Congressional Democrats Urge Biden to Stop Seeking Death Penalty

One month after the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) stopped executions for present federal death row prisoners, over twenty congressional Democratic leaders urged the Biden administration to go even further Monday and stop seeking the death sentence in all future cases. Moreover, the anti-death penalty supporters force the Biden government to stop capital punishment permanently.

In an open letter, seventeen Senate Democrats – including Majority leader Whip Dick Durbin asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to stop federal prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in any pending or new criminal cases. Whereas the justice department conducts a review of capital punishment from Garland. Four other Democrats from House also confined a similar letter Monday, with Jerrold Nadler, the House Judiciary Committee Chair, and his allies pressing Garland to stop all participation in the capital punishment system by no more chasing the death penalty.

Both these letters acclaimed Garland for imposing a halt on executions in early July. Still, they warned that the justice department could make way for a future U.S. president to start executions again if it keeps pursuing the death penalty in new cases. A spokesman of the justice department told Forbes that the department would assess the letters but refused to comment more on the issue.

Critics Cast the Death Penalty as cruel and unnecessary

The Democratic leaders cited the former Republican President Donald Trump – who ended a seventeen-year-long pause in federal executions in 2020 and put thirteen people to death in six months – as a warning tale. Criticizers cast the death sentence as cruel and unnecessary, but ex-Attorney General William Barr indicated the horrific crimes for which some prisoners were convicted and claimed the justice department was working to carry over the sentence according to the U.S. justice system.

The letter of Senate Democrats said that they listened the alarmed when the previous Republican government ended the seventeen-year pause on the federal death penalty. Further, it added that rejecting the death penalty and adding more convict persons to the death sentence could reduce the risk that a future government will proceed with federal death penalties at a similar rate.

Joe Biden, the President of the United States, vowed to push for the removal of the death penalty on the election campaign trail last year. However, until now, the justice department provisionally delayed death penalties until an extensive review of the practice completed, and the DOJ pull out death penalty requests in seven continuing federal cases last month, according to the report of the New York Times.

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