CHICAGO (AP) – On federal death row, prisoners throw notes on a cord under each other’s cell doors and talk through interconnected air ducts. An important question today: whether President Joe Biden will stop executions, several told the Associated Press.
Biden has not spoken publicly about the death penalty since taking office four days after the Trump administration executed the last of the 13 inmates in Terre Haute, Indiana, a prison where all federal death inmates are held. The six-month run of executions reduced the unit from 63 to 50. Biden’s campaign website said he would work to end federal executions, but he never specified how.
Four inmates exchanged e-mails with the AP through a prison-monitored system that they access during the two hours a day that they are released from their 3.6 x 7-meter single inmate cells. Biden’s silence makes them nervous, wondering if political calculations will lead him to retreat into far-reaching actions, such as commuting his sentences to life in prison and endorsing legislation that excludes capital punishment from US statutes.
“Not a day goes by without us scanning the news for clues as to when or if the Biden government will take significant steps to implement its promises,” said Rejon Taylor, 36, sentenced to death in 2008 for killing a restaurant owner. in Atlanta.
Everyone on federal death row was convicted of killing someone, their victims often suffering brutal and painful deaths. Among the dead are children, bank workers and prison guards. One inmate, white supremacist Dylann Roof, killed nine black members of a South Carolina church during a Bible study in 2015. Many Americans believe that death is the only remedy for these crimes.
Opinions on the death penalty, however, are changing. A recent report found that people of color are overrepresented on death row across the country. About 40% of federal prisoners on death row are black, compared with about 13% of the United States population. With the growing scrutiny of who is sentenced to death and why, support for the death penalty has declined and fewer executions are being made in general. Virginia lawmakers recently voted to abolish it.
Death row prisoners expressed relief at Donald Trump’s departure from the White House after he presided over more federal executions than any other president in 130 years. There was an ever-present fear that guards would appear at the door of their cells to say that the director needed to speak to them – terrible words that meant his execution was scheduled.
They described death row as a close-knit community where ties are forged. Everyone said they were still recovering from seeing friends escorted for execution by lethal injection in a nearby garage-sized building.
“When everything is quiet here, which usually happens, you hear someone say, ‘Damn it, I can’t believe they’re gone!’ We all know what they are referring to, ”said Daniel Troya, convicted in 2009 of participating in drug-related murders of a Florida man, his wife and two children.
Federal executions during the coronavirus pandemic were probably superspreader events. In December, 70% of death row inmates had COVID-19, some possibly infected by air ducts through which they communicate.
AP participated in all 13 federal executions.
Five of the first six inmates executed were white. Six of the last seven were black, including Dustin Higgs, the last prisoner sentenced to death on Jan. 16 for ordering the murder of three women in Maryland.
Memories of talking to Higgs shortly before his execution still hurt Sherman Fields, who is on death row, but has a new sentence for conviction for the murder of his girlfriend after escaping from a prison in Waco, Texas.
“He said he was innocent and didn’t want to die,” said Fields, 46. “He is my friend. It was very difficult.”
While there were rumors that Biden would take action on the death penalty in his early days as president, there were no announcements. While he struggles with issues like the coronavirus and the economy, the death penalty appears to be on the back burner. Meanwhile, federal prosecutors still say they will seek death sentences.
Even if he waited, Biden could not put aside the death penalty issue altogether. It emerged on Monday when the Supreme Court said it would consider a request – initially made by the Trump administration – to reinstate the death sentence for the Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, which a lower court judged in July. The Biden government could choose to say that the government is no longer opposed to the decision of the lower court, although this, like everything with the death penalty, would undoubtedly create controversy.
The easiest political step for Biden would be to simply instruct his Department of Justice not to carry out any executions during his presidency. This would save prisoners’ lives for at least four years, but leave the door open for a future president to resume.
Prisoners learned for the first time that federal executions would resume after 17 years in 2019, when the first detainees were placed on execution lists. More were added throughout 2020.
During the past year, prisoners have cringed whenever they hear the sound of thick key chains when a larger-than-normal contingent of guards has entered their floor. This sound meant that the guards would soon stop at a prisoner’s door and that he would soon be at the principal’s office to receive his death sentence.
When a frantic Keith Nelson, convicted of raping and killing a girl from Kansas, said a year ago that he was sure he would be the next to die, a prisoner shouted at him to “shut up” that he was unnerving everyone else , Troya remembered. Nelson was executed on 28 August.
Emotions increased as the days of execution approached. As the guards led the convicts, other prisoners shouted, “Come on! Fight them! “Said Troya. None seemed to resist.
Prisoners cannot access the normal internet, but they can follow the news of last-minute appeals on TVs in their cells. When the broadcasts confirmed that an execution had been carried out, Taylor said, a silence fell over death row, followed by a chorus of curses.
Prisoners know that Biden, as a senator, played a key role in passing a 1994 criminal bill that increased federal crimes for which someone could be sentenced to death.
“I don’t trust Biden,” said Troya. “He set the rules for getting all of us here in the first place.”
Several inmates said Brandon Bernard’s death was especially difficult to prosecute. They described him as introspective and kind. Bernard, convicted of participating in the robbery, theft and murder of a couple in Texas, also organized a crochet group on death row that shared patterns and knitting tips.
“The nicest guy on federal death row,” Fields said.
Bernard’s case caught the attention of reality show star Kim Kardashian and other celebrities, who pleaded on Twitter for Trump to commute his sentence.
His lawyers said Bernard, then 18 and the lowest-ranking member of a street gang, was pressured to set a car on fire with the bodies of Todd and Stacie Bagley inside. They said he believed the Bagleys were already dead after a gang leader shot them in the head.
He and co-defendant Christopher Vialva, both black, were convicted by a mostly white Texas jury in 2000.
Tied to a cross-shaped stretcher on December 10, Bernard addressed the couple’s relatives in an adjacent witness room in the death chamber, repeatedly apologizing and saying that he hoped his death would end them.
After his execution, Todd Bagley’s mother called the murders an “act of unnecessary evil”. She said that Bernard and Vialva’s executions months earlier brought closure. But she also expressed gratitude to both of them for apologizing. Starting to cry, she told reporters, “I can say a lot – I forgive them.”
Troya said that she often thinks of Bernard, Vialva and Higgs, whom she considered close friends. All three, he said, had long since become better people and were mentoring other inmates.
“They killed future models of prison,” he said. “So much potential lost for nothing.”
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