Protesters denounce the resumption of federal executions in the United States, in Terre Haute, Indiana, July 13, 2020 (GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / SCOTT OLSON)
Human rights organizations are stepping up pressure on outgoing US President Joe Biden to commute federal death sentences before he leaves the White House, fearing a “wave of executions” under Donald Trump.
Federal executions are rare, the vast majority being carried out by the states, currently around twenty per year. Some 2,300 prisoners are on death row in the United States, including only 40 sentenced by federal justice.
The last federal executions date back to the end of the Trump presidency. After 17 years of interruption, 13 convicts were put to death between July 14, 2020 and January 16, 2021, four days before the inauguration of his Democratic successor Joe Biden.
In an open letter to Joe Biden on Monday, more than 130 organizations, including the powerful civil rights organization ACLU or Amnesty International United States, reminded him of his campaign commitment in 2020 against the death penalty and welcomed the moratorium on federal executions ordered in May 2021 by his administration.
They urge him to “consolidate his commitment to repairing injustices by exercising his right of pardon by commuting the sentences of those condemned on death row”.
“President Trump executed more people than the ten previous administrations combined,” these organizations point out, specifying that “more than half were of color: six black men and one Native American.”
“The only irreversible act you can take to prevent President-elect Trump from renewing his wave of executions, as he has expressed his intention, is to commute federal death sentences now,” according to the letter. “Time is running out,” these organizations insist.
The first Trump administration also amended federal execution procedures, “opening the door to more brutal methods, including the firing squad, electrocution and hypoxia by nitrogen inhalation, an experimental method and close to torture”, they also recall in a press release.
– “Racial factor” –
During his election campaign, the Republican candidate called for expanding the scope of the death penalty, particularly for immigrants convicted of murdering American citizens or drug and human traffickers.
“The death penalty is deeply rooted in a history of racialized violence. To this day, race is still the strongest determinant of who gets sentenced to death,” says Southern Poverty Law Center Director Margaret Huang.
She notes that nearly 40% of those sentenced to death by federal justice are black, while this community only represents 12% of the adult American population.
The vast majority of the 40 convicts concerned are common criminals, with the notable exception of perpetrators of racist or anti-Semitic murders or even Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the bombers of the attack against the Boston marathon on April 15 2013.
Pope Francis on Sunday urged the Catholic faithful to “pray for the inmates who are on death row in the United States” so that their sentences “may be commuted, changed.”
Calls to this effect, coming from religious or ethnic communities such as former prison or judicial officials, have been increasing for weeks for Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic whose presidential pardon was granted to his son, Hunter, on the 1st December sparked controversy.
Discussions on this subject are underway at the White House, reports the Washington Post in particular, citing sources close to the matter, according to which no decision has been taken.
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