All 49 remaining sentenced to death in federal prisons are expected to have their sentences commuted by President Biden, two members of the progressive group “Democrat Squad” urged on Friday.
Demand from US representatives Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. And Cori Bush, D-Mo., Came in a letter sent to Biden that was also signed by 35 other Democrats, including the Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., And Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.
It was a reaction to the revival of federal executions by the Trump administration, after a hiatus of nearly two decades, which resulted in 13 executions carried out in the final months of former President Donald Trump’s term.
“We believe that rebuilding America’s dignity requires that we commit ourselves again to the tradition of due process, mercy and judicial clemency when it comes to issues related to the criminal justice system,” began the Democrats’ letter to Biden. “For that reason, we ask that you immediately commute the sentences of everyone on death row.”
Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. From the USA, he speaks in Washington, August 28, 2020. (Getty Images)
Congressmen said they appreciated “Biden’s vocal opposition to the death penalty and ask you to take quick and decisive action.”
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The Biden campaign website says his government “would work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and encourage” states to do the same.
Democrats said in the letter that President Trump left a legacy of “carnage and rampant violence” because of the number of executions in the final months of his presidency.
The then attorney general William Barr announced in July 2019 that the government would resume federal executions for the first time in 17 years.
In recent weeks, those executed include Corey Johnson, a Virginia man linked to seven murders, and Lisa Montgomery, who was convicted on charges of strangling a pregnant woman and using a kitchen knife to remove the baby from the victim’s womb.
US Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., Is seen in St. Louis, August 5, 2020. (Reuters)
Trump expressed support for the reinstatement of the death penalty long before he became president.
“Either it will be brought back quickly or our society will rot,” Trump told Playboy magazine in 1990, according to The Associated Press.
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For the country to find “responsibility and healing,” the Democrats wrote, Americans very “first acknowledge the moral depravity of federal executions.”
Congressmen defended a justice system that seeks to “rehabilitate and restore” rather than “penalize and execute”.
“Like slavery and lynching before, the death penalty perpetuates cycles of trauma, violence and state-sanctioned murder in black and brown communities,” they wrote.
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Pressley sent a similar letter to Biden before he took office in December, writing that his “historic election with record attendance represents a national mandate to make significant progress in reforming our unfair and inhuman criminal justice system”.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.