Four U.S. House democrats, including Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley from Massachusetts’ 7th Congressional District, sent a letter Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland supporting a moratorium on federal executions.
The group of representatives — comprising Ayanna Pressley, Adriano Espaillat, Jerrold Nadler and Cori Bush — requested the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) halt participation in the capital punishment system and prohibit attorneys from seeking the death penalty, calling the system flawed. In the letter, the representatives cited concerns that it is applied arbitrarily and often on innocent individuals. They also said use of the death penalty has a disproportionate effect on people of color.
“State-sanctioned murder is not justice, and the death penalty has no place in any society,” Pressley said in a press release. “I applaud the critical steps the DOJ has taken, responsive to the demands of the coalition working to end the federal death penalty. Now the Biden Administration must strengthen its moratorium on executions by formally directing federal prosecutors to no longer seek the death penalty, commuting the sentences of those on death row, and dismantling the death row facility at Terre Haute.”
The letter comes in response to a July memorandum from the DOJ calling for no federal executions to be scheduled while the deputy attorney general supervises a review of the department’s policies surrounding executions.
A focus of the letter is the impact of the use of capital punishment on people of color. The representatives cite data from the Death Penalty Information Center that says about 34% of people executed in the United States since 1976 have been Black, while Black Americans only make up about 13% of the population nationally, according to 2019 data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The DOJ memorandum also acknowledged concerns about “disparate impact on people of color.”
The United States saw an increase in federal executions in 2020. After a 17-year hiatus, the Trump administration oversaw 10 federal executions between July 2020 and the end last year. Three more followed in January, before President Joe Biden took office.
The Biden Administration indicated it planned to eliminate the death penalty as part of its campaign, citing the number of exonerations of individuals who were sentenced to be executed. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 171 individuals have been exonerated since 1977 compared to 1,534 executions during the same time.
“Because we cannot ensure we get death penalty cases right every time, 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,” the campaign wrote on its website. “These individuals should instead serve life sentences without probation or parole.”
In this week’s letter, the representatives said that as Congress works on legislation to abolish capital punishment, the executive branch should take action.
“While the United States Congress considers legislation to abolish the death penalty, which has an unprecedented and growing level of support, the Department of Justice still has a moral obligation to take immediate, decisive action,” they wrote in the letter. “The Biden-Harris Administration was elected on the promise of abolishing the federal death penalty, and we are committed to using every legislative tool to help fulfill it.”
