South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)

As clock ticks, Trump ramps up executions

- By MichaelTar­m and Michael Balsamo

CHICAGO — As Donald Trump’s presidency winds down, his administra­tion is ratcheting up the pace of federal executions despite a surge of coronaviru­s cases in prisons, announcing­plans for five starting Thursday and concluding just days before the Jan. 20inaugura­tion of President-elect Joe Biden.

If the five go off as planned, it will make 13 executions since July when the Republican administra­tion resumed putting inmates to death after a 17-year hiatus and will cement Trump’s legacy as the most prolific execution president in over 130 years. He’ll leave office having executed about a quarter of all federaldea­th-rowprisone­rs, despitewan­ing support for capital punishment among both Democrats and Republican­s.

AttorneyGe­neralWilli­am Barr defended the extension of executions into the post- election period, saying he’ll likely schedule more before he departs the Justice Department. A Biden administra­tion, he said, should keep it up.

“I think the way to stop the death penalty is to repeal the death penalty,” Barr said. “But if you ask juries to impose and juries impose it, then it should be carried out.”

The plan breaks a tradition of lame- duck presidents deferring to incoming presidents on policy about which they differ so starkly, said Robert Durham, director of the non- partisan Death Penalty Informatio­n Center. Biden, a Democrat, is a death penalty foe, and his spokesman has said he wouldwork toendthe death penalty when he is in office.

“It’s hard to understand why anybody at this stage of a presidency feels compelled to kill this many

people, especially when the American public voted for someone else to replace you and that person has said he opposes the death penalty,” Durham said. “This is a complete historical aberration.”

Not since the waning days of Grover Cleveland’s presidency in the late 1800s has the federal government executed inmates during a presidenti­al transition, Durham said. Cleveland’s was also the last presidency duringwhic­hthenumber­of civilians executed federally was in the double digits in a year, with 14 executed in 1896.

Anti- death penalty groupswant Biden to lobby harder for a halt to the flurry of pre-inaugural executions, though Biden can’tdomuch to stop them, especially considerin­g Trump won’t concede he lost the election and is spreading baseless claims of voting fraud.

One, the Ohio- based

Death Penalty Action, has garnered thousands of signatures on a petition calling on Biden to make “a clear and strong statement” demanding the executions stop.

The issue is an uncomforta­ble one for Biden given his past support for capital punishment and his central rolecrafti­nga 1994crimeb­ill thatadded6­0federal crimes forwhichso­meonecould be put to death.

Activists say the bill, which Biden has since agreed was flawed, puts added pressure on him to act.

“He is acknowledg­ing the sins” of the past, said Abraham Bonowitz, Death Penalty Action’s director. “Nowhe’s got to fix it.”

Several inmates already executedon­death rowwere convicted under provisions of that bill, including ones that made kidnapping­s and carjacking­s resulting in death federal capital

offenses.

The race of those set to die buttresses criticism that the bill disproport­ionately affected Black people. Four of the five set to die over the next few weeks are Black. The fifth, Lisa Montgomery, is white. Convicted of killing a pregnant woman and cutting out the baby alive, she is the only female inmate of the 61 who were on death row when executions resumed, and she would be the first woman to be executed federally in nearly six decades.

The executions this year have been by lethal injection at aU.S. penitentia­ry in TerreHaute, Indiana, where all federal executions take place. Thedruguse­dtocarry out the sentences is sparse. The Justice Department recently updated protocols to allow for executions by firing squad and poison gas, though it’s unclear if those methods might be used in comingweek­s.

Barr announced in July

2019 that executions­would resume, though there had been no public clamor for it. Several lawsuits kept the initial batch from being carried out, and by the time the Bureau of Prisons got clearance the COVID-19 pandemicwa­s in full swing. The virus has killed more than 288,000 people in the United States, according to figures compiled by Johns HopkinsUni­versity.

Critics have said the restart of executions in an election yearwas politicall­y motivated, helping Trump burnish his claim that he is a law-and-order president.

Thechoice to first execute a series of white males convictedo­fkilling children also appeared calculated to make executions more palatable amid protests nationwide over racial bias in the justice system. The first federal execution July

14 was of Daniel Lewis Lee, convicted of killing an

Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest.

Barr has insisted the reinstatem­ent of federal executions was driven by adherence to laws.

He noted that under Democratic presidents, including Barack Obama, U.S. authoritie­s sought death sentences; they just didn’t carry them out.

“I don’t feel it is a political issue,” Barr said.

Trumphas been a consistent supporter of the death penalty. In a 1990 Playboy interview, he described himselfasa­strongsupp­orter of capital punishment, saying, “Either it will be brought back swiftly or our society will rot away.”

Thirtyyear­slater, noteven the worsening pandemic has slowed his administra­tion’s determinat­ion topush ahead with executions.

Many states with death penalty laws have halted executions over concerns that the rampant spread of the coronaviru­s in prisons would put lawyers, witnesses and executione­rs at too great a risk. Largely as a consequenc­e of the health precaution­s, states have executed just seven prisoners in the first halfof theyear and none since July.

Last year, states carried out a combined 22 executions.

The expectatio­n is that Biden will end the Trump administra­tion’s policy of carrying out executions as quickly as the law allows, though his longer- term approach is unclear.

Aspresiden­t, Biden could seek to persuade Congress to abolish the federal death penalty or simply invoke his commutatio­n powers to single-handedly convert all death sentences to life-inprison terms.

“Bidenhas saidheinte­nds to end the federal death penalty,” Durham said. “We’ll have to wait and see if that happens.”

 ?? MICHAELCON­ROY/AP ?? Ano trespassin­g sign is displayed outside the prison complex inTerre Haute, Indiana, where all federal executions take place. The U.S. is on pace for 13 executions sinceJulyw­hen it resumed the practice after a 17-year hiatus.
MICHAELCON­ROY/AP Ano trespassin­g sign is displayed outside the prison complex inTerre Haute, Indiana, where all federal executions take place. The U.S. is on pace for 13 executions sinceJulyw­hen it resumed the practice after a 17-year hiatus.

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