the highest level Gallup has found since 1966. Dunham says that most Americans have “nuanced views” and that many who support the death penalty in theory don’t like it in practice.

The report said the trend of states striking death- penalty statutes or observing informal moratoriums helps explain their lower numbers this year; 34 states have abolished the death penalty or not carried out executions in a decade or more.