
The power of U.S. presidents to issue pardons grabbed headlines after President Biden pardoned his son Hunter for any past or future crimes. As Biden’s presidency is drawing to a close, he also commuted the sentences of 1,500 individuals and pardoned 39 people convicted of non-violent crimes — the biggest single-day act of clemency in modern history. Supporters of 80-year-old indigenous rights activist Leonard Peltier — the longest-serving political prisoner in America — are again urging Biden to release him after almost 50 years in prison.
At the same time, 130 civil and human rights groups, faith organizations and others — including Pope Francis — are calling on Biden to commute the death sentences of 40 men now on federal death row to life in prison without the possibility of release.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. She warns that President-elect Trump has promised to restart and accelerate federal executions once he takes office in January. In the last months of his first term, Trump signed off on the executions of 13 individuals.
ROBIN MAHER: During the Trump era, there was one woman on the federal death row and she was executed, so there are only men there now. Between July 2020 and January 2021 – so literally days before President Biden took office – there was a spree of 13 executions during that very short time, and keep in mind, that was during a worldwide pandemic, so it was quite a thing to see.
MELINDA TUHUS: President Biden ran on opposition to the death penalty. Why hasn’t he done this already? What do you think is going on there?
ROBIN MAHER: Well, I don’t like to speculate. What I can say is that President Biden did make a very firm promise to the American people that he recognized there were some serious issues with the use of the federal death penalty. And he said he was going to work to abolish the federal death penalty.
He couldn’t do that on his own; he needed Congress to do that. And, so, for whatever reasons, that did not happen. But what he did do, right away, is appoint an attorney general at the Department of Justice – Merrick Garland – who immediately paused federal executions. He also ordered an internal review of execution policies in the DOJ Justice Manual, and he also asked his staff, high-ranking officials at the DOJ, to study the execution protocol and the execution regulations.
And when he made that order, he also acknowledged these long-standing concerns that everyone is now talking about again: those problems we’ve seen with arbitrariness in the use of the federal death penalty, and especially the unmistakable racial bias that we’ve seen among the people who are sentenced to death on the federal row. So, he understands these issues exist. He’s acknowledged them, he’s asked his staff to investigate them, and we have not understood what conclusions they’ve reached quite yet. Two of those reviews are outstanding.
That’s the first thing that President Biden did when he got to office. Attorney General Garland also de-authorized many of the death penalty prosecutions that had been authorized under the previous administration. So, there were literally dozens of cases for which the DOJ was planning to seek death, and AG Garland said, “No, we’re not going to do that anymore.”
So, there were some important changes and I think very encouraging changes to recognize these racial inequities and these long-standing problems that I’ve just described. What we didn’t see, unfortunately, is any action from President Biden himself, regarding his promise to do something about the federal death penalty. But it’s not too late. There is time. And that’s what this coalition of many different perspectives and individuals and organizations are all urging him to do right now.
MELINDA TUHUS: Robin Maher, I understand that 40 percent of the men on federal death row are Black, while Black men make up only about 7% of the U.S. population.
ROBIN MAHER: That was one of the troubling aspects of the Trump-era executions. There were many people who had unresolved legal claims. Many of them were very credible claims, including eligibility itself. There was someone with a very credible claim of intellectual disability, which means he would not be eligible for a death sentence at all. He was nevertheless executed.
So, there’s really no guarantee that if someone has legal claims pending that they will not be subject to execution. This Justice Department revised its justice manual to make clear that if there were prisoners who had legal claims that were still pending, they should not be executed, but as we saw under the Trump administration, that language can be changed, as it was under Attorney General Barr.
So, really, that is part of the urgency of this entire effort. We know from our experience in the past with President Trump that we can’t rely on the courts to do the right thing. We can’t rely on officials at DOJ to behave appropriately. And so, this is part of why this is so urgent right now for so many people, that Presiden Biden do something to keep these men safe from another execution spree.
MELINDA TUHUS: I honestly don’t know if I would prefer execution to spending the rest of my life in prison.
ROBIN MAHER: This is a very harsh and severe sentence to be sentenced to die in prison, to serve the rest of your natural life in a prison setting. You know, what we have seen is that many people on death row, even people arriving thinking, “What is there for me here?” have found a way to exist and find a meaningful life. They are there for their children, for example, to help guide and be a parent to their children, even though it’s behind bars. Some of them have gone back to school and improved their minds, and many more have worked on their own rehabilitation and remorse, and have worked to get the forgiveness of the people they have harmed and that has also been quite meaningful, both for themselves and some of their victims.
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