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capital punishment
To Thwart Trump Killing Spree, Biden Urged to Commute Death Penalty Cases
The former president, warned a broad rights coalition, "executed more people than the previous ten administrations combined."
Dec 09, 2024
A large and diverse coalition of broad coalition of rights organizations on Monday sent a letter to U.S. President Biden Monday, urging him to commute the sentences of all 40 individuals who are on federal death row.
The letter adds to a chorus of voices—including prosecutors and law enforcement officials—advocating for Biden to use his clemency powers to issue such commutations before he departs office.
The calls for Biden to issue pardons and commutations have only grown since the president issued a pardon for his son, clearing Hunter Biden of wrongdoing in any federal crimes he committed or may have committed in the last 11 years.
The joint letter to Biden was backed by over 130 organizations, including the ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, and The Sentencing Project, commends his administration's "actions to repudiate capital punishment, including imposing a moratorium on executions for those sentenced to death, and for publicly calling for an end to the use of the death penalty during your 2020 campaign. In the face of a second Trump administration, more is necessary."
"President Trump executed more people than the previous ten administrations combined. Of those he executed, over half were people of color: six Black men and one Native American. The only irreversible action you can take to prevent President-elect Trump from renewing his execution spree, as he has vowed to do, is commuting the death sentences of those on federal death row now," the letter states.
The letter cites additional reasons that Biden ought to commute the sentences, including that the death penalty "has been rooted in slavery, lynchings, and white vigilantism."
A separate letter to Biden—sent in November by group of attorneys general, law enforcement officials, and others—argues that "condemning people to death by the state does not advance public safety. The death penalty fails as an effective deterrent and does not reduce crime. As an outdated, error-riddled, and racially-biased practice, its continued use—and the potential for its abuse—erodes public trust in the criminal legal system and undermines the legitimacy of the entire criminal legal system."
Matt Bruenig, president of the People's Policy Project think tank, directly tied Biden's inaction on this issue to the pardon he issued for his son in a blog post last week, writing that "if Biden does not act, there is little doubt that Trump will aggressively schedule executions in his next term. Their blood will primarily be on Trump's hands, but, if Biden does not act to prevent it, his hands will be bloody too."
The call for commutations for death row prisoners aligns with a wider push for the President to use his clemency powers before he leaves office.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who has been particularly vocal on this issue, said Sunday on social media that President Biden "must use his clemency power to change lives for the better. And we have some ideas on who he can target: Folks in custody with unjustified sentencing disparities, the elderly and chronically ill, people on death row, women punished for crimes of their abusers, and more."
Pressley was one of over 60 members of Congress who sent a letter to Biden last month, encouraging Biden to intervene to help these groups.
Several lawmakers have specific pardons or commutations in mind, according to Axios. For example, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has urged Biden to pardon Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has called for a pardon of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, per Axios.
So far, Biden has granted far fewer clemency petitions (161 total) than former President Barrack Obama, according to the Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney, and a few dozen less than President-elect Trump did during his entire first presidency. However, in 2022, Biden did grant full and unconditional pardons to all U.S. citizens convicted of simple federal marijuana possession—a move that was cheered by advocates.
According to The New York Times, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week that Biden was expected to make more clemency announcements "at the end of his term."
"He's thinking through that process very thoroughly," she said.
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US Supreme Court Refuses to Stop Alabama Nitrogen Gas Execution
"The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, and we urge Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to use her clemency power to stop the execution of Kenneth Smith before it's too late," said one group.
Jan 24, 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday denied an application to stop the execution of a man on Alabama's death row who is set to become the first person in the country to be killed with nitrogen gas in a method rejected by veterinarians for euthanizing animals and condemned by United Nations human rights experts as possible torture.
The justices rejected assertions by lawyers representing 58-year-old Kenneth Smith—who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Sennett—that execution by the untested method of suffocation with nitrogen gas violates the U.S. Constitution's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment."
The attorneys' argument was based largely on the fact that Smith survived a botched attempt to execute him by lethal injection in November 2022.
Smith's petition for a writ of certiorari asked: "Does a second attempt to execute a condemned person following a single, cruelly willful attempt to execute that same person violate the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments under the Eighth and 14th amendments to the United States Constitution?"
A separate challenge by Smith to the use of nitrogen gas in his execution is pending before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Two other states, Mississippi and Oklahoma, have approved the use of nitrogen gas for executions. States have scrambled to find alternative means of killing condemned inmates after the European Union banned the sale and export of lethal injection drugs in 2011.
Earlier this month, Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned that the U.S. may be violating the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment by allowing Smith's execution by nitrogen asphyxia.
Shamdasani noted that the American Veterinary Medical Association recommends sedating animals before euthanizing them with nitrogen—a step that is not included in Alabama's protocol.
In addition to concerns over the method of Smith's impending execution, advocates have also pointed to flaws in his sentencing process. The jury that convicted him in 1996 voted 11-1 to recommend a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, but a judge invoked a since-outlawed rule to override the jurors.
Rights groups urged Alabama's Republican governor to halt Smith's execution—a move she declined in 2022.
"The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment, and we urge Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey to use her clemency power to stop the execution of Kenneth Smith before it's too late," Amnesty International implored Wednesday.
Abraham Bonowitz, co-founder of the abolitionist group Death Penalty Action, called Wednesday "a shameful day for our country."
"The discussion that is missing in all of this hubbub around nitrogen hypoxia is the mental torture of a second execution attempt," he added. "That, and the fact that if Kenny Smith were on trial today, he could not be sentenced to death at all because his jury was not unanimous regarding his sentence. Jury overrides were outlawed in Alabama in 2017. Alabama's capital punishment system as a whole is broken and cannot be trusted to get it right."
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UN Rights Experts Says Alabama Nitrogen Execution May Constitute Torture
"Rather than inventing new ways to implement capital punishment, we urge all states to put in place a moratorium on its use, as a step towards universal abolition," said the U.N. Human Rights Office.
Jan 16, 2024
As the United States insists on continuing state-sanctioned killings despite a European ban on drugs commonly used in capital punishment, the United Nations Human Rights Office warned Tuesday that Alabama officials may soon violate international laws banning torture as they plan to use nitrogen gas in an upcoming execution.
A number of U.N. officials have said in recent days that the planned execution of Kenneth Smith, who was convicted for a 1988 murder, should be halted as it likely will violate the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Smith is scheduled to face the death penalty at Alabama's Holman Correctional Facility on January 25, with authorities binding a mask to his face to forcibly administer nitrogen gas, which would deprive him of oxygen.
On Tuesday, Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said that by allowing the execution, the U.S. may also breach two international human rights treaties—the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
"The death penalty is inconsistent with the fundamental right to life. There is an absence of proof that it deters crime, and it creates an unacceptable risk of executing innocent people," said Shamdasani. "Rather than inventing new ways to implement capital punishment, we urge all states to put in place a moratorium on its use, as a step towards universal abolition."
Pro-death penalty officials in the U.S. have in recent years sought to carry out executions using obsolete or untested methods, as the European Union has banned pharmaceutical companies from selling medications that can be used in capital punishment.
"What does it say about the morally-enervated condition of our political culture that the state of Alabama is so eager to try for a second time to kill someone... that it's willing to put the lives of a pastor and its prison execution team at risk?"
Experts say Smith would be the first person in the world to be killed via capital punishment using "asphyxiation with an inert gas."
A federal judge ruled last week that Alabama could proceed with Smith's execution using nitrogen. Smith had sued the Alabama Department of Corrections, arguing that the execution, if botched, could leave him in a permanent vegetative state or cause a stroke, and that the method carries the risk of "particular pain and suffering."
A previous attempt to execute Smith was botched by Alabama prison officials in 2022, when, as journalist Robyn Pennachia wrote at Wonkette, officials "spent hours and hours trying and failing to properly insert an IV while Smith was strapped to a gurney."
Shamdasani noted that Alabama's plan to execute Smith does not even meet the standards put forth by the American Veterinary Medical Association, which recommends sedating animals that are euthanized using nitrogen gas.
"Nitrogen gas has never been used in the United States to execute human beings," said Shamdasani. "Alabama's protocol for execution by nitrogen asphyxiation makes no provision for sedation of human beings prior to execution."
Mississippi and Oklahoma have also approved the use of nitrogen gas for executions in the absence of barbiturates for lethal injections, while Utah, South Carolina, and Idaho are among the states that have approved firing squads as a capital punishment method.
The U.N. Human Rights Committee, said Shamdasani, "has also criticized the use of asphyxiation by gas as an execution method, the use of untested methods, as well as widening the use of the death penalty in states that continue to apply it."
Amnesty International has pointed out that the jury that convicted Smith in 1996 supported life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, but a judge imposed a death sentence "under a judicial override system outlawed in Alabama in 2017."
As Jeffrey St. Clair wrote at Counterpunch last week, Alabama officials seem "uncertain about how the execution might unfold," and are requiring Smith's spiritual adviser, who is permitted to be in the execution chamber, to sign a waiver requiring him to stay three feet away from Smith due to the risk that "a hose supplying nitrogen to Smith's mask detaches from his face, filling an area around him with the potentially deadly odorless, tasteless, invisible gas."
"What does it say about the morally-enervated condition of our political culture that the state of Alabama is so eager to try for a second time to kill someone (whose own jury didn't think should be put to death in the first place) that it's willing to put the lives of a pastor and its prison execution team at risk?" wrote St. Clair. "Other states are eagerly awaiting the death notice from Holman Prison so that they can accelerate their stalled rosters of slated killings by using this ghastly new method. The execution of Kenneth Smith will signal yet another triumph of American efficiency culture, where death always seems to find a way."
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