Biden must use the final months of his term to commute federal death sentences

President-elect Donald Trump has chilling plans to use his second term to expand the federal death penalty. This expansion continues the killing spree he began in the final six months of his first presidency, when Trump oversaw more executions than any president in the past 120 years. His plans for a second term include sentencing more people to death, expanding the category of crimes punishable by death, and killing all 40 people currently on federal death row.

President Joe Biden can — and should — act now to complete the death penalty reform his administration began in 2020. He must commute the sentences of all people on federal death row to thwart Trump’s plans and undo the racial injustice inherent in the death penalty.

The ACLU has long fought for an end to the death penalty. We know that his cruel practices are inconsistent with the fundamental values ​​of our democratic system. Trump’s return to the White House and his unprecedented, extreme and inhumane stance on the death penalty only threaten to make an already cruel system even more dangerous.

Trump has already done that called to unconstitutionally extend the death penalty to non-homicidal crimes, such as drug-related crimes. He has also reportedly called for the death penalty punishment for those who leak information about him to the press or undermine him politically. He has proposed bringing back firing squads, the guillotine and hangings by noose – a symbol and instrument of our country’s sordid legacy of lynching and racial terror.

Trump’s promise to expand the death penalty exacerbates the systemic inequalities that already plague our capital punishment system. The federal death penalty, like state capital punishment systems, is error-prone, racially biased, and demanding of public resources. More than half of those facing the federal death penalty in 2024 will be people of color, some of whom were convicted by all-white juries. People with severe mental illness, intellectual disabilities, brain damage and a history of trauma are also overrepresented on death rows across the country, including federal prison. Moreover, as long as the death penalty exists, we risk executing innocent people, as evidenced by the 200 people sentenced to death and acquitted since 1973.

In 2020, Biden made history as the first president to openly oppose the death penalty. Under his leadership, the Department of Justice (DOJ) recognized the disparate impact of the death penalty on people of color, as well as the staggering number of people sentenced to death and then exonerated over the past fifty years. Although Biden fell short of his promise to end the death penalty, he can still save lives and help build a legacy rooted in racial justice by commuting all federal death sentences to life in prison.

Research shows that the death penalty does not make our communities safer. In reality, research has consistently shown that the death penalty does not deter murder, and in states it does murders are lower in states that do not have the death penalty.

Trump has consistently ignored these facts. Instead, he went on a killing spree during his final term in office, executing thirteen men in quick succession, disregarding serious miscarriages of justice. Of the thirteen people Trump executed during his last term, two were black men convicted as teenagers, one was a woman with mental illness who had survived a lifetime of horrific sexual abuse and torture, the other was a man with an intellectual disability, and there was also a 67-year-old man whose Alzheimer’s disease made him unaware of why he was sentenced to death. A majority of the thirteen executed were people of color, including seven black men and one Native American man.

These executions, especially of people with mental illness and intellectual disabilities, demonstrate that no procedure can overcome the fundamental flaws of the death penalty.

The ACLU is calling on President Biden to commute the sentences of all people on federal death row before he leaves office. Commuting federal death sentences will restore the legacy of racial prejudice inherent in the death penalty and make Trump’s brutal plans for another killing spree impossible. If Biden does this, he will not only take away Trump’s power to oversee another execution, but he will also help set the US on a different course. By setting an example of empathy and a willingness to root out injustice, he can pave the way for future governments to build on his legacy and ultimately end the death penalty.

Our work is not limited to federal commutation efforts. The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and customary punishment, including Trump’s proposals to expand the use of the death penalty to non-homicidal crimes such as drug trafficking and to use methods such as hanging or the guillotine. The ACLU stands ready from day one to challenge the inhumane efforts to expand the death penalty and any efforts to return to regressive methods of killing.

At the state level, the ACLU will build on our ongoing work against the death penalty. We will continue our lawsuits in states such as Kansas And North Carolina under laws more protective than the U.S. Constitution — such as state racial justice laws and constitutions — to invalidate the death penalty based on its racist administration, including in jury selection.

“The death penalty is a morally bankrupt and inescapably racist institution. President Biden came to power promising to abolish the federal death penalty due to its fundamental flaws. Shutting down the federal fight is the way he can fulfill that promise and avoid irreversible miscarriages of justice.” — Yasmin Cader, deputy legal director of the ACLU and director of the Trone Center for Justice and Equality.”

President Biden can commute all federal death sentences before his time as president ends, saving lives, preventing an irreversible miscarriage of justice, and building a legacy rooted in racial justice and compassion. Call on him to do so today.