Death penalty opponents will gather outside the Supreme Court to call for the passage of the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act.
Death penalty opponents are once again putting pressure on President Joe Biden to take action to end federal capital punishment. The Abolitionist Action Committee is set to gather in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Monday morning to highlight a petition addressed to all three branches of the federal government. In a news release, organizers say some participants “may risk arrest to ensure their life-saving message is heard” during the rally, and later march to the U.S. Capitol and the Hart Senate Office Building. “We are calling for immediate passage of the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act,” Rev. Sharon Risher, a board member of Death Penalty Action, said. “We are calling on the Attorney General to stop seeking death in all federal cases and on President Biden to commute all federal death sentences and to order the demolition of the Death House at the federal prison in Terre Haute,” she added. Risher lost her mother and other relatives in the Charleston church massacre in 2015, but opposes the death penalty for their killer, Dylann Roof, one of the most notorious inmates on federal death row. She will join others pushing for the abolition of the death penalty at Monday’s protest, held outside the Supreme Court every five years on January 17 to mark the anniversary of the first execution in the modern era, when Gary Gilmore was executed by firing squad in 1977. This year, it coincides with Martin Luther King Jr. Day. King abhorred capital punishment, and was quoted in a 1957 article saying: “I do not think that God approves the death penalty for any crime—rape and murder included….
