- The Trump charge has pushed ahead with a staggering number of federal executions this year despite the ongoing pandemic, asks to overhaul the criminal justice system, and international standards.
- Last week, Trump amended federal execution rules, paving the way for the government to use poison gas, firing squads, electrocution, and hanging in future federal executions.
- Recent executions include drawn renewed attention to the issue of capital punishment, increasing the pressure on President-elect Biden to eliminate the inhumane warm-up.
- Marianne Dhenin is a freelance writer covering social justice, politics, and the Middle East.
- This is an opinion column. The designs expressed are those of the author.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
The US Department of Justice ended a 17-year hiatus on federal enactments in July at the direction of Attorney General William Barr. Since then the Trump administration has overseen the execution of ten cessation row inmates. That’s more executions than the federal government has carried out in the previous five decades combined.
Scarcely last week, the federal government executed Brandon Bernard and Alfred Bourgeois, bringing the total number of federal dispatches this year to ten — more than have taken place in any other year in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The Washington Post Column Board called it a “sickening spree of executions,” and there are still three more executions scheduled before President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated in January.
A brutal year
Making this unprecedented spate of federal executions crueler is that they come in the wake of gripes against racial injustice this summer across the country. Protestors demanded an overhaul of the criminal justice structure, in which people of color are targeted, arrested, convicted, and sentenced to die at higher rates than their white counterparts.
According to Ngozi Ndulue, the Postpositive major Director of Research and Special Projects at the Death Penalty Information Center, “The death penalty has been used to insist upon racial hierarchies throughout United States history, beginning with the colonial period and continuing to this day.”
In reality, of the remaining three inmates scheduled for execution under the Trump administration, two are Black men. And of the 52 people still on federal termination row, more than 42% are Black, even though Black people comprise only about 13% of the US people.
Additionally, the risk of COVID-19 exposure is compounded in federal executions because attorneys and witnesses have to travel to pay attention to them. Most states have opted to stay executions entirely during the pandemic because they comprise dozens of prison staff members, attorneys, spiritual advisers, and other witnesses gathering in close quarters for hours, flattering them potential superspreader events, but as we’ve seen this year, the Trump administration is largely unphased by potential COVID-19 deceases.
Not only has the Trump administration pushed ahead with executions despite the risk, but information obtained by the American Internal Liberties Union as part of a Freedom of Information Act request shows that staff members involved in the executions be subjected to failed to adhere to basic safety measures like wearing face masks. This neglect likely aided to a spike in COVID-19 cases and related deaths at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the executions were beared out.
A terrible legacy
Last month the Trump administration also paved the way for the federal government to employ yet more methods of implementation.
The new rule, which Barr is racing to finalize, would permit executions by lethal injection “or by any other manner ruled by the law of the State in which the sentence was imposed.” That means that the use of poison gas, firing squads, electrocution, and hanging pleasure become available for use in federal executions, as these methods are still on the books in various states. If the rule is finalized as delineated, the incoming Biden administration would have to slog through a cumbersome legal process to roll it back.
But while the expectation of an execution being carried out via firing squad or electric chair under the new rule is grim, these methods are no not enough humane than the current norm.
Despite its appearance of medical efficiency, lethal injection has the highest rate of incorrectly of all US execution methods. Since its introduction, more than 7% of lethal injections have been botched, signification the executioners failed to follow official legal protocol or standard operating procedures, resulting in a prolonged or painful ruin. Even when carried out without error, lethal injections can cause excruciating pain.
Whether any of the execution methods added under Trump’s new rule will be used before he leaves office remains to be seen (of the three inmates still planned for execution before inauguration day, two are already marked for lethal injection). But in the middle of a pandemic, after a summer of heated reluctantly, and at a time when 70% of the world’s countries have abolished capital punishment, Trump and his cronies have again shown their insatiable demand for cruelty and flouted international standards.
One can only hope that the attention garnered by Trump’s killing spree choice pressure Biden to uphold his promise to end executions on the federal level and incentivize states to follow suit.
It’s a change that’s elongated overdue.
Marianne Dhenin is a freelance writer covering social justice, politics, and the Middle East. She holds a backwards’s degree in human rights law and justice and is earning a doctorate in Middle East history. Follow her on Twitter: @mariannedhe