Can Commuting the Row Be Biden's Real Legacy? Herman Lindsey and Cassy Stubbs Discuss With W. Kamau Bell

WASHINGTON – More than 130 civil and human rights organizations, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, Southern Poverty Law Center, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, issued a letter to President Biden today, urging him to commute the sentences of people on federal death row before he leaves office. The letter highlights the moral and legal failings of the death penalty in the United States and stresses the urgency of action to prevent the potential resurgence of federal executions under an incoming Trump administration. The groups call on Biden to fulfill his campaign promise to address the irrevocably broken federal death penalty and to “bring America into a new era of moral leadership.” President Biden was the first presidential candidate to openly oppose the death penalty, and his administration issued a moratorium on federal executions. With 40 men still on death row, however, the letter emphasizes that commuting federal death sentences is the only irreversible action President Biden can take to prevent the incoming administration from attempting another execution spree. "President Biden has an opportunity to make history by addressing the racist and unjust federal death penalty system and keep an early campaign promise he made to the American people,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU. “Commuting the sentences of those on death row would help end the death penalty once and for all and prevent a second execution spree by President Trump. Trump’s first act of political theater ended in the execution of 13 people. President Biden shouldn’t allow Trump to repeat that travesty." In Trump’s final months in office, his administration executed 13 people in rapid succession, more than any administration in over 120 years. The Trump administration also amended the federal execution protocol which opened the door to more brutal methods of execution, including death by firing squad, electrocution, and nitrogen hypoxia, an untested and torturous method. Below are additional comments from: Paul O’Brien, executive director, Amnesty International USA: “President-elect Trump has promised to restart and accelerate the federal death machine, just as he did in his last administration. In the span of only 6 months, the Trump administration executed more people than the 10 previous presidential administrations combined. The executions carried out in his first term demonstrated to the world how the federal death penalty is fundamentally broken and that this ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment should be abolished forever. We should take Trump at his word when he says he plans to repeat this horrific killing spree, and Biden must do what he can now to prevent it.” Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel, Legal Defense Fund: “Since our founding, LDF has been unwavering in its fight to abolish the death penalty and eliminate racial discrimination from our criminal legal system. The death penalty is rooted in slavery, lynchings, and white vigilantism and historically weaponized against people of color. From the Groveland Four in 1949 to many capital cases today, Black people are disproportionately impacted by the ultimate punishment. Commuting the sentences of the 40 individuals on federal death row is an unprecedented opportunity for President Biden to cement his commitment to remedying injustice by exercising executive clemency.” Margaret Huang, president and CEO, The Southern Poverty Law Center: “The death penalty is rooted in a deep history of racialized violence. To this day, race is still the biggest predictor of who gets sentenced to death, with Black people accounting for nearly 40% of those on federal death row, despite representing less than 12% of the adult population. And fully 70% of those on federal death row are from the South. Our nation, and particularly the communities that we serve in the Deep South, cannot achieve true racial justice while the death penalty remains in practice.” Joia Erin Thornton, executive director, FLOCC (Faith Leaders of Color Coalition): “President Biden should commute all federal death sentences because doing so would acknowledge and help redress the racial bias built into the federal death penalty system, allow government resources to be redirected to policies that actually make our communities safer, and allow the families of victims and incarcerated persons to focus on healing instead of living in legal limbo.” This letter is one of more than a dozen letters released today from hundreds of stakeholders from across the political and faith spectrums calling on President Biden to commute all federal death sentences, including Black pastors, former corrections officials, business leaders, current and former prosecutors, families who have lost loved ones to homicide, mental health advocates, and many more. All of the letters can be found here.

In our series on how Biden can use the lame duck period to secure civil liberties and civil rights, we examine how Biden can combat President-elect Trump’s plans to greatly expand the death penalty and execute every person on the federal row.

WASHINGTON — A U.S. military court has agreed that the plea agreement reached with ACLU client Khalid Shaikh Mohammad back in August is valid and must go into effect. The judge’s decision comes three months after Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, overruled prosecutors and Brig. General Susan Escallier, the Guantánamo military commission’s convening authority, and revoked the signed plea agreement. In exchange for a guilty plea to all counts, the U.S. government agreed to life imprisonment instead of the death penalty for Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and two other defendants. The military judge’s decision follows litigation by the three defendants to enforce their agreement with the government. The negotiated plea process allows family members to get answers to long-held questions about the attacks directly from the defendants and, at sentencing, make statements about the tragic impact on them and their loved ones. The military judge has said he will next schedule a hearing for the guilty pleas to be entered. Since 2008, through its John Adams Project, the ACLU has provided capital defense support for detainees facing the death penalty in the military commissions, spending over $12.5 million to provide experienced capital defenders, mitigation specialists, investigators, and experts to the under-resourced military defense teams. Our efforts exposed unfairness, secrecy, and the ongoing role of torture in the Guantanamo military commissions, making clear that the commissions are a complete failure. The following is a statement from Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU: “By reinstating the plea agreements, Col. Matthew N. McCall rightly recognizes that Defense Secretary Austin stepped out of bounds. We are finally back at the only practical solution after nearly two decades of litigation. “The government's decision to settle for life imprisonment instead of seeking the death penalty in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was always the right call. For too long, the U.S. has repeatedly defended its use of torture and unconstitutional military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay. As a nation, we must move forward with the plea process and sentencing hearing that is intended to give victim family members answers to their questions. They deserve transparency and finality about the events that claimed their loved ones. “This plea agreement further underscores the fact that the death penalty is out of step with the fundamental values of our democratic system. It is inhumane, inequitable, and unjust. “We also urge the U.S. government to quickly relocate the men cleared for transfer, and finally end all indefinite detentions and unfair trials at Guantánamo.”

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Kansas, the Kansas Death Penalty Unit, Hogan Lovells, and Ali & Lockwood filed a challenge yesterday to the Kansas death penalty and to an unconstitutional jury selection practice unique to death penalty trials. The practice, called “death qualification,” dictates that to serve on a capital jury, a prospective juror must be willing to impose the death penalty. The ACLU and its co-counsel argue that death qualification is discriminatory, unconstitutional, and undermines the principles at the core of the legal system. Studies show that Black people, women, and those of religious faith are more likely to oppose the death penalty. As a result, death qualification warps the jury from a cross-section of peers to be whiter, more male, more conviction prone, less likely to debate the evidence, and far more likely to sentence a defendant to death. “Every person accused of a crime is entitled to a fair, impartial jury, but that’s never the reality in capital cases,” said Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project. “The evidence is overwhelmingly consistent that Black Kansans are disproportionately disqualified from serving on capital juries. Death qualification, like the death penalty itself, is unconstitutional and undermines justice for everyone. We are committed to ending both.” By systemically barring Black community members from fully participating in jury service, death qualification violates the rights of both the accused and prospective jurors alike. Removing Black voices from capital juries perpetuates the legacy of all-white juries that have long condemned Black individuals to death. Death qualification is one piece of what makes the death penalty in Kansas racist, unjust, and unconstitutional. New evidence shows that every aspect of the death penalty — from who gets charged, to who has a fair trial, to who gets sentenced — echoes a long history of racial bias in the criminal legal system. In Kansas, there is an undeniable line connecting the state’s history of racial terror to its modern administration of the death penalty. When lynching became less publicly and politically acceptable, the death penalty emerged as a new form of racialized violence. “The death penalty in Kansas is unjust from start to finish and goes against all of the most fundamental principles of justice,” said Katie Ali, attorney at Ali & Lockwood. “From its disproportionate impact on Black Kansans to the high risk of wrongful convictions, it is clear that the death penalty serves neither fairness nor public safety. It’s time for Kansas to abandon this deeply unjust system.” In a series of hearings beginning on Oct. 28, the ACLU and co-counsel will present evidence and testimony from leading experts nationwide demonstrating that the death penalty in Kansas and death qualification are unconstitutional and racially discriminatory. The ACLU filed the challenges on behalf of Antoine Fielder, who is pretrial and facing capital charges in Wyandotte County. His case has been joined with another pretrial capital defendant, Hugo Villanueva, for the purpose of these hearings only.