City Bar Urges President Biden to Commute All Death Row Sentences

The New York City Bar Association has written to President Joseph Biden, urging him to “make good on a promise about the federal death penalty that you made to the American people when you were running for the presidency” by commuting the sentences of those on federal death row.

Citing the 2020 Biden campaign’s declaration that “Biden will work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example,” and acknowledging that the time to pass federal legislation to accomplish that has run short, the City Bar cites the Constitution’s Presidential “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States.”

The City Bar cites six reasons for its request:

First, “[t]here can be no greater miscarriage of justice than the execution of an innocent person,” the letter states. According to the Innocence Project and the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1973, at least 200 people have been exonerated from American death rows. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 78% of Americans believe that “there is some risk that an innocent person will be executed.”

Second, the main justifications for supporting the death penalty are demonstrably flawed. Capital punishment proponents claim that the death penalty is a deterrent to those contemplating committing crimes, but there is no evidence to support this claim. However, commuting someone’s death sentence does not mean letting them go free, instead the sentence would become a life sentence without the possibility for parole. This sentence achieves the same goal as capital punishment—preventing dangerous criminals from reoffending.

Third, capital punishment is becoming more unpopular in the United States and is globally disfavored. Twenty-three states have abolished the death penalty and of the remaining twenty-seven states, thirteen have not carried out an execution in at least a decade. Globally, by continuing to use the death penalty as a form of punishment, the United States remains the only Western nation that has not abolished the death penalty.

Fourth, the federal death penalty is, in practice, racially biased and favors those who can afford their own representation.

Fifth, the federal death penalty is expensive. The American government, and by default, American taxpayers spend a significant amount of money maintaining the federal death penalty, far more than what would be spent on inmates who were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. According to the ACLU, the cost of five of the Trump Administration’s executions amounted to $4.7 million dollars or more than $900,000 per execution. By contrast, in 2022, the cost of incarcerating a federal inmate was $42,672 per year.

Sixth, as administered, the death penalty is cruel and unusual. Capital punishment by the federal government is presently carried out using a lethal injection of pentobarbital. The Trump Administration has asserted that the use of pentobarbital was pain free and that the execution process was akin to “falling asleep . . . and final breaths ‘snores.’” However, the Associated Press revealed that according to an autopsy, at least one inmate experienced pulmonary edema, an experience akin to suffocation or drowning.

The letter states that these concerns are only heightened given Mr. Trump’s re-election. “Mr. Trump has been and continues to be a huge proponent of the death penalty….While in office, Mr. Trump went on an execution spree, approving the execution of thirteen federal death row inmates in the last six months of his presidency….The first of these thirteen executions was the first federal execution in 17 years,” the letter states, adding that “Mr. Trump continues to strongly support the federal death penalty and has advocated for increasing its use in his second term.”

“Finally,” the letter, which is signed by City Bar President Muhammad U. Faridi and Stephen R. Greenwald, Chair of the City Bar’s Capital Punishment Committee, states, “we respect that in recent years you have repeatedly acknowledged the failings of the United States’ death penalty after in your early career helping pass laws such as the Death Penalty for Drug Kingpin Act (1988) and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (1992). It takes a courageous person to change their position based on years of evidence. Other legislators, governors, and Supreme Court Justices (such as Justices Lewis Powell, Harry Blackmun, and John Paul Stevens) also came to regret their earlier roles in the foundation of the American death penalty. The difference now is that your change-of-heart has occurred while you still have the authority and opportunity to make a difference. We request that you follow through on your campaign promise and commute the sentences of those on the federal death row.”

Read the full letter, with cites, here: https://bit.ly/3AVCIHe