Biden's silence on capital punishment is irking fellow death penalty opponents


President Biden campaigned as an opponent of capitol punishment, and he still opposes the death penalty, the White House says. But you'd be forgiven for not knowing that based on the actions — and lack of action — of his administration, The Associated Press reports Friday. "Biden hasn't said whether he'd back a bill introduced by fellow Democrats to strike the death penalty from U.S. statutes. He also hasn't rescinded Trump-era protocols enabling federal executions to resume and allowing prisons to use firing squads if necessary."
And on Monday, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, arguing that a lower court was wrong to throw out the sentence based on concerns about jury selection and asking the high court to "put this case back on track toward a just conclusion."
"Biden's lack of action is unconscionable," Ashley Kincaid Eve, a lawyer and anti–death penalty activist, tells AP. "This is the easiest campaign promise to keep, and the fact he refuses to keep it ... is political cowardice."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Biden's "hands-off approach" is "adding to disarray around the death penalty nationwide as pressure increases in some conservative states to find ways to continue executions amid shortages of the lethal-injection drugs," AP reports. And some capital punishment opponents worry his silence gives the appearance of tacit approval for revived state execution methods like gas chambers and firing squads.
Biden believes the Justice Department "has independence regarding such decisions" as the Tsarnaev motion, White House spokesman Andrew Bates told AP, and he also "believes the department should return to its prior practice, and not carry out executions."
There are things Biden can do unilaterally, like commute all federal death sentences to life in jail, and he could tell the Justice Department not to schedule any more executions while he is president. But the initial sense of optimism on death row about Biden's presidency has dissipated, Rejon Taylor, an inmate at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, told AP. "I won't say that skepticism has settled in, but I will say that most no longer feel that immediate action will happen," he said, adding that most inmates also don't believe they will be executed while Biden is president.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
-
Canadian man dies in ICE custody
Speed Read A Canadian citizen with permanent US residency died at a federal detention center in Miami
-
GOP races to revise megabill after Senate rulings
Speed Read A Senate parliamentarian ruled that several changes to Medicaid included in Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" were not permissible
-
Supreme Court lets states ax Planned Parenthood funds
Speed Read The court ruled that Planned Parenthood cannot sue South Carolina over the state's effort to deny it funding
-
Trump plans Iran talks, insists nuke threat gone
Speed Read 'The war is done' and 'we destroyed the nuclear,' said President Trump
-
Trump embraces NATO after budget vow, charm offensive
Speed Read The president reversed course on his longstanding skepticism of the trans-Atlantic military alliance
-
Trump judge pick told DOJ to defy courts, lawyer says
Speed Read Emil Bove, a top Justice Department official nominated by Trump for a lifetime seat, stands accused of encouraging government lawyers to mislead the courts and defy judicial orders
-
Mamdani upsets Cuomo in NYC mayoral primary
Speed Read Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani beat out Andrew Cuomo in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary
-
Supreme Court clears third-country deportations
Speed Read The court allowed Trump to temporarily resume deporting migrants to countries they aren't from