President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday reiterated his pledge to “aggressively pursue” the death penalty, taking aim at President Joe Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of nearly all federal death row inmates.
Trump also heightened the backlash by some against Biden’s unprecedented move, which has drawn both criticism and praise.
“illogical” Trump posted On his social media platform Truth Social. “Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”
“Once inaugurated, I will direct the Department of Justice to aggressively pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters,” he added. Continue. “We will be a nation of law and order again!”
Biden announced on Monday that he would commute the sentences issued against 37 of the defendants 40 federal prisoners He was sentenced to death without the possibility of parole, saying he was “guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender.”
The measure has been speculated for weeks by a broad coalition of criminal justice advocacy groups, former prosecutors and business leaders He wrote letters To the White House asking him to commute the sentences before Trump takes office. Pope Francis this month too Biden appealedCatholic to commute sentences; Biden is scheduled to meet with the Pope next month in the final days of his presidency.
in statement The president noted Monday that the commutations are consistent with the moratorium on executions his administration imposed after taking office, and that “in good conscience, I cannot stand back and allow a new administration to resume the executions I suspended.”
But Biden also signaled a refusal to commute the sentences of three federal death row inmates involved in mass killings: Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 people in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018; Dylann Roof, who fatally shot nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who carried out a bomb attack at the Boston Marathon in 2013.
Although the lives of the other 37 prisoners were spared, Biden added: “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, I mourn for the victims of their despicable actions, and I ache for all the families who have suffered an unimaginable and irreparable loss.”
Trump campaigned on expanding the federal death penalty after his first term, during which the Justice Department executed 13 federal inmates — an unprecedented high number Since the presidency of Grover Cleveland In the late nineteenth century.
Trump has since said he would like to expand the death penalty to include child rapists, immigrants who kill American citizens and law enforcement officers, and those convicted of drug and human trafficking. It is unclear how the president-elect would do that, and legal experts say it would require support from Congress and face formidable constitutional challenges.
However, death penalty advocates say they take Trump’s comments seriously.
Meanwhile, Biden is facing criticism for commuting the death sentence, not only from his political opponents but law enforcement groups and some victims’ families.
“We thought the timing was despicable,” said Tim Timmerman, whose 19-year-old daughter, Rachel, was murdered in 1997. NBC affiliate WOOD-TV said (Grand Rapids, Michigan).
The convicted killer of his daughter, Marvin Gabrion, is also accused of killing Rachel Timmerman’s infant daughter, whose body was never found, and is the prime suspect in three other deaths. Gabrion is now 71 years old.
“Where is the justice in just giving him a prison bed to die comfortably?” “It was not me who gave Gabrion the death penalty. It was the jury, and I always think that’s important to point out — that the jury are the people who sentenced Gabrion to the death penalty,” Timmerman said.
The daughter of Donna Major, one of two South Carolina bank employees killed by federal death row inmate Brandon Council in 2017, criticized the board’s commutation as unfair and an “abuse of power.”
“My mother’s murder is being used as a political ploy by a president who is not even fit to be president,” Heather Turner said. Published Tuesday On Facebook. “I stand by my position that Joe Biden has blood on his hands.”
While Biden is being praised by anti-death penalty groups that have long maintained that the death penalty process is tainted, in part because… Racial disparities Among those who were sentenced to death and executed, some also believe he did not go far enough by failing to commute all inmates on federal death row as well as The four prisoners sentenced to death by the US military.
“Politics got in the way,” the Rev. Sharon Richer, board president of Death Penalty Action, whose mother, Ethel Lance, and cousins, Tywanza Sanders and Susie Jackson, were among those killed in the 2015 Charleston shooting, said in a statement. Of mercy.”
“You cannot label the victims, Mr. President,” Risher said. “I implore you to finish the job, not only with the three men on federal death row, but also with those on military death row.” “There’s still time.”
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2024-12-24 18:02:14
