Thirteen inmates were put to death in an unprecedented run of federal executions in the final six months of Trump’s first term.
President Joe Biden has been urged to take action to prevent a spree of federal executions after President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
Thirteen inmates were put to death in an unprecedented run of federal executions in the final six months of Trump’s first term.
Those executions went ahead even though experts said that mental health and other issues should have stopped many of them from taking place. The Trump administration spent millions to ensure they were carried out during the coronavirus pandemic.
After Trump won a second term on Wednesday, the Rev. Sharon Risher sent Biden a letter urging him to take action, including by commuting the sentences of all inmates on federal death row, to prevent Trump from embarking on a second execution spree.
“We write to you today with renewed concern and urgency”, Risher wrote in the letter, which Newsweek reviewed. “President-Elect Donald Trump’s stated plan is to execute all remaining prisoners on the federal death row. It is vital that you deny him that opportunity by commuting every death sentence remaining on federal and military death rows.”
The letter was signed by a coalition of about 350 organizations, including Amnesty International USA, Death Penalty Action, Equal Justice USA, Faithful America, Human Rights Watch and The Innocence Project.
Biden hasn’t kept his promise to abolish the federal death penalty, but his Justice Department announced a moratorium on federal executions in 2021.
