It seems to me that undue emphasis is placed on DNA evidence being the only reason unjust convictions are overturned. This results in a 20-year-old hideous crime being validated because the DNA evidence supports the defendants' conviction and it's OK to murder them with Barr's new drug. How many prisoners, convicted of hideous crimes, have their sentences overturned because of non-DNA evidence such as someone confessing to the crime a couple of decades later? Is the family to be told, "Sorry, but there was no DNA involved, and this confession is valid, but Barr has already your loved one. You should be thankful knowing that he or she was innocent."
1
Is it overly cynical to note that the victims of the 5 prisoners selected for execution include children? I fear that this is (at least partially) a partisan political decision where any opposition to resuming executions will be included in campaign materials for Trump that describe opponents (socialists) as supporting child killers.
6
Only a violent and vengeful society like ours could bring back the death penalty. Another example of how brutal our empire is!
9
Trump and the GOP are suppose to be pro life. They are an accessory to murder as is their supporters. Very shameful.
7
Killing people only diminishes us as a Country and as Civil Society and changes nothing else. #AbhorrentHumanBehavior
5
i can’t believe any civilised country still even discusses capital punishment... much less if it is the worlds leading power... what millennium are we living in????
11
More Republican cruelty. It seems to be wired into their DNA, their wallets, and their social circles.
9
Where is the intense outcry from the US Catholic Bishops and their followers who are pro-life?
11
There is no capital punishment in more civilized parts of the world, like Canada and the European Union. America’s retention of this barbaric practice is just another example of its frightening cult of violence. As Jesus said, “A nation that lives by the sword will perish by the sword.” Our beloved America is perishing.
4
People are either for or against the death penalty, but resuming it federally is more than a little creepy when it's done by this administration.
Mr. Trump is insensitive to the nuances of what the Constitution allows; he's already politicized the Justice Department; he brays about prosecuting the media; he calls political opponents 'traitors'.
Combining the last with new enthusiasm for the death penalty in federal cases makes me very uneasy.
34
@Grennan
Ditto. If a political opponent should be locked up for daring to run against Trump, would execution be the next step?
8
@Pecan
Could be....
It's kind of surprising that much of the reaction has stayed with the usual death penalty discussion instead of on the specifics of *this* administration and whether it's a good idea to bring it anywhere near a president who's 'joked' about shooting border crossers; enthused about 'locking her up'; and has never spoken about his duty under the Constitution, only his rights and power.
We already know he's a vigilante sort of guy and had no grasp of the nuances of this punishment back when he was just a member of the population placing ads to demand the death penalty return, based on his certainty that the Central Park boys were guilty--even before the jury verdict.
9
Why this, now? There is overwhelming evidence from research on the criminal "justice" system that capital punishment does not deter crime and that many innocent people have been put to death, and that those who die at the hands of the state are disproportionately African Americans and Latino. With all the knowledge against the death penalty that we have developed o over the past three decades, why this decision by Attorney General Barr now? To this Texan--in a state that continues to put to death far more than it's fair share of incarcerated people--this decision by the "Justice" Department smells, smacks (insert your favorite verb here) of an effort to gin up the Republican base for 2020. Like so many Americans, I will be working to ensure that we have a different president and attorney general soon to put an end to capital punishment.
5
Although these convicted miscreants deserve execution, why does the attorney General need to make this a priority now? Because Trump’s base voters need to watch as revenge and loathing goes forward. It’s like red meat fed to a hungry lion.
4
Don't forget Barr's dad hired Epstein to teach (without qualifications or a degree) in a private school....watch Barr closely he is weilding more power than he has
4
Murder is still murder no matter who commits it.
4
I have a question for AG Barr, if, as has happened countless times, especially to people of color, it turns out through investigation that an executed person was 'exonerated' and false witness, fake evidence was used to convict that person, will those responsible then get the death penalty for murder to include police, prosecutors, false witnesses?
Asking for a friend...America and people of all colors, races, ethnicities, and gender identity.
1
At the risk of being labeled a raving conspiracy theorist, I believe that the administration's resumption of the death penalty is another ploy in their game plan. Get the country used to Federal executions with 5 despicable men so that the more questionable, political ones won't create waves. But, you know, this administration definitely lends itself to conspiracy theories.
6
Thou shall not kill. I thought the US was a Christian country. Another death does not provide justice nor does it bring back the deceased. It does, however, provide revenge.
6
I have to be honest - and this from a leftie and progressive - that I am not particularly concerned about the 'plight' of the five individuals named in this piece. Their crimes are truly evil and vile. Do I support the death penalty - no; do I care what happens to these five convicted felons - no . . .
8
@PS
Do you care about the citizens forced to carry out the killings? Would you be prepared to perform the executions at Trump and Barr's orders?
4
My conscience tells me death penalty is barbaric, unworthy of a civilized society as America. However, reality of the number of massacres that had taken place lately in America makes me believe that an exception should be made. Dylann S. Roof and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev mentioned in this article should have faced the death panelty long time ago. The tax we paid to the government should be for other purpose then to keep these mass killers alive for another 50+ years. I believe mass killers are incapable of compassion, love, empathy, qualities that make us human.
2
As repulsive as these men are the US is one of the very few countries in the world that executes prisoners, and all the other countries are dictatorships.
I was just fine not knowing about any of these men and I would prefer they went back to prison where they lived in anonymity to die.
7
Their executions can't come soon enough. If the law is to mean anything it has to be carried out and these criminals were condemned long ago through all the usual processes.
Very glad to see this news!
4
It is an axiom that no civilised country has the death penalty.
5
This is a circus act for the amusement of Trump fans. It is just an opportunity to give them what they want--someone to blame and punish-punish-punish. As an extra treat, it will annoy many liberals.
But, like so many Trump administration actions, it will accomplish nothing good.
4
The timing of this announcement again demonstrates how arbitrary and political capital punishment is. Does anyone else see a wedge issue for the 2020 election?
1
The reason for doing this is likely the desire to look tough, a theme for this administration. I do not consider the death penalty to be the worst punishment. Personally, if I had a choice between 30, 40, 50 years in a small cell or being put to death, I'd chose the latter.
Since many violent crimes are crimes of passion or opportunistic, the death penalty is unlike to be much of a deterrent. As to terrorists, many of them plan to die in the midst of their act, so no thought of punishment would deter them.
2
I hope everyone is taking note of the millions of people protesting in Puerto Rico to rid themselves of their dreadful governor.There is power in numbers.How much longer will we put up with this nightmare???
5
After reading what these killers did to their victims, the vast majority of Americans would want one or more of them executed, including me.
Hate to break it to you, but Trump has always been for the death penalty, going back to a time where even he never dreamed he would gain any elected office, yet alone the presidency.
3
Bob Dylan told us decades ago: "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows."
2
The death penalty should only be for white collar crime and crimes of office. It would deter fraudulent bankers and others whose crimes are rational in nature.
6
Okay, let’s say that capital punishment is the punishment some deserve. Is it the punishment innocent people deserve? Because a small percentage of those on death row are likely innocent. We’re not talking about a missile strike, where collateral damage is a necessary reality. Capital punishment is a choice we’re making, I argue out of an instinctual urge for revenge, not punishment. Innocent people’s lives should not be endangered so we can execute those who “deserve” it.
1
The elimination of these 5 prisoners really won't deter crime. Why bother? Oh yeah, this new policy is to appease "the base", the Evangelicals, the religious right. Well, I grew up in a supremely religious household and my parents would NEVER ever, ever think the death penalty was the right choice, even for a person who caused the most heinous crime.
2
In China, many serious crimes, such as drug trafficking, are subject to death penalty commonly, which is why people donot do the deal easily. some sins cannot be forgiven, only pay by inmates bloodshed.
I oppose the death penalty. Not because many of these killers and rapists and child molesters don't deserve it. In my sense of justice these crimes are pure evil and yes, they have no right to life after doing these horrible crimes. I oppose it because the death penalty is the perfect punishment that needs a perfect justice system to rationalize it. Our justice system is far from perfect. I am old enough to have witnessed our justice system convict innocent people of crimes, and let guilty people walk away free. Research the Innocence Project and you will learn about the multiple cases of false convictions.Since we know that our justice system makes frequent mistakes I have a question for those who argue for the death penalty. For every 100 executions how many "mistakes" are acceptable? All other punishments in our justice system have options to make up for the errors that we make through restitution. The death penalty does not provide for any system for paying for our mistakes.
1
Can't prove it but there is little doubt that most of those opposed to the death penalty change their minds if a young child of theirs is murdered. When people's attitudes are tested by the terrible reality of a child murder all prior beliefs go out the window.
3
It's highly dubious that the murder rate will diminish as a result of this action since its not about deterrence but only retribution. Stricter gun laws would certainly work better but neither McConnell nor Barr is interested in that.
3
The death penalty is barbaric! And it serves no purpose. I believe in life w/o parole for the worst. And limited appeals for this group. But, I also believe that no judge should be permitted to deny DNA tests for prisoners who are trying to prove their innocence. And once DNA proves innocence, there must be a requirement to release the prisoner within 60 days. There are states whose judges deny DNA tests , and prosecutors who refuse to to release prisoners. That has to stop!
2
There is an accompanying article in this edition of the New York Times that dispassionately relates the case facts of the five people who are slated to be executed by the federal government. All the commenters who are torturing their souls about AG Barr's decision to execute these offenders should make sure they read it. There is no ambiguity there. The defendants in these five cases are irredeemable, the victims are were all totally without fault in any way in their deaths, and the facts are horrific. Which of course, is why federal prosecutors sought the death penalty in the first place and why these offenders where subsequently chosen by juries to die. Even the New York Times couldn't bring themselves to present a sympathetic picture of any of these death row inmates.
As a career prosecutor who routinely sat across the desk from the families of victims just like these, my sympathy lies only with them. To satisfy their own sense of moral self-validation, however, death penalty opponents have written those people out of their moral equation. I reach the opposite conclusion, If executing offenders like these, who committed crime like these, can in any measure ease the pain that victim families will suffer for the rest of their lives, we should be happy to do it.
1
How completely creepy - and I doubt accidental - that the day after Mueller testifies Barr, who has been doing what? for the past however many weeks, comes out with this? If this is not a retaliatory show of sinister power, I don't know what else it could be.
I do not support the death penalty. There are times I wish I did, but I don't. I believe it is wrong to execute people, and even the slightest chance that a mistake could be made should be enough of a deterrent to using it as a means of punishment.
This news made me feel sick today. Mr. William Barr is not a good man, he does not pursue good causes, and he does not work for a good man.
3
I worked in law enforcement most of my life. I know, beyond any doubt, that people with money can beat the death penalty. I also believe that no matter how bad some people are; that there is some degree of good in everybody (however slight). There may be redemption. Also, even "DNA" evidence has a failure rate.
And, then there's this: when you hear about a foreign country exercising the death penalty and you immediately think that the execution(s) were likely "extra judicial," unfair, brutal, and barbaric, then think about how people in other countries think about executions in the USA. You may say you don't care about what people in other countries think (and we're "not like them"). Okay . . . but just take a moment to remind yourself about what YOU have thought about executions in other countries. Something doesn't feel right about it when others are doing it.
2
Fundamentally, capital punishment provides a simple solution to an extremely complex problem. I don't think anyone is born a murderer. Growing up and then living in an environment where crime, drugs and poverty dominate will inevitably bring forth situations where murder is committed. Ultimately, the government/municipality is responsible for ensuring that its citizens can live a life in a reasonably safe milieu which is conducive to raising a family, being a teenager and growing old. When this fails, and the end result is a society ridden with poverty and horrendous violence, including murder, should not the government take partial responsibility for the actions of the people it let down instead of just simply killing them?
1
As we continue our transformation into a despotic, oligarchic and cruel regime, it is worth noting that the ideological mentor of the "Justices" either appointed by Trump or stolen by Mitch McConnell once ruled in a death penalty case that "actual innocence " is not a bar to executions if procedural deadlines were missed.
"This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable."
With a few more seats on the High Court our fate is sealed.
Those first five are some real winners. Bottom line is that so long as the death penalty has not been repealed, it is definitely hard to defend these murderers. If capital punishment is an option and a jury has chosen it, then it must be carried out unless there is a reversal on appeal. Not saying that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment option, just saying that it is almost dishonorable to the jury and society that has chosen it to not carry it out.
1
Given the current administration, I’m kind of more worried about the slippery slope of this. Perhaps next it will seem expedient to dispatch political prisoners, persons the government perceives have little value, persons the government believes set an ‘unworthy’ example of ‘proper’ citizenship, academics and journalists critical of administration policies.
It’s not that hard to imagine. Of course it’s difficult to summon up compassion for child murderers, torture murderers, etc. Putting that aside, however, I think it’s imperative we include in the debate the potential for government expansion of execution into areas such as non-murder political offenses.
There are currently societies where homosexuality and extramarital sexual activity are capital offenses. That may seem incredibly far fetched here in the USA, but from my point of view there is quite a bit going on already which three years ago I would never have dreamed would be occurring.
2
There are truly compelling arguments in favor of capital punishment as a philosophical concept. I have to say I agree with them. However we certainly do not and likely will never live in a society with a perfect (as in, without human error) justice system. Human bias in a trial by jury will never be totally nonexistent. There will always be wrongly accused. There will always be human error in the administration of capital punishment, whether by lethal injection or otherwise, making a truly and perfectly "humane" mode of capital punishment unattainable. Without even touching upon racial inequality in the American justice system, the economic impact of lethal injection versus life imprisonment, or the often illegal procurement of the drugs used for punishment, I do wish Barr would refrain from continuing this policy into the new age we seem to have found ourselves in here in this country.
1
The US is in illustrious company with North Korea, Saudi Arabia and various other tyrannical regimes. It is in this respect truly exceptional in the Western World. Whereas countries like Russia, Mexico or Turkey have long abandoned this inhumane practice, it stubbornly persists here, in an otherwise enlightened country so advanced in Science and Art and with a self image of fairness and mercy. The only conclusion I can draw is that it has something to do with the Religious founding of the country and a deep rooted religious fundamentalist mindset. Either that or too many Hollywood movies where the bad guy always pays the ultimate price.
3
I think many of the commenters are not using the word “punishment” accurately, as for example “the criminal committing the heinous crime gets the punishment they deserve by being put to death.” Punishment is an action that is intended to reduce the frequency of a particular behavior deemed wrong. A decrease in the behavior must be observed before such an action can be called a punishment.
When a person is executed, he/she will have no chance of showing a decreased tendency to do what he/she was executed for. So executing someone is not punishing them personally.
Often these commenters will mention “deterrence”, by which executing a person accused of a terrible crime will reduce the frequency of other people committing the same crime. Though this seems like a form of punishment as described above, there is overwhelming evidence that shows that the death penalty has no deterrent effect.
So why have the death penalty? It’s often politically advantageous — the proponents could get higher approval ratings for being tough on crime. But what are the emotional reasons behind this support? I think that there are two primary ones: anger at the crimes themselves, which if inflamed leads to feelings of revenge, and fear of the crimes, which often leads to the belief that the death penalty would be a deterrent. Such anger and fear are understandable, but the presence of the death penalty has an inflammatory effect on them, enlarges them, so is detrimental to society.
3
Like most everything coming out of the Trump administration, this is simply more red meat to stoke his base. Whether or not anyone is actually executed, his supporters (most of which oppose abortion) will cheer that he's getting tough on criminals.
Oh, and then there's that testimony from Robert Mueller about elections tampering and possible obstruction. Quick everyone, look over here at the shiny object!
21
President Trump likes to portray himself as the tough guy. He likes to talk about "wiping out" countries He once bought a full page ad in the New York Times calling for the death penalty for 5 teenagers that he called "animals" for a viscous rape of a young woman. One small issue. They were 100% not guilty. The actual perp confessed, the DNA was a perfect match to the actual killer, not the five innocent kids who ,if he had his way, would have died for a crime they did not commit. Trump has never admitted his mistake, still tries to claim that the State of New York should have never given them money for their error the justice system committed. You would think his obvious error in judgement regarding the Central Park five would make President Trump rethink his decision to bring back the death penalty. But not Trump. Despite the scientific facts that prove he was 100% wrong in this case his giant ego will not allow him to admit his error. He still think those innocent men should have been killed.
12
Great because there is a certain current president who has committed treason against the USA and what the punishment for treason?
14
Good ! The justice the victims deserve is that the criminals get the punishment they deserve.
11
The death penalty is problematic because of the non-zero probability of executing someone wrongfully convicted.
Not because dispatching unspeakably evil monsters like these five is “barbaric,” “cruel,” or “inhumane.” Not because it puts the U.S. in league with North Korea and Saudi Arabia, where innocents are jailed, tortured, and executed on a routine basis. And not because it makes our justice system equivalent to a man who rapes and murders a child, an assertion that is beyond preposterous.
Yet I read such sentiments again and again expressed by individuals with whom I agree on virtually every other issue. And I finally understand why so many otherwise reasonable people loathe liberals.
6
Well, I have to work every day, so I hope the executions can be streamed and saved till I’ve done the dishes.
9
Barr is such a good Catholic- has he read any of the church's teachings on capital punishment? What a hypocrite.
16
People who support the death penalty should spend time listening to stories of those assisted by The Innocence Project. It will open your eyes - it did mine.
9
As a campaign coordinator for a local chapter of Amnesty International, I have studied the effect that the death penalty as well as actual executions have upon the crime and society. There is not rationale for the idea that state sponsored murder leads to any good outcome.
It doesn't reduce crime. It doesn't bring solace to surviving relatives. It does serve to normalize the use of force as a means of controlling the most powerless segments of society.
Amnesty International holds that the death penalty breaches human rights, in particular the right to life and the right to live free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Both rights are protected under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948.
This is a huge step backward toward barbarity. One that is part of a general trend that now clearly shows that Trump and his ministers aim to undermine civil and humane law and begin a government that rules by fear.
10
@Richard Bennett And who exactly elected Amnesty International to dictate policy on any matter?
Not putting these killers to death is inhumane to the victims families and loved ones.
2
The death penalty serves no useful purpose other than revenge. As heinous as their crimes were it would be better that they rot in prison than killing them. I am not religious but doesn’t god forgive sins if someone is truly repentant? Obviously some of them will never repent but that does not give the state to deny sinners a chance.
6
Executions to start in the month of December... the same month we celebrate the birth of Christ. Not that it would be less wrong at any time, this is just ironic timing. Also, a principle is a principle is a principle, it's not about the criminals or the nature of their crimes - life is either precious or it isn't.
7
Trump, playing to his base.
10
Trump has wanted to execute people for a long time. Remember his calls to kill the Central Park Five?
10
Vile, utterly, brutally vile.
There is a singular reason they are doing this.
To further numb and inure the American public to public murder by the state.
If our federal government kills people all the time, it won't be bother us as much when they begin to execute scapegoated groups extrajudicially and as graphic, terrorizing population control.
Authoritarian, fascist monsters.
18
So I read the article about the group of men and two women who are set to be executed....
And I’m entirely fine with the federal government removing them from this earthly plane. Seems all of them fear the death penalty which is comical considering it’s what they delivered to their victims.
16
So basically the GOP is pro-life until they decide to kill you.
26
There are a lot of strong feelings that you are expressing, here. They are genuinely felt. You cite some statistics which can be verified. You state some opinions which reflect your conclusions, which you do believe. At least one cannot be verified with any reliability, that African Americans are persecuted for doing things that white people do with impunity. There is no way to know if this is accurate.
1
One needs to be the least concerned for those who deserve to be executed.
To be the most concerned of the probability of an innocent person to be executed. The records show us this has happened many times in the past.
2
To be opposed to the death penalty is NOT to condone to crimes of these horrible humans. Emotionally, I want these carefully-chosen, disgusting murderers to die. That said, this is an opening for our country to kill people who are much less carefully chosen, and as a group almost certainly less white and less carefully chosen. We are being manipulated.
10
The death penalty is barbaric just like the terrible twins Barr and trump.I'm surprised they waited this long to resurrect capital punishment.They must have really been rattled about Mueller's testimony as well they should be.The public got to see what horrid people they are so now they've got to double down as a diversion which is pretty convoluted if you think about it.
For sure the terrible twins know that most inmates have no money and are of mixed race.Keep in mind one of the most heinous acts trump did prior to becoming the illegal president was taking out ads in several papers calling for the execution of the Central Park 5. Who after spending many years in jail, were released when the real perpetrator came forth.This awful decision is right in their wheelhouse.
Many years ago,I asked myself if I could ever sentence someone to death, beyond a reasonable doubt and my answer was a resounding NO.It's a cinch for these two vile bros.
9
The Republicans - all about protecting life in utero, while caring nothing about putting people to death.
15
Thou shall not kill (oh, these Christians are selective in their read of the Bible). Politically expedient “Christians”.
13
My reasons for opposing the death penalty at any level for any crime are simply logical: if the state condemns murder, it should not commit it.
19
@Wiltontraveler-So I assume you are against all US military operations as well?
Such hypocrisy... the people who defend the lives of unborn children want to kill the troubled souls who engage in violent acts?
Are we a civilized nation or are we losing our grip on being humans?
We are either in favor of killing or we in favor of preserving life.
An emotionally stable person will choose life of the unborn, life of the violent criminal, peace and harmony among peoples.
The emotionally troubled choose abortion, capital punishment, war and violence against those they fear or despise.
Who are we Americans, as a collective people?
8
And so it continues... Unabated... while the Dems focus hopelessly on the Mueller report... time to start focusing on and bringing attention to these issues...
2
televised or streamed?
7
Why can't the US grow up and be a civilized nation? Look at the statistics. The Death penalty does not deter crime and creates wrongful convictions and executions.
8
I am sure there will be massive protests by those that are pro-life because all life is sacred right??? All I hear is crickets....
13
Good god, whenever I think this administration could not possibly get worse, it does. The death penalty is barbaric and should be abolished.
9
We can be just like the Saudis !!
10
Just wondering - how does Trump and Barr's position on the death penalty relate to their views on right-to-life and abortion? I mean, both are human lives. Since both men so strongly believe in the death penalty, are they willing to give the injection, or do they delegate someone else to do it? Just asking...
7
What horrible humans the 5 selected seem to be, for having killed people they brought under their power.... They should rot in prison for as long as possible.
Perhaps this Attorney General Barr ought to be tried for Attempted Murder, something he is saying he's perfectly willing to do.
2
Pro-life Republicans?
6
Yes, innocents have been executed, but we're in the 21st Century now.
When guilt is established beyond a shadow of a doubt, then capital punishment is moral and praiseworthy.
Please don't say "all life is precious" and similar nonsense. Or, if you really believe that, then what about the life of the murderer's innocent victim.
6
There are still cases where people accused of capital crimes have been found innocent. We have NOT yet shown that we are incapable of convicting the wrong person. And this push is being led by a President who called for execution of the Central Park Five even after it became known that they might be innocent. Men like Trump and his legal and judicial appointees simply should not have power to execute.
It is beyond certain that innocent people have been, and will again, be killed.
Capital punishment is expensive, inhumane, and for those who are religious, against the teachings of God.
Also, the optics for this country are terrible.
The United States is considered a backward country, and we have just confirmed the world’s low opinion of us.
10
The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.”
― George R.R. Martin
8
I started reading the 'Reader Picks' and thought I'd see grief, disgust, and profound sadness at the heinousness of the crimes these men committed. I'd thought I'd read something about the victims, particularly the children, and the horrific way they were tortured and killed. All I saw were comments about how the death penalty is not a deterrent and how it's barbaric. Did you read the article about the crimes? There's a link right in the story. If there is no question these men are guilty, I'm kind of on board with the executions, I'm sorry to say. I'm shocked that the comments are all so intellectual and not one, at least as far as I got, mentioned the victims. I'm a Democrat, but I understand full well why Trump won and why people support Republicans. Republicans are, at their roots, about personal responsibility. I realize they take it to a cruel and often ludicrous degree, but ignoring these men's crimes seems equally cruel, and downright bizarre. We are not making America great by intellectualizing everything. I wish we Democrats could get on board with a message of personal responsibility. The crimes were heinous. The executions are meant to be punishment; they have nothing to do with deterrence.
10
What is the punishment going to achieve? Opposing the death penalty doesn't mean condoning the crime; it simply means that we acknowledge the intrinsic value of all human life - not only for the sake of the condemned but for all our sakes. Once we start diminishing the value of certain lives, we diminish our own. Which is why I oppose elective abortion.
3
This is ridiculous when very often the world reads about persons who have been wrongly convicted but have served years in jail, but it seems par for the course but n the new American world. Sad.
1
I find it disturbing that the Godly people in this nation want to take away one's opportunity to come to the Lord so to speak and deprive them of the salvation, grace and mercy that they preach.
4
What a lovely group of people our federal government is.
2
Barr and Trump concerned with comfort for the victims. That is about as ridiculous a statement that one can make.
8
I thought I was against the death penalty until I read the horrific things these monsters did. Horrifying.
16
The Trump Administration fortuitously reinstates the death penalty, just in time for Trump to be eligible for indictment for treason when he becomes a private citizen in 2020.
13
If Jeff Sessions started this effort and Barr put it forth, both men are no better than a Mafia killer that gave a wave of the hand to end lives. They are Romans. They will fade from history.
2
There is no doubt that brutal crimes are committed and justice needs to rendered. Whether we believe in the death penalty or not, the justice system isn't flawless and innocents are wrongly convicted. Reinstating the death penalty gives power to those whose misjudgments will lead to irreversible consequences for the innocent, while those guilty will be free. Trump still can't admit that the Central Park 5 were wrongly convicted of a brutal rape and assault. So, how are citizens suppose to trust the Federal judiciary in correcting wrong prosecutions?
3
GOOD! These people have gone through the justice system and the verdict handed down. Don't like it? Then change the law.
4
I guess I don't care much about keeping ultra-violent criminals alive, past the possibility of accidentally executing someone who is innocent. The chance of that is shrinking but not gone. However, executions are quite costly. My reading on the issue leads me to believe that it's actually cheaper to just put someone in solitary until they expire naturally than to do all of the court work. If this is true, so long as they can't get back out, do whatever costs less.
3
Once again . . . So much for “rule of law.” Why we write all these laws that people only turn around and regret later is beyond me. Classic example here of freedom and liberty to be heartless and stupid. America, love it or leave it!
1
Blah, blah, blah, you want to end the death penalty the campaign on it. All this moning and attacking Barr, Trump and Trump supporters. It's the law. Where were the Democratic candidates yesterday on this issue. Where in the polls is abolishing the death penalty. Stop being reactive. Oh how smug we all are, let's see who can write the most clever anti- Trump comment.
5
It disgusts me that the death penalty is supported by the so-called Pro Life contingency. The most utterly hypocritical policy imaginable.
6
@Eric. I think you are wrong. It is the value they place on life that makes the death the most severe of punishments.
5
Yet another brilliant idea from the Pro Life GOP
5
Lack of killing drugs, why not resort to the barbarism that is still practiced now or in history. The ax, sword, spike, fire, noose, garrot, piano wire, guns, rifles, drowning, guillotine and many more that sadists can dream up.This President a man without conscience and lack of ego somehow has his satraps and the "Christian Right" the New Testament anybody, with or without his knowledge set us back to the Middle Ages. I for one am appalled but not surprised.
2
I would hazard a guess that amongst Trump’s popular minority of supporters “public support” for state-sanctioned murder has not dwindled. As there is no body of evidence that capital punishment deters crime Trump’s resumption of this barbaric practice makes sense only as a political move to shore up support amongst his base.
4
Rule of law apparently only applies when the President needs a boost offered by pretending to be tough on crime — well just some of them — Yes, the administration of justice requires pending executions for William Barr to suddenly interest himself in respecting the law. Time to keep up appearances or something.
3
By reinstituting the death penalty, the US government demonstrates it’s no more humane, no more capable of mercy, no more civilized than the criminals it executes.
7
To placate every anti-death penalty proponents, all of those currently in the various states’ death rows should be immediately set free, and put under the care of those who claim “cruel and unusual punishment “, and wait until they come around in the middle of the night asking for a beer. Or their sentences commuted to life in prison, with all the perks of a resort, at the expense of the US taxpayer. There’s no need to punish those exemplary members of a civilized society, never mind the atrocious and terrible crimes they committed. In the meantime, allow them to mingle with the rest of the incarcerated population. After all their victims are already dead.
3
The choice is not between the death penalty and freeing murderers.
Life without parole prevents the murderer from killing again and allows for freeing a falsely convicted person.
Once executed an innocent person can not be brought back to life.
4
Without getting into the debate about the effectiveness, expense or ethics of the death penalty, the only reason for Trump to reinstate this federally - right now - is as a play for votes and publicity. Period.
His talk about executing "drug dealers" echoes Duterte; his concern with punishing child murderers doesn't hold up in light of his lack of concern for living children, whether incarcerated at the border, or living in poverty across the US.
8
Shame on Tim Scott given his knowledge of executions and the disproportionate of Black men executed. I am sure Graham would like to see a good old fashioned Southern style execution again.
2
If it was a no-escape/legal requirement for the President, whoever they may be, to be right there, seeing a person being killed, would that make that President feel any different ? YOU approve of it, YOU be feet away. You watch. Hope you sleep well.
4
This administration is cartoonish in its evil.
Who are these low-life traitors and criminals to execute anyone in enforcement of the law?
What a joke!
10
Maybe Good old Jeff Epstein will be the first recipient. You know, to keep him from talking about you-know-who.
9
Trump is probably still pushing to get the death penalty for the Central Park 5. That alone should demonstrate how immoral the death penalty is.
9
Fox News will be televising the executions, live.
7
The death penalty is a barbarous relic and an expensive one too. Hopefully it will be effectively abandoned over time. Until then we can at least rest assured that there will be no repeat of the depraved mocking displayed toward Texas death row inmate Karla Faye Tucker by the governor at the time and later worst President ever.
3
Tim Scott knows better. A black man as an ally of Graham & Barr? Over federal executions? He should be deeply ashamed.
5
Where are the pro-life protesters on this issue?
13
@William . . .. BINGO! As my catholic priest told me: "they're anti-abortion. Not pro-life." 'nuff said.
5
America is one of the few modern countries that hasn't abolished the death penalty.
And one of the few that still lacks affordable health care as a right for all citizens.
And one of the few that lets citizens carry guns everywhere, and identifies this with Freedom.
And where a movement to ban abortion is gaining strength.
We keep fighting about these issues that other countries found solutions and agreement about decades or generations ago.
The US media has to start analyzing the underlying attitudes and social norms that account for sharp differences between us and the rest of the civilized world.
Interview people in the countries that have banned executions, have health care for all, sensible gun restrictions, and legal abortion as national policy. The Times, with its international resources could do this enlightening project, and ask readers from all over to submit comments.
Compare, contrast, clarify.
9
On every important issue Trump's administration either goes backwards or blocks any progress going forward.
Its really uncanny how consistently wrong they are!
8
Every day, some new atrocity, with plenty of cover provided by whatever show is currently appearing center stage. This week it was Robert Mueller's appearance, generously put on by my moronic fellow Democrats. Next week, who knows?
The gates are closing on compassion, civility, honesty, integrity, and the very core of our humanity as individuals and as a nation.
Today I read that impeachment is less likely now because there was a lack of "electricity" in Mueller's testimony and, oh heavens, the tv ratings were low.
Today, we begin killing people again for the satisfaction of the people who never have to see it and for the perverse thrill of those who choose to. Executions should be electric enough for those bored by Robert Mueller.
The death penalty. State-sanctioned violence and revenge. We sink another step down the ladder toward the slime.
4
Leave it to the pro-life party to reinstate the death penalty. Republican hypocrisy is really and truly breathtaking, especially in this instance!
8
"Stupid is as Stupid does," Forest Gump
7
William Barr is Trump's most effective election booster. Nothing says red meat than bringing back state sponsored murder.
9
This is a grisly step forward in normalizing totalitarianism. It’s no surprise that the five men chosen to die are all from predominantly red states and have narratives as child killers to exploit.
It’s also not surprising that abortion hating Catholic men like Barr pick a la carte from the church’s principles when it serves their political agendas. The death penalty puts us in company with the worst governments in the world.
We have human beings being held in cages, children dying at the border, women losing their bodily autonomy and now this? It’s time to flip out, because worse is coming.
14
It is incredibly heartwarming to finally see the Times carrying water for Donald Trump and how vindictive administration. The paper of record has finally given in. A spate of articles dismissing Mueller’s testimony, and now the practical support of federal executions under Attorney General Barr. It makes me sick.
In reality, it is disheartening the lengths that American media is going to rationalize and normalize this administration, and the Times should not fall in line here. This administration has given our democracy away. They are cruelty writ large, and execution of their chosen targets is a distraction from Trump’s history with Epstein.
7
What's our Pal going to do: string 'em up on piano wires, for video delight in the game room in Palm Beach, or license the pixels one at a time to Fox News, as confetti for his nightly appearances?
5
Good. It is the only way a civilized society can function.
4
There is nothing civilized about the death penalty.
More distractions, feed the base some raw meat while we fill our pockets and grab power.
8
Sanctity of life GOP? Terrible crimes but my Bible says thou shall not kill. Guess the GOP only applies to the unborn.
6
How telling that the only republican senator is in the picture.
1
Good. For the most humane method, bring back the guillotine or use fentanyl, which seems to work very well. The death penalty should be reserved for criminals convicted of the very worst behavior imaginable. They simply deserve it.
7
@Emerson H: The problem is, who is going to define in a legal sense, what the “worst behavior imaginable” is? One judge’s “worst behavior” could be another’s “very bad behavior”. So for the same crime, one person would get the death penalty, the other not.
Two observations: 1) Where are the white conservative Christian supporters that overuse the phrase “sanctity of life”? 2) Is this another way to justify killing a disproportionate segment of Blacks and Latinos?
7
Further proof that Trump and his minions seek a return to the dark ages. Next stop: public open air executions featuring the guillotine.
8
I'm not for the death penalty because I believe a life in prison is far more punitive than a long-drawn out execution.
Also, knowing the punitive nature of this administration in general, I question the signals it's sending, in terms of cruelty and barbarism, not to mention, a threat hanging over just about anyone should a certain amount of arbitrariness determine it's "deserved."
We already know this administration has little respect for the laws we have. I can't even begin to imagine how this type of punishment could be used by a lawless AG and his lawless president.
9
Time to review death penalty facts: proven more expensive than life imprisonments, proven to be more likely for those who murder whites than persons of color by the Eagle report (I.e. intrinsically biased), currently unable to be done in anything approaching a ‘humane’ manner due to lack of drug availability, more than 160 death row inmates have been exonerated, it is proven to lack deterrent effect. Please allow any opinions you have on this topic and post here to take these into account.
10
@Erin Barnes it’s the multiple appeals that make it more costly- don’t drag it out and it’s cheaper. It’s the left who have threatened boycott of drug manufacturers which has lead, in some cases, to challenges in getting the appropriate medication. The left touts and in some cases celebrates painless doctor assisted suicide but when it comes to providing justice to the killers, rapists and torturers of women, children and the elderly, that practice suddenly becomes cruel and unusual torture.
3
And multiple appeals is the law, don't try to oversimplify such a complex problem. Anyone who doesn't recognize the unfairness with which this is applied is really 'unlearned' on the matter.
8
Remember what company we keep when we kill our prisoners: North Korea and Saudi Arabia will included.
5
“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law”...except when it doesn’t. What a joke the Justice Dept has become under trump/barr.
12
The death penalty is supported by a majority of citizens, it is constitutional and it is appropriate in its application to these instances: the murder and, in some cases, torture of children.
It’s obvious the NYT and other liberals are against it but their opposition makes it no less constitutional or appropriate.
10
@Jack
If you were innocent, and about to be executed, ending any hope that exoneration would free you, you may change your conservative mind.
You can't undo an execution.
6
Except that the justice system is so compromised and imperfect that scores of convicted death row inmates have been exonerated by subsequent evidence.
8
sources, please....
1
The five monsters scheduled for death are certainly excellent representatives for the reinstatement of the death penalty.
13
There is a simple truth to be known to all; The executions are an act of Revenge and terror aimed at the public. The animals call it a Deterrent. It's revenge and terror. All nations ultimately suffer revolutions and it would be unwise to be known to new successful uprising as one who terrorized them. The old saying seems to be relevant; "What goes around, comes around".
As attention is focused on the severity of the crimes committed by those that are executed, everyone misses some important point like the fact that the self proclaimed good Catholics in Government ignore the most important Commandment; "Thou Shalt NOT Kill". So we can say they are not good Catholics and appear to be wolves in Sheep's clothing.
Whatever you think me as being evil or good, I condemn AG Barr, Jeff Sessions, and if Kavanaugh allows the Death sentence to continue, all to eternal damnation, and that's a lot worse than death.
A personal note to the Church; Thank you for excommunicating the Mafia. Now there is more to be done.
"Thou Shalt NOT Kill". Even to atheists, God's commandment makes sense.
6
Is there anything AG Barr wouldn’t do to please the President? From whitewashing the Mueller report, resuming executions, ignoring Congressional subpoenas, to helping Mnuchin hide the tax returns, he’’ll fix it. I’m just afraid of what Barr will be asked to do next.
9
I feel no sympathy for the sociopaths who torture, rape and murder. I wish they'd never been born, so their victims would have been spared unimaginable suffering. But whenever I catch myself wondering if the perpetrators' execution would be best for the world, I'm reminded of the father of one of Anders Breivik's victims, who continues to reject the death penalty for what it says about those who impose it. And I tell myself I should strive to be as big of a person as that guy.
3
Squirrel!
Nothing like revving up a death penalty debate to get the base riled up. Pretty soon we will as great as all those Islamic countries. Or China. Or North Korea.
4
Well of course we are. And, if Trump finds out that he can drown kittens in front of adoring crowds chanting "kill the cat!!" we'll do that, too. ANYTHING that is brutal, cruel, misogynist, racist, greedy, inhumane, deadly, threatening, punitive, belligerent, haughty, despicable, reprehensible, and crass, we will do. That's the country we have become.
15
Oh, look, the base is getting served porterhouse this week. Look how well fed they are!
8
Shameful. As a nation, we now rejoin the ranks of uncivilized societies. In addition, won’t this end renditions by most of our allies, reducing our intelligence?
6
If you’re looking to comfort the loved ones of the victims, why not just hand the convicts over to those same people and let them have their way with them?
2
Horrible!
3
See this for what it is. Manufacture of an election issue to campaign on. It’s a way to convince a previously dormant set of single issue voters to vote Republican even if the Democratic economic policies would be to their benefit. It’s absolutely going to work.
7
Well..... we now know clearly the Republican Party has completely abdicated their ethical, moral, previous party concepts, since early 2016!
Any other questions.
5
Now they’re murderers too?
10
More evidence that we are no longer evolving as a species but rather devolving. Congrats, Trump--bloodlust is great again.
3
Why not have Don Jr. and Eric hunt them down in an enclosed wooded area and televise it? Why not! We’re quickly peeling away any sense of civil decency we have left.
11
There is no low these sociopaths can't reach.
You think they hit bottom and they find something even more immoral and disgusting to do.
I am not proud to be an American.
7
If you have been that hideous of a person to get the “death penalty” sentence, then good riddance. And in today’s era seems ridiculous there could be a botched execution. Thousands of people die daily from a drug over dose.
6
Ignorance grows under Trump.
6
May as well go all out and hold it in a public square and use a guillotine.
3
Have we not evolved past “an eye for an eye”?
State-sanctioned killing is barbaric, unjust, and often kills innocent people. Trump wanted to execute the Central Park Five, later exonerated.
10
Trump still hasn’t apologized for what he wanted to do to the Central Park Five.
7
Wow, the corporate and government billionaire sociopaths sure are emboldened! They are predators on the hunt and nothing seems to satiate their hunger to destroy lives and dismantle our nation.
I blame both parties — the extreme liberals who have no spine for the fight, and the extreme militant republicans who worship fascism. America is now a third world.
2
"The government is not God. It does not have the right to take away that which it can’t return even if it wants to."
- Anton Chekhov
6
I don't think capital punishment works as a deterrent. I'm not opposed to the death penalty, but I don't think it deters anybody. In order to debate the topic, we must first determine whether those in favor of the death penalty support it, because they think it deters violent crime or because they think it's a fitting punishment. It might be a fair punishment for some crimes, but I don't think fear of it deters anybody (unless they are in a Coen brothers movie or something).
I'm still not sure what prison is supposed to do.
a) deter crime
b) punish people for committing crime
c) rehabilitate those who have committed a crime
It can't possibly be passim. We have to agree on the purpose of prison. I say a) and b) and not c).
Or d) protecting society by keeping criminals in a place where they can’t hurt people.
@Heather
Yes. I forgot that.
@Anti-Marx
But I don't think execution serves as d). I don't think one can argue that capital punishment removes a danger from the world (any more than imprisonment does). Perhaps one could argue that execution is more humane than lifetime solitary confinement. I've been a very solitary person, for ten years. I rarely talk with anyone, but I have complete freedom. I can drive or fly to Toronto and stay at the Four Seasons or St. Regis or Shangri-la any time I want to. Is solitude in a four-star hotel any better than solitary confinement in prison? A lot of solitary confinement and prison is sex deprivation, but that can happen inside a marriage too.
This is a logical move. A country built on genocide returns to...genocide!
3
Some people might deserve capital punishment, perhaps. But I’m 100% the death penalty because of the incredibly high percentage of death row inmates that are ultimately exonerated, it’s unbelievable. And if even a single person is slightly at risk of being executed, then we cannot allow a single person to be executed. That’s completely intolerable.
5
So, the pro life crowd proves that they are actually only pro fetus. Amazing.
16
@Brian Hauswirt
They are only "pro-fetus" because they can "use" that stance to turn women into second-class citizens, without the right to control their own bodies.
2
How many innocent died during executions before DNA? With all that we know now about coerced confessions, false police testimony (lying), unreliable eye witnesses, and prosecutorial cheating and other shenanigans, why would they return to an absolute execution for a vague conviction?
4
If Republicans are so vehemently opposed to late term abortions and call it murder, why are they in favor of late adult murder?
4
Barr: “The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
Is "our justice system" a bona fide system of justice or a vengeance system? Is executing someone righting an injustice inflicted by a criminal--correcting wrongs inflicted on society--or just getting even with those responsible for harming families and communities? Does the state-sponsored killing of a human person effectively improve or heal the wounds suffered? Does state-sponsored killing advance the pro-life agenda?
3
No, but it’s a great way for Trump to reduce the number of brown and black people. (Who tend to get the death penalty more often than whites.)
2
Will Barr make sure Individual-1 has a front row seat to each execution? Will Individual-1 give passes to his "best" donors? Will the condemned be required to grovel before Individual-1 and beg for mercy? I bet he would love that.
This is nothing but a disgusting play to "the base."
Deplorable!
3
This is what Fascism looks like, here, today, in the USA
7
Suppose you assume falsely [see below] that the death penalty is a deterrent.
Is it worth risking executing an innocent person so that vicious criminals may be executed.
Is it worth executing no one so that innocent people are not executed even though vicious criminals escape execution.
No and yes.
Two arguments against the death penalty as a deterrent.
Comparison of homicide rates in adjacent states one with the death penalty the other without show no difference.
After a murderous rampage many mass killers kill themselves.
The U.S.A is the only first world Western country that still allows the execution of it's own people. The stain of the Trump atrocities can never be erased!
5
I thought they called it Pro-Life. How did execution get a pass?
4
If the killer has converted his soul and heart to helping others and is not the same person as he was when he committed the murder, do we still kill him?
1
- Resuming prisoner executions
- Separating children from families
- Gutting environmental regulations
- Praising dictators & murderers
- Boasting of sexual assaults
- Cutting taxes for the wealthy
- Reducing food assistance for the poor
- Lying openly and shamelessly
- Ignoring climate change
- Threatening journalists
- Open corruption and nepotism
- Legalizing discrimination
- Demonizing minorities & foreigners
- Arbitrary tariffs
- Weakening vital values & institutions
- Increasing the national debt
- Alienating long-standing allies
- Breaking promises and agreements
It will take America decades to recover from this administration...
32
America’s shadow comes to life
Grieve for the dream of America
4
I am not adamantly against the death penalty. There are some people who simply do not deserve to live. Spare me the retort that I’m playing God. If God could allow these poor victims to suffer for no reason, perhaps someone else should play Him. What I object to is the hap hazard way the death penalty is applied on the state level. For an identical crime, you can get prison time in one state and the death penalty in another. Life and death decisions should not be based on geography. The federal statute is applied the same in all 50 states. So while I normally would object to anything Bill Barr does, he gets a pass on this from me.
3
The death penalty has been abolished in most of the world with no significant increase in crime. If it doesn’t deter crime then what is its purpose? By using the death penalty the US is in some questionable company: https://www.infoplease.com/world/political-statistics/death-penalty-worldwide
2
Was there some unexpected discovery of a Cruelty Deficit in the Trump administration? Otherwise, the cause would seem to be like the answer to a certain canine riddle: "Because he can."
3
Whatever Mr. Barr’s motives, this story is uniquely dark for me. Someone murdered our daughter, Jean, in 1985. She was eight years old. Despite a plea from my wife and me, our district attorney pursued a death sentence. We felt compelled to try and stop it. I testified in the penalty phase of the trial, asking the jury not to vote for execution. We feel fortunate that the jury supported us. Residents of our community from that era remember Jean, not the one killed her. I look at a photograph of Jean every day. She's running wide open across the grass, but it is she who looks still. The world is blurry speed behind her. Much was taken; much abides. Opposing capital punishment is right for us. It’s a choice for life: ours.
25
I’m so sorry for your loss.
2
@Tom Fewel, wow, I don’t cry much but I’m bawling my eyes out right now. God bless you!
1
So this admin is getting ready to kill more people. Whad-da-ya-know. People at borders, people without insurance, people taking unregulated prescription drugs, people fighting our dirty wars and the civilians around them, people fleeing oppressive regimes.
Yum! We really like killing people. Pretty soon it will happen during illegal abortions (the woman, not the nonviable cell mass).
We're so civilized! NOT. Gotta love that 45.
6
Mr. Barr is separating us once more from the community of civilized nations by consigning five people to the execution chamber They may indeed be guilty of the most heinous crimes of the sort that excite a desire for revenge or the belief that such beasts must be prevented from doing more harm by being executed. The problem is not that the "bleeding heart liberals" want to save them but one more insidious: some poor employees of the prison system must perform the executions as described in an Op Ed in the Times written by a warden who had in the course of his career participated in executions. He wrote of the toll these legal killings took on him and those he supervised. The strain over the course of years was terrible almost as if these prison employees had become modern equivalents of the medieval sin eaters.
However, let us grant perhaps that someone must perform the act. If his Jesuit education has so failed him that he feels the need to deliver "justice" to these five inmates, perhaps he can be a direct participant and relieve one warden of the burden on his soul.
6
Executing people will not restore lost mining and manufacturing jobs.
11
Another stunt for the MAGA base. Despicable.
15
The problem with arguments that the death penalty should be reserved for the most heinous of crimes--with opposition to the death penalty for other capital offenses--is the presumption that the penalty is applied to defendants who are actually guilty of a vicious crime. And the presumption that matters of race and economic class do not affect sentencing.
We know, for a fact, that these presumptions are neither valid nor reliable. Of course, it is hard to scold those who nevertheless hold contrary opinions when the
Justices of the Supreme Court also ignore this reality. Actually, it is incomprehensible.
4
yep, in lieu of a health plan
6
Any second now. No, within minutes. Certainly the next hour or two. Definitely tomorrow or the next day. Soon. Very soon.
Franklin Graham and other `christian' (lower case deliberate) evangelicals will denounce this return to barbarism.
Still waiting.
10
The federal death row is small and odd. Roughly half are there for killing other federal prisoners while in prison. The rest are murders during bank robberies, drug deals or while on federal land. Purely political.
2
"U.S. to Resume Executions of Death-Row Inmates"
There are all sorts of arguments against the death penalty, but there is one point no one seems to think about. For the condemned person, it's his or her "Get Out Of Jail Card."
Remember the first inmate who petitioned the court to order his execution date? Gary Gilmore did that in Utah in 1977.
There have been others since that time.
What the execution does is terminate the punishment of the prisoner. It seems that a life with no parole is a much more severe penalty. That person who killed a loved one will spend every last day of his miserable life in that cell.
3
@RetiredGuy
"it's his or her "Get Out Of Jail Card.""
You haven't heard of the "Innocence Project" ?
Even after 20 or more years, some of the innocent are freed and get out of jail.
1
No surprise from this reader. The United States is the home office for violence and retribution. Currently we are militarily engaged in five wars, domestically, we play gun violence between the police and criminals, not to mention the innocent caught in the crossfire. So, add executions to the list and you have the Western world’s most violent country. What a disgrace.
4
Food stamps slashed one day, the death penalty revived the next. What's the next top for this awful administration?
8
Back to the third world we go.
5
All the people slated for execution certainly look like they deserve it. Reading about their crimes makes me angry. It revives the anger I felt when my best friend from high school was murdered, and I want them to suffer and die.
But these instincts are not a desire for justice, they are a desire for revenge. When we as a society give in to these base qualities, we don’t serve justice. We damage ourselves.
12
All my anger never satiates the thirst when followed through, and never fixes any problems. I want it to lead to and end, but it justs fuels the next round. Well put.
3
@Chickpea
I’m not sure it’s that pat and simple. There can beauty in solemn retribution ... and facile hypocrisy in
rote forgiveness.
3
So, the Central Park Five would have been executed before they could be found innocent. If Trump ran the zoo ......
10
I'm a centrist Democrat. I'm pleased to see this. My cousin and his friend (one white, one black) were abducted by two youths who were trying to get into a gang by carjacking and murdering someone. My cousin was thrown in the trunk of a car as he came out of a convenience store one evening, his mouth, hands, and feet duct-taped. His friend was made drive while the two gang youths sat in the backseat and directed him to a remote area. My cousin was taken out of the trunk, tortured, and then shot in the head multiple times while his friend was made to watch my cousin's brains explode out of his head. His friend made a run for it, was shot, but survived, thank goodness. When those two young youths were tried as adults and given the death penalty, I made sure that when their respective times came, I requested to be in the room to witness their lives being taken from them. All I could think about was that final terror-filled ride in the dark trunk of the car my cousin had, and those last moments of torture, pain, and utter fear. I rejoiced when I watched those two young men put to death. I've never missed a wink of sleep. If you haven't been through this kind of dynamic, and are an armchair quarterback who just reads newspaper articles and online social media rants about the death penalty (either for or against), you might have an opinion about the death penalty, but as far as I'm concerned, your opinion is ignorant and uninformed.
8
Why do you start out with your political affiliation? State sanctioned murder has no political basis....eye for an eye is baseless defense....god sees all and is the ultimate judge....
2
What your cousin suffered is unspeakably horrific and I am deeply sorry. I don’t think it’s wrong that his murderers were executed. But I remain against the death penalty because as long as even one innocent person could be mistakenly sentenced to death (and we know that has happened before), it should not be legal. As far as I know, there is no way to prove with utter certainty that every “guilty” person actually is.
3
@Bob - I start out with my political affiliation so the average NY Times reader doesn't default to "...well, that's what I'd expect from a far-right NRA gun toting Trumpster..."
4
Disgusting. The government should not be in the death business. (Nor should it outsource executions, as it does prisons and detention centers.) "Cover-up General" Barr is, like his boss, an utterly phony Christian, and a disgrace to the Catholic faith. I hope Pope Francis will denounce this deeply cynical maneuver and, if necessary, ex-communicate him.
1
Republicans are pro life, huh?
4
An unsurprising announcement from the right-wing political hack that serves as Attorney General of the United States.
More states are abolishing capital punishment: 9 of the 21 abolition states have done so in the last dozen years; no state has revived the death penalty in a quarter century (and the one that did--Kansas in 1994--has yet to execute anyone).
Fewer executions are occurring every year. From heights of nearly 100 in the late 1990s, there are typically 20-25 per year in the U.S. for the last several years. One of the reasons is that juries are imposing death sentences far less frequently over the last decade.
While legal in 29 states, four of those have executive moratoriums in place. In the half of the states that permit executions, only 8 (AL, FL, GA, MO, OK, OH, TN and, of course, Texas--which now typically carries out half of the nation's executions) do so with any frequency. Oklahoma and Ohio haven't killed anyone for several years due to issues with their death drugs.
And, finally, the significant number of innocents exonerated from death row--coupled with research that debunks the deterrence myth--has given more and more people pause about capital punishment.
But neither evidence nor public will has any impact on Bill Barr, the biggest political hack to serve as AG since John Mitchell. He's been pursing an extremist, lock 'em up and fry 'em up agenda--facts be damned--since he first became AG in the early 90s.
Another stain on his soiled record.
2
@pczisny
It's too bad that more states didn't learn what ours did while Wisconsin was still a territory. The first execution was the last; they hanged the wrong man, and the prospect of doing it again was too horrible to consider.
Enough with the mixed messages. Murder is wrong.
2
A harbinger of grim things to come. A new tool for Trump 's, Barr's and Stephen Miller's toolbox of horrors.
16
The federal government resuming executions under Trump really DOES seem of a piece with other cruelties Trump has visited upon illegal immigrants, spoken wistfully of, and countenanced his confreres doling out (think Duterte, Putin, MbS, Kim, Erdogan). Of course, our legal system has gotten in his way from truly following their example. But, perhaps we should have realized, these legal executions were just waiting for the removal of a few minor roadblocks.
6
Yet again, the Republicans move our beloved nation backwards away from civilized, moral positions. Look at the countries that still have the death penalty. Do we really want to be more like them?
12
As I recall, the high crime of treason was punishable by death in the past. Barr might want to rethink this idea. It may have unintended consequences in the future.
19
For the US, this experiment stretches back decades if not centuries. Certainly, by now we have the data that proves capital punishment reduces violent crime, saves tax dollars, and provides victims with absolute closure. What, no?
4
@William I'm afraid you're going to get recommends from people who don't realize you're against the death penalty. Such pro-deathers tend not to be able to understand sarcasm and irony.
It's called justice
4
At the end of the movie In Cold Blood, based upon the novel by Truman Capote, two policemen are standing near a gallows where a murderer is to be hung. One mentions to the other that when he speaks to the condemned he asks them if it ever occurred to them that their crimes would land them here. He then says that none of them ever thought of this as an inevitable outcome and the point he's trying to make is that the death penalty is ineffectual insofar as deterring murder goes.
This is a false argument. If the murderers had thought that this would be the inevitable outcome they would not have committed the murders. Those who have thought it through are deterred and do not commit the crimes.
Most certainly the fear of the death penalty has stopped people from murdering a spouse for insurance money, sticking up a bank, shooting at cops and other crimes.
There are no statistics on how many people are not murdered.
4
What, it’s not good enough for the Trump Administration that they run prison camps along the southern border? So, they go find some other unfortunates and order them killed. What country is this, anyway?
8
William Barr walks around with such a strangely mournful expression, and then does the most awful things. The guy is so dangerous. He started by firmly positioning Trump above the law, and now this plunge into barbarism. Executions with Trump as dictator - a scary thought. George W. brought some very vile people into Washington, Barr being one, who were subsequently kicking around for eight years, only to resurface with Trump. They need amoral, ignorant chumps, like Bush and Trump, to latch on to and thus further their Heritage agendas with impunity. Kavanaugh was brought in by W. as well.
5
Trumps evangelical supporters must love this.
Sanctity of life and all. Anyway.
Barr. What a guy.
4
The states where these murders happened, SC and MA don’t have laws against killing people? So we have to make everything a federal crime. I guess the Democrats will win and the Feds will have all power.
Yet another case where the Trump administration is making America “great” again?
3
It was reinstated for treason. Trump is always a few steps ahead.
3
Barr "The Justice Department upholds the rule of law . . . ".
Would that that were true.
Let me rephrase it for him "The Justice Department upholds laws we want to, sweeps some under the rug, and closes investigations if they are getting too close to the President".
7
From Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life:
“The pro-life view, by contrast, holds that we have rights simply because we are human—not because of what we look like, or what we can do, or what others think or feel about us, but rather because of what (the kind of being) we are. So all human beings matter, and they matter equally because they are equally human.
The next time you explain to someone why you're pro-life, try saying this: "Because I'm convinced that human equality is really true." Or this: "Because I think human rights are inclusive—they belong to all humans rather than only some." It's probably not the explanation the other person is expecting, and it almost guarantees that you'll have a substantive conversation.”
Unless, of course, one is talking about capital punishment. Then human rights are not quite so inclusive and it is alright to take another life because...well...because.
Hypocrites.
3
This has little to do with deterrence. It's just a political tactic by the Trump Administration to show how 'tough' they are on crime.
6
The death penalty is all about revenge - it does not deter. If you think it deters, why not hang them in the street for all to watch? We may never understand the "why" of a murderer - even when there is a motive. Maybe it is due to mental disease or social up-bringing. Is it possible to groom a murderer from birth? I'm guessing yes.
2
This will no doubt please all haters of big, overreacting government. Such principled citizens.
Public support at 54 per cent, while at the low end historically, is quite a bit higher than any current candidate for President has and would be considered a solid victory electorally. Thirty or so states still impose the death penalty for particularly heinous crimes. So hardly is this some outlier policy being revived.
2
When will we return to burning witches and public hangings??? The death penalty serves no useful purpose - unless public revenge is useful. Other civilized countries have banned it and we were getting closer to that goal. Once again the Trump administration takes us back in time and not in a good or positive way/
3
Seems like Trump is out there campaigning again.....
4
"...Mr. Barr said in a statement. 'The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.' "
Has the notion that "we owe" a human life to specific third parties become a legal rationale for the death penalty? I thought that sentences imposed by our justice system were done on behalf of the polity, not to avenge third parties. Count me out, Mr. Barr.
7
Timing is everything. While I am generally against the death penalty, I do believe in exceptions for particularly cruel and inhuman acts by obvious sociopaths, crimes against humanity, and treason and only when society is absolutely certain of the perpetrator. So even though the death penalty is too expensive due to all the appeals and legal safeguards, the special housing and facilities required to carry out the sentence, and for a host of other reasons, this should work well for getting rid of Donald Trump after he’s voted out of office, since he’s met all of my criteria, and more.
4
''The president has expressed a harsh attitude toward convicted criminals in the past, claiming that they are treated too gently and given too many opportunities to appeal against their sentences.'' Remember these words.
5
Call me cynical, or crazy, but I wonder if this was only announced so that Britain will NOT extradite Julian Assange to the U.S., where he could cut a deal and tell federal prosecutors about any collusion among him, Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign. Britain will not extradite accused criminals to the U.S. if they could receive the death penalty.
8
@RRM
Actually this explains the timing perfectly. I thought maybe they were pandering to bloodlust but keeping Assange's testimony out of the courts is a much better explanation.
3
Trump takes us another gigantic step backwards. It is a show of force.
3
What are they doing? Is it about votes, appealing to a cold-blooded base somehow? Or do they really think we need to get on with executions? Both? Is the strategy about making immature, un-formed people (the base and also themselves?) feel good about themselves? "Go ahead and lash out, call names, come to a rally and join a mob. You're ok just as you are; you don't have to become more forgiving or tolerant. Those bits of racism you feel sometimes? That's ok. You want to feel superior to everyone in the world because you were born in America? Great. And today, you want to take revenge and get rid of some people who did terrible things? Good idea, we'll make it official." Is that it, or part of it? Make the worst in us all right?
3
Perhaps they should give the prisoner a choice, death or continued life in prison.
Oh, goody!
Nothing warms the heart like executing criminals. It’s about time, that we get back to our roots....as In Medieval. And since we are returning to a simpler evolutionary standard,
And shedding ourselves of that cumbersome ‘compassion’ nonsense, when does The Purge get going?
This popcorn doesn’t have enough gristle in it....waiter!
3
deflect deflect deflect
distract distract distract
outrage outrage outrage
divide and conquer
gaslight
3
As a society, we do not understand mental illness, the influences of childhood violence, extreme poverty and hardship as well as countless other factors that can influence those that commit violent crimes.
Until we can accurately sort out the causes and motivations of the criminal mind from the mentally ill, an execution could truly be a cruel and unusual punishment.
4
I just read the piece which follows this piece about the 5 guys. There is no good reason not to execute these heinous murderer's.
4
Who'd ever thought that a pro-life administration would be for the death penalty.
2
Trump better be careful, does this mean the punishment for treason once again is death?
2
Not a surprise, Trump is leading the US backwards so fast, after restarting concentration camps and eliminating reproductive rights, executing people is the administration's next logical step. Public hanging anyone? I heard they are also going to start stoning witches again
3
Let’s talk about the innocent men who have been put to death, first.
2
I do not want the state to have the power to kill anymore than is necessary.
Some comments support the vengeance provided by executing this punishment.
Aren’t we organized as a government of laws to forestall vengeance.
We cannot counter barbarism with barbaric state sanctioned acts.
1
GOP is ok to kill once you're born. GOP gives more right to fetus; right after certain white men and before all white women and people of color.
2
Dylann Roof murdered a church full of people in the hopes of igniting a race war. Frankly, capital punishment couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
3
If there is a news camera at these events, Don will be there with his finger on the button, showing what a leader he is.
1
I read the profiles of the men on the federal death row. Good riddance, they should have executed them yesterday.
2
Good then we can execute Trump when he is voted out of office.
1
If the US government is resuming executions, can we start with William Barr?
1
Darn. I mighta killed somebody this week? Now I'm deterred for sure.
1
If you are altruistic, then the death penalty is wrong because there is a small chance the condemned can be rehabilitated. If you want revenge (justice) then a living hell in prison is much more suffering than going to sleep forever. And it is not an irrevocable sentence if incorrectly judged.
Life in a 4x4 cage is more punishment than the death sentence, although it may seem more just to the atrocity committed.
2
Only surprise is that Trump and Sessions didn't announce this within the first six months.
2
Whenever I think of people like El Chapo or Jeffrey Epstein I want the worst for them. But then, I get a tap on my left shoulder and a quiet, still voice reminds me of an evil man who ran around killing Christians. And how he later wrote most of the New Testament that Christians now live by.
Then I think that these two are incapable of adding a book to anyone's religion.
I get another tap and that still voice asks, "Have you ever walked on water, have you raised the dead, or even made a bottle of wine from grapes? Get back to me after you can make a decent Cabernet and we'll talk about appointing you as judge."
OK.
So I guess this is going to prompt all your “Pro-Life” bigots to take their placards back to the streets?
You either grant yourself a right to kill or you don’t, but you certainly can’t have it both ways as you please, right?
Or did I just get il all wrong?
Am sorry but this country’s government choices and its supporters are getting so irrational on a daily basis that it’s getting really hard no to get confused about the current prevailing American values.
8
Equating the death penalty for people convicted of capital crimes with abortion is just plain stupid.
2
@BecauseTruth
Where did you in the first place see the word “abortion” in my comment?
Did I accidentally hit a soft spot?
I only put in opposition the actual semantical meanings of “pro-life” (that some obviously chose as some kind of branding, not my pick) to that of “killing” (i.e. actually taking a life away FYI).
Those are semantically totally controversial no matter what you think or want to believe I don’t care.
It is just factual.
Maybe if anti-abortionists would only have called themselves for what they are, i.e. anti-abortionists, I would not have underlined this controversy.
But guess what, turned out they just didn’t, not my pick either.
Words have a meaning.
Just don’t call yourself “pro-life” simply because it probably sells you off better on some issues if you happen to be also, under some circumstances (I didn’t even discuss nor argue with in my comment), also “pro-death” on some other issues.
Because this for sure reads like plain stupidity.
1
Here we go again! Trump has unflattering news and he goes out of his way to do something vile. The poor and people of color are over-represented in prisons as it is, and I'm certain that they will become the most executed group as well. There is no low that is too low for Trump. The death penalty does nothing but assuage the anxieties of a small group who think they are under attack by some bogeyman or another all of the time. I have never understood how a person can be so insistent that no abortion ever happens, and, yet, believe that it's ok to kill adults (either through the use of the death penalty or by war)! Those are mutually exclusive ideas! Illogical, immoral, and immature thinking are the hallmarks of Trumpism.
1
As long as the process is thoughtfully implemented, and as long as those convicted of treason automatically move to the front of the line, I'm all for it. Then, after the figureheads of the current administration have been served - to the level of, say, Attorney General - we should seriously reconsider the pros and cons of state homicide.
1
Despite the increasing evidence of wrongful conviction, this administration goes full steam ahead on killing its citizens to please a base that seems to love violence and hate.
2
Oh, where, oh, where are the right-to-lifers when one needs them?
7
The death penalty is the appropriate sentence for some crimes. Academics can debate concepts such as deterrence, retribution, and proportionality, but most normal people aren’t going to oppose the execution of these murders. Torturing and killing a 2 year old? Raping and murdering a teen and then killing an old woman? Killing 5 people? Unless there are doubts about the evidence, these people should have been executed long ago.
2
Is there no alternative that would satisfy you
@H
“Normal people”?
A decision promoted by a criminal in the White House who is also responsible for horrific actions. Keeping it surreal
3
I guess Barr didn't get the memo wherein his party is the "pro-life" party. More hypocrisy from the right.
7
I keep thinking it can’t get any worse, and then it does. As the only industrialized nation that allows its states to execute prisoners, the United States should be ashamed. And now the Trump and his favorite flunky William Barr are going to re-institute federal executions. If either of them had a conscience, they would not be able to sleep nights. But as it is, they can just stay up nights thinking of more cruelly inhumane actions to take on the most vulnerable persons in our society.
3
Well, seeing as how this administration wants to return this country to an earlier, “simpler time” in its quest to “make America great”, why not go full bore and start holding public executions again? Back in those “simpler times”, jails such as Charleston’s Old City Jail would have them all the time. The Old City Jail’s special way of dispatching prisoners (for crimes as small as not being able to pay your debts) was to put the noose around the necks of those who had to stand in a shallow pit, while the mechanism for the hanging was more like a trebuchet than a gallows. The net effect was: Too heavy and your head would be ripped from your neck; too light and you’d be flung out of that pit like a rubber ball at the end of a paddle.
I bet Trump’s faithful would just love that. I can see all the cheering, rabid MAGA hat-wearing Trumpies with that happy, blood-lust look in their eyes now. Trump would probably want to preside over each and every one. He could follow up each one with one of his rousing rants. That would make him very happy. And we want our dear President happy, don’t we?
2
I fail to see how state sanctioned murder makes us great, again.
3
Another "If-it-feels-good-do-it" policy from Billy and The Kid.
3
Well, given the backgrounds of whom we Americans typically likes to execute, this is one way to eliminate minority voters.
2
The Trump administration's cruelty knows no bounds, as its bottom continues to fall.
3
Why did Barr and Graham have to "tour" that prison to make the announcement? Was it to see the inmates and get a rush from the drug of power?
2
I’m personally of the opinion that the death penalty serves no purpose whatsoever, and I think it’s immoral. I highly recommend this article that was published last month in the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/opinion/sunday/death-penalty.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
2
It’s barbaric, absolutely. The death penalty never has been or ever will be a deterrent so let’s get past that nonsense. It fits the barbaric, flat-earth mentality of the same people who wrote the Old Testament biblical adage, “an eye for an eye.” Do humans commit horrors for which they should pay the consequences? Absolutely.
But in this round earth, evolving and expanding universe in which we live, and with the advances in neuroscience, surely, we can begin to understand the why of human horrors and move beyond state sponsored revenge killing.
1
Absolutely barbaric. For shame!
1
Gosh, so much negativity!
How about some constructive ideas.
1. Don't let the organs go to waste! Harvest them before the execution and you might not have to worry about the shortage of lethal injection drugs.
2. Consider a compassionate means of execution - beheading - popular in Saudi Arabia. They are failsafe. If you're worried about the executioner getting PTSD, automate the process with a mechanized guillotine.
3. Broadcast the execution for maximum salutary effect on the populace.
4. Monetize the executions so that we can pay down our massive national debt. An execution a week on Blu-ray, with interviews and replays of significant events. Make sure each prisoner gets his 15 minutes of international fame.
5. Make executions fun again, like lynching parties of old where God-fearing townsfolk gathered in pot-luck picnics.
MEFA!
3
Can I make a suggestion?
1
Many Christians are against capital punishment but Trump is not a Christian. He follows the hateful white jesus of the Fundamentalist. The Hateful vengeful Jesus taught at Liberty University.
2
Right to life ends at birth. How hypocritical can it get.
6
Of course it does. You need adults to die in the wasteful, unnecessary wars we fight when corporations need resources that belong to someone else.
1
Wake up Americans: our illegitimate President Trump and his Evil Empire Administration is trying to send this nation back into the barbaric Dark Age. Jailing babies, turning our backs to desperate souls drowned in the Rio Grande, making it harder for already unlucky people to be further crushed by poverty and capitalism- what are allowing? Every day we wake up in this nation we should ask ourselves What are we ALLOWING? Why are we allowing this evil to be done in our name?
3
Watching and thinking about the behaviors and actions of AG Barr and the Republicans I am reminded of these words:
"The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency."
― Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience
Trump is simply a useful idiot for AG Barr, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham and the R-gang to advance the interest of the 1%, corporations and the Federalist Society, an organization of conservatives and libertarians that uses the Constitution as cover for their undemocratic actions.
3
Restoring the death penalty to the Weimar Republic was part of the rise of Nazism.
It makes sense that the death penalty would return again, as part of the necessary coarsening endemic to the rise of our own home-grown fascism.
Resist.
5
Isn't that fabulous we rank right up there with China, Iran and Iraque---we keep good company huh!!1
3
Based on the anti-death penalty comments herein from Democrats and so-called ‘progressives,’ Timothy McVeigh should still be alive.
Yet another winning position right up there with free health care for illegals.
1
Lindsay Graham seems grafted onto Barr. And Pence. And Trump. He's everywhere.
This whole thing is just vile. Death penalty needs to be abolished.
2
As science and forensics become ever more sophisticated and monitoring public and even private spaces more complete, the proof of guilt will become very much more airtight than in the past. In this context there could be a whole new era of capital punishment that would be harder to decry as too fallible a process for irreversible action.
On the other hand, if techniques of intervention and policy evolve to higher standards too, the future may have very few murders.
2
I am glad to see this decision. If a jury and judge have pronounced the death penalty, then the government must carry it out. They should pay no attention to UN, anti-death penalty demonstrates etc.
You can argue all you want over whether it is a deterrent, but the real issue is will we enforce the law which has condemned these individuals to death. They have had all the appeals they are entitled to.
We spend a lot of time arguing whether the method of execution is painless. If you want a quick death then go for the firing squad or a proper hanging. But the argument about the method of execution should cease.
2
And how do you feel about executing the innocent, which has been done and will continue?
This action completes the cycle of policy that is the business model of the right.
Ban abortion, ban birth control services, cut funding for education, cut food stamps, mass incarceration via a variety of "law and order" laws that target the poor and house them in for profit prisons.
Upon release, their ability to re-integrate into the economy and society as a consequence of grinding stigma and laws that "protect" the public. Add to this, a brand new death penalty push targeting precisely those people that this society broke.
7
Pro-life (anti-abortion) and Pro-death penalty -- while these seem contradictory, we sadly know all to well where this is coming from and where it is going -- the Christian fundamentalist right wing as an important part of Trump's base being only too happy in hearing of this latest move. But so retrogressive and contrary to modern thinking and policies of evolved societies regarding both abortion and the death penalty. It's like the US is going backward not forward while the rest of the world is leaving it behind.
6
On Thursday, Mr. Barr said that he had issued a protocol that replaces the three-drug procedure previously used in federal executions with a single drug, pentobarbital, which is widely available.
Bob Barr should make sure the protocol works by testing it on himself.
11
Thousands of prisoners were released from prison last week because of a law signed by Trump ( the boogie man ) in these parts.
Imagine all these people freed ...because of Trump.
Not too much press release on that fact though ...and we know why.
Now days with DNA records changes the calculations.
5
I find the death penalty deplorable and should not be in any civilized country. However, Tim McVeigh and others were executed under Bill Clinton. Why are comments here against the Trump administration? They are just applying the law.
7
@Rose B
According to data from the bureau of prisons, McVeigh was executed during the administration of George Bush, as well as two others.
18
@Rose B Because the toad stool's "administration" is CHOOSING to do so, arbitrarily. There is no "justice" in fake AG Barr's JD.
4
@Rose B
McVeigh was executed in 2001 after Clinton left office
6
Great news! Finally an administration with the courage to carry out the rule of law as written.
11
@Donald
Let’s pray you don’t slip, Donald.
@Donald
Except when it has to do with the President
7
@Donald
Oh please grow up the rule of law doesn't apply to the conman
7
How many who support capital punishment "Have a dog in the fight." Thirty-one years, one week, and two days ago I buried my two-year-old son...a homicide victim. I was against capital punishment then and I am against it now. I know the horror of murder...I know the loss from a murder...and I know that killing the killer does not in any way better our society. I am not sure what the answer is...but I know that by taking the life of a murderer only lessens us.
24
@Michael
That is tragic and horrific. I am so sorry for your loss.
4
@Michael
The cost of the authority you offer is far more than most of us could bear. Peace be with you.
3
I am not surprised by this move. Though I am appalled and dismayed. The death penalty is an abomination. I pray for anyone who helps to set policy allowing for the murder of a human being. I also troubles me that money I work to earn goes, in the form of taxes, to putting a human being to death. All Americans go off to work every day and when they pay taxes, they are consenting, perhaps unknowingly or seemingly with no alternative, to this barbaric act. That said, this country has been in the business of killing for a long time. The vast majority of those put to death by this country are innocent. Just look at all of the human atrocities our government has directed in many many countries across the globe. So, yes, there is the possibility that the death penalty will result in the death of an innocent person – that is nothing new.
2
I am against the reinstituted death penalty, but not for many of the reasons cited. I think it is a far greater punishment to be committed to LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE. Knowing you will spend the rest of your life in prison with no hope of release would be far more painful than being killed by the State. The additional benefit of life imprisonment is that it is reversible. We have seen many cases over the recent years where, because of improved scientific knowledge, an individual has been proven innocent.
2
How long until those three are on the other side of that wall?
2
Capital punishment is cruel and should be unusual. It is too risky based on the number of people cleared either before or after their demise by DNA. It is too expensive and therefore not logical. Society has a right to be protected from predators but no right to revenge....
The US have 26.5x the homicide rate of Japan and Singapore, 17.6x that of Hong Kong and Macao, 8.8x of China and South Korea; even more than places like Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Rwanda. Yet Americans cannot take a hint from those safe places and realize strong law enforcement and efficient capital punishment is key to a safe society. All the talk of human rights just masks 10,000 more American are murdered each year than the Chinese, with 4x the population.
3
@amateurhistorian I am the only progressive/liberal person I know who believes that in certain circumstances, the death penalty is warranted. (I have felt that way ever since the barbaric Manson murders happened decades ago.) But as for your statistics about countries with far fewer homicides than the U.S., do you honestly not think that the fact that there are 300 million guns in America has nothing to do with this? The death penalty in the U.S. has been applied unfairly and selectively far too many times, while others with some privilege have committed murder and gotten off with with relatively light sentences. (Think Dan White killing Mayor Moscone in and Harvey Milk in San Francisco, the infamous “Twinkie Defense”). And while I may not join others with my political views in banishing the death penalty in every situation, I find it alarming that Bill Barr, a man clearly comtrolled and manipulated by Donald Trump, can make this decision on his own to reinstate the federal death penalty.
@Stephanie
Politics aside, if the US indeed have problem with too many guns, wouldn’t strong law enforcement and efficient capital punishment help the situation?
Too many guns is not an agreement against capital punishment nor is “too many on death row are...”. Crime needs to be punished and the severity of the punishment needs to fit the crime and serve as deterrent
1
How can anyone be pro-life and pro-death penalty at the same time? Either all life is sacred or not one life is sacred. How does one choose which lives are sacred and which are not? Skin color? Wealth?
If the death penalty did work, there'd be no more crime. The problem with criminals, each one believes his/her crime is the perfect crime and they won't get caught. It matters not what penalties are in store for them, they just don't see themselves getting caught.
So, society says enough is enough and chooses to put criminals to sleep instead of insisting criminals serve out their time in misery. What is dying other than a few anxious moments prior to entering that eternal sleep and rest? We all die, what does using death as punishment say about our own dying? Are we also being punished, and for what?
3
Every day makes me want to join a protest.
This is not great, America.
2
While I don't believe capital punishment actually serves as any sort of deterrent, and it is applied unfairly to minorities and poor people, I'm not going to lose any sleep over the five the US initially plans to execute. Truly heinous crimes.
4
So much for the sanctity of life.
4
Each day I read something like this that seems to indicate our cultural regression. It is wrong to take the life of another human being even the most villainous. But today our government is the champion of vengeance. Some much for the right to life.
3
There are two federal death penalties that we should be aware of. The first is the judicial variety that at least must follow the constitutional norms of our legal system.
But the second lies beyond all constitutional boundaries. It is part of our "war on terror" and allows the military to assassinate anyone designated as a 'terrorist' without any due process of law, including American citizens.
Most American's have been so conditioned to the state of perpetual war that we don't think about who we are killing or why.
But studies of the drone strikes carried out under the Obama administration found that the majority of persons killed in these strikes were known to be innocent civilians, including children.
I am part of that slim majority of Americans that opposes capital punishment. But I imagine I'm also part of a tiny minority that believes that international human rights law forbids the near indiscriminate use of lethal force in a war declared against an idea.
"Terror" is not a nation or an army. It has no generals and its troops are simply those who embrace the use of terror for a political purpose.
As such, it is so loosely defined that abuses in what would otherwise be the rules of war are inevitable and carried out repeatedly. And this I also oppose.
1
Sure, why not, it’s not like the Trump Administration can contribute in any positive way to the country, so let’s just go further down the dark path. Makes sense!
1
I am a Conservative-Libertarian who voted for Gary Johnson in 2016.
While still in favor of the death penalty, I've become somewhat more skeptical.
Do all of those DNA exoneration's have something to do with that?
Certainly.
To apply the death penalty, 'beyond a reasonable doubt' is no longer good enough.
I have a different standard: NO DOUBT AT ALL.
Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer - they would fit that standard.
Would I take into account possible mitigating circumstances?
Yes, absolutely.
I’m against capital punishment, because I believe that the right to life is the most basic human right. It’s an inalienable right. When governments kill, it is us that are doing the killing. And we shouldn’t be doing it.
This is what happens when Congress doesn't lock up Bar for for contempt.
1
Congress can only find Barr in contempt. They have to make a referral to DOJ to enforce, which they did. DOJ declined to enforce contempt against their boss. Big surprise.
This is yet another reason why I am embarrassed and ashamed for my country. The primitiveness of those currently in power is breathtaking. They seem to revel in being cruel.
2
Is this type of culture wars bludgeoning sufficient, when elected officials don't produce anything meaningful to make your life better?
1
I understand that many of the Supreme Court Justices are Catholics. The Pope and the Church renounce the death penalty. So the so-called pro-life justices continue along their hypocritical paths as they head toward overturning Roe v. Wade.
I am hopeful that the ACLU or some other group will stop this.
What else can the Trump and the AG do to make us a more cruel nation!
1
This announcement is the latest notch in the cruelty cudgel wielded by this administration. How do they sleep at night?
According to conservative “logic”:
Government that provides healthcare = big government
Government that MURDERS = small government
1
Hey! Where's the great health insurance I was promised?!?!?
1
Finally, something this administration can be good at!
2
"Nearly a decade ago, drug makers in the United States and Europe stopped selling to the federal government the sedatives that it had long used to render prisoners unconscious before executing them."
It occurs to me the Sacklers have a pretty good solution to this dire problem. Seems appropriate they'd be the ones to try it out.
1
I'm only surprised that Trump didn't add the New York 5 to list of those to be executed.
2
So much for pro-life.
2
Demonization of immigrants and religious minorities.
Encouragement of violence against protesters.
Declaring a free press “the enemy of the people”.
Children in cages.
“I can do anything I want”.
Resumption and acceleration of executions.
Haven’t we seen this movie before, folks?
2
Thank you for your disservice to humanity, William Barr.
26
These monsters don't deserve to live. Read what they did: Mitchell stabbed the 63-year-old grandmother to death and then killed her granddaughter after forcing the child to sit near her grandmother’s body while he drove for 30 to 40 miles. Purkey kidnapped a 16-year-old girl, raped her repeatedly and, after killing her, dismembered and burned her body. Lee broke into a family’s home with an accomplice and together they suffocated the family before throwing them into the Illinois Bayou. Bourgeois was convicted of torturing and murdering his 2-year-old daughter. It's sickening.
6
If they did those things, then yeah I agree. Unfortunately, as we’ve begun to learn, wrongful convictions are far too common even in ‘slam dunk’ cases.
state sanctioned murder is still murder
Absolutely repugnant: Barr and his resuming execution of the death-row inmates are the perfect image of this sinister government.
7
You know, “Christian values.”
Disgusting.
10
Will Trump and his toady, Barr, do the killings, or will they appoint someone else to carry out their orders?
12
@Pecan Neither Trump nor Barr will execute these people. One of their major campaign contributors will do it for an obscene profit.
3
It’ll be a bummer if Barr is ever rightly convinced of treason...
5
squirrel !
3
On the bright side, treason is punishable by death according to the Constitution. Maybe Barr should rethink this policy reversal...just in case. #goose/gander
7
In 2018 the innocence project helped exonerate 8 human beings who spent 200 years, combined, incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. It is nearly possible to get the courts to admit mistakes, so very few cases are even selected out of the countless who are wrongfully convicted.
The courts have had to admit, in one year, alone, there were 8 human beings who had been licked in hell for 200 years-- IN ERROR.
Now these same monsters who get away with some of the worst crimes against humanity, democracy, and our constitution want to EXECUTE potentially innocent people.
We are lost as a people and as a nation.
9
Raise better sons.
1
Better than Barr and Trump, yes.
More red meat (literally) for Trump’s hateful, rabid base.
6
With 5% of humanity America has 25% of the world's prisoners.
And although only 13% are black like Ben Carson and Tim Scott about 40% of them are black. Because blacks are persecuted for acting like white people do without any criminal justice consequences.
Prison is the carefully carved colored exception to the 13th Amendment's abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude.
The death penalty in America has a sordid sorry history in America based upon race aka color aka ethnicity aka national origin. Lynching was the preferred method for implementing the death penalty in America against black African Americans.
George Stinney, Jr. was executed in Texas at 14 years old for allegedly assaulting a white girl. The Scottsboro Boys and the Central Park Five nearly suffered a similar fate.
See [email protected] ; whitneyplantation.com
5
@Blackmamba
Or maybe some demographics should commit less violent crime, huh...
2
Here we go! More blood lust for the base. What are they going to do next, torch homeless shelters? Force feed Twinkies to school kids? Fire bomb solar panels? Deregulate emissions standards? Oh yeah, they're already trying to do that, for what? Anyway, killing convicts is easy optics. Who cares if they're guilty or not? Long as they're not white. If we could only get the Iranians to sink a boat, we'd be all set. Televised mayhem and the perfect nutjob in charge. Clown in Chief would be happy to destroy the world. Payback for the uptowners who dissed him.
1
@dave beemon
Ssssshhhhhh....Don’t give them any more ideas.
@June
Yeah. Sorry.
How far back are we going to take humanity? Must we return to preCivilization standards? Or is this simply the implementation of the New Testament’s “an eye for an eye” protocol, which at times damns the innocent, erroneously defends execution at the expense of appropriate punishment or even rehabilitation, and financially drains our economy by choosing the most expensive option?
1
Euthanasia in dogs is still common and why not humans? General Barr must feel like public service includes taking care of criminals once and for all has been missing in his life. Poor Mr. Barr, his dyspepsia must have been brewing far too long to awaken and be a Trump sycophant and now, grim reaper. Terrible conditions and leadership.
2
I'd probably choose execution over life without parole at ADX Florence.
1
@PeteH Errr... maybe not.
“...and additional executions will be scheduled later.”
What an enabler Donald Trump has found in William Barr! And how many executions does this barbaric administration hope to carry out in the run up to the 2020 election, in order to pander to the Old Testament hypocrisy of the Evangelicals? One shudders to think.
1
I could not be more opposed to anything as I am to the death penalty but I would willingly listen to anyone suggesting we add it to the penalties for obstruction of justice or conspiring with Russians. Still opposed, but now in a better humor.
Trump didn't get his wish to execute the alleged Central Park Five, so now that Article 2 lets him do anything he wants, he is going death penalty big time.
Just imagine had Trump's wish to execute those five young men back then, the government would have had the blood of innocent men on its hands.
6
@SNA Trump can also make himself look like a great humanitarian by occasionally pardoning some of the condemned. But one thing that hasn't been said about our tyrant, and should be, is that he is a sadist.
2
@SNA Highly recommend "When They See Us" on Netflix. Finished it last night. Downright horrible and sad at what lengths greedy lawyers will go to trying to make a name for themselves so they can get their five minutes of fame.
Was very happy to see the careers of the two prosecutors in that case, Elizabeth Lederer and Linda Fairstein, destroyed in full public view.
This administration is all for the rule of law except when it applies to them.
5
Good Christian's all, realize that killing inmates makes economic sense...the cost of the drug given to down horses at race tracks is cheap and readily available. Plus no more costs for three hots and a cot.
2
This is a switch ...
since common knowledge life in prison is less expensive in our legal system for the government than executions ...
and Trump loves money almost as much as he loves himself ... the policy switch must be a concession to his blood thirsty base.
2
The one commandment that definitely should be adhered to is:
Thou Shalt Not Kill !
End Capital Punishment !
3
Ah, the pro-life, anti-evidence forces in action. Thanks for embarrassing thinking Americans and our country again, geniuses.
7
Got to cut down on the number of inmates of color on death row. Too many are being proven innocent after years on death row & life terms. This isn't even an Obama program creating the moratorium.
Another distraction by trump to get everyone to stop thinking about his crimes.
trump administration is out to clean the country of people of color. Who is next on his hit list? Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans? They have already tried genocide on Native Americans.
2
@Nostradamus Said So
Would have served you well to look at the pictures of the 5 scheduled to die.
If there is no evidence that capital punishment deters violent crime, but rather evidence that innocent people are executed and black men are disproportionately executed, then one has to conclude that the reinstitution of capital punishment by the U.S. Government must have some other rationale. Is Trump catering to the atavistic desire of his followers for revenge that he himself displayed in his notorious ad calling for the execution of the Central Park Five who, not coincidentally, were black and hispanic and proven through DNA evidence to be innocent?
7
If restored, then televise and add to youtube. The American public has a right to see how its taxes are spent. Let the NRA and GOP advertise. After each execution, ask Barr and Graham for reviews (if the cowards watched).
3
If the president thinks nobody is above the law and the law should be carried out by executing these prisoners, then he should also be subject to the law without the protection of any legal opinion from the DoJ.
Indict him! His crimes were detailed yesterday for all those too lazy to read the special counsel’s report.
1
This seems very much like a cheap and cynical departure. Why was it necessary? Who really ordered it?
2
The death penalty has never been a deterrent. In fact it probably encourages more killing because as the saying goes "you can only hang once". In addition, its application has always been biased and thus not justified. Better to let the convicted felon serve a truly life sentence. After all once you execute someone and it turns out that he/she were innocent there is no going back. This makes our justice system a murderer so who will be executed to atone for this gross error in judgment.
2
Great Nations are enlightened. Enlightened nationa do not employ capital punishment.
Make your own conclusions.
2
Black people have long been subject to a de facto death penalty in the form of public acceptance of state sanctioned police murder.
Since Mr. Barr's client in chief commenced his illegitimate reign of terror, nearly 2500 people have been shot and killed by police, without due process, just as trying to feed his children Mr. Garner was denied in his Justice Department sanctioned murderous takedown for selling... cigarettes.
1
Thus putting an even finer point on "Making America Great Again"!
I hope the Trump faithful enjoy our "Greatness" as we take our place with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Vietnam, and Egypt (and perhaps North Korea) as the world's top executioners of their convicted - but not always guilty, prisoners.
3
"The Justice Department upholds the rule of law..."
A sick joke by an AG guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice.
2
That's right. Let's get in with the likes of Saudi Arabia, China, Iran and North Korea. We would never want to fall behind those countries in terms of barbarism and cruelty. It is such a fitting accolade for this administration.
2
“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law .." said Mr. Barr. Yeah, except when it comes to the president of the U.S.
2
Sadism and racism all rolled into one raw executive power play -- it's a banner day at the Trump White House.
3
Quite frankly I don’t know how anyone can read the details of the Mitchell murders (stabbed the grandmother 33 times in front of her 9 year old granddaughter, forced the child to sit next to her corpse while driving away their stolen car, then proceeded to cut the child’s neck. When that didn’t work, he used 20 lb stones to her head) and not support a right and just penalty. Now you tell me - what’s barbaric?
4
@Elena M
One thing that's barbaric is forcing a citizen to become a killer. Would you be willing to take a turn as executioner?
Will this include traitors that become president and sell out our country to our enemies? Or are Republicans exempted as usual?
The truth used to set you free ... now it will get you locked up, deported from your country, vilificatied, falsely accused, and worse - killed by the trump-state. Trump wants to emulate Duterte's tough guy meme. What could go wrong? Actually, what WILL GO WRONG? The pro-life of misery party in action again. Eagerly killing humans after they're born. Inhumane - the Republican motto they've never botch, as they deprive millions of healthcare, life and the pursuit of survival let alone happiness which is reserved only for the wealthy Republican elite.
The innocent that are killed in our name are merely collateral damage, just as society is merely collateral damage for the ever increasing wealth of the wealthy.
Life in prison is a form of death sentence. You get to live in misery and die in prison knowing exactly why your life's existence and predicament is what its until you die. There's a reason many murderers avoid the consequences of their crimes by killing themselves.
3
So this so-called Right to Life administration is for state-sanctioned killing of living breathing humans but not for a woman’s right to control her reproductive rights with counsel from her physicians. Just another shiny object to keep the cult followers appeased and distracted from this administration’s own crimes including those ploddingly highlighted yesterday.
2
Now all that is left, like in Saudi Arabia, is to make expressing displeasure with the regime a capital crime.
3
All Hail Emperor Trump and his henchmen.
The only advantage here is that some day we may be able to use this edict on HIM. I'm pretty sure that High Treason carries a death sentence.
1
Oh brother, what post is Lindsay Graham interviewing for? Interesting that these GOP operatives are not hiding their objective to impress Trump and do his bidding. What is he holdibg over them? Maybe it's just me.
Don’t y’all talk to me about China then. And otherwise the irony of murder being so heinous that you kill for it makes my head hurt.
1
I'm sure Trump would love to issue a new Executive Order such that women who get abortions are stoned to death. Inspired by his best bud, MBS. I'm sure the base would totally approve.
3
How Orwellian, ... er trumpian. First it was lock her up and all of his opponents. Then it is abduct and cage children. Then it is treat pregnant women as state property. Now trump re-establishes state sponsored murder with trump representing ... nay, with trump as the state. What WILL go wrong?
4
Oh goody. That solves the pesky problem of what to do about Trump and Barr after they are convicted for treason for what they did and are contining to do aiding and abetting in the ongoing hostile takeover of 1600 Penn Ave by the former Soviet Union disguised as Putin's Russia.
3
They say that when Trump loses in 2020, he and his family and perhaps a few "associates" may be reinvestigated, indicted and tried for offenses that may even be deemed treasonous. Remember the Rosenbergs, Donnie?
1
Barr has got to go. His notion of the rule of law changes each time he has breakfast.
1
The main long term effect of the death penalty is to help re elect idea bankrupt demagogic pols. like these three men.
2
So much for the Pro Life Party. We should be promoting the Sanctity of Life in all its stages. While it’s easier emotionally to promote the sanctity of the innocent baby, it’s morally inconsistent to stop there.
4
The problem with capital punishment is the possibility of executing an innocent person.
The only way to be sure of not executing an innocent person is to execute no one.
There is no absolute certainty.
Recall the Central Park Five in NYC.
Everyone knew they were guilty.
They confessed.
IF NYS had a death penalty and the jogger had died then five innocent youths would have been fried.
Confessions can be coerced,
Lab tests have false positives.
Eyewitnesses can be mistaken.
Life without parole [where without must mean without] prevents the criminal from killing again but also allows freeing a falsely convicted person.
With the death penalty there is no such option to free an innocent person.
The death penalty is not a deterrent. Comparison of homicide rates in adjacent states ;one with the death penalty the other without show no difference.
4
@David, Yes, good post. I agree.
Sometimes it feels like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons is in charge. Next on the docket, let's block out the sun.
4
Red meat for the Trump base, and age-old winning strategy with scare tactics. I highly recommend two books, which have caused me to rethink my own views about crime and punishment: Preet Bharara’s Doing Justice, Rachel Barkow’s Prisoners of Politics.
1
It's always loathsome to watch authoritarianism enacted, especially at the highest government levels.
The authoritarian impulse, with its latent (and sometimes not-so-latent) need to punish, is easily excited. A decision such as the one reported on does just that.
1
What if the jury gets it wrong and an innocent man or woman is executed?
Because that scenario has occurred in the past, taking executions off the table permanently should be the paramount justification. PERIOD.
6
If one is convicted of committing treason can that person get the death penalty? If so, this is the last step in culling protesters against Trump (in his view "the State), who might be, in a soon to be announced presidential memorandum, committing treason if they speak out against the government or the laws they don't like in the country. The first steps will be those prisons set up all over the country now being used for immigrants. We are on a perilous journey here. Bringing back the death penalty by the federal government can't be good.
1
I always default to the thought... whatever gives the families the most peace. I've never had a particularly strong view on the death penalty either way. Who is to say how I would feel if one of them was murdered? Hopefully I will never know.
2
Just when you think it can’t get worse, it does. Worst administration in my lifetime.
3
I can't bring myself to think there may be cases, like Dillon Rood, for whom the death penalty might be appropriate. That concept is as horrific to me as assisted death of an average person who is simply tired of suffering and signs an agreement saying that it's all right to pull the plug if a physician decides it's time to cease care, often related to the costs of maintaining the patient's care. Rood is unmistakably guilty of his crime but executing him does not reverse the grief or loss of the friends and relatives of the people he killed. Families losing their sick relatives will grieve no matter what over a patient's death but how much more difficult it will be when a doctor prescribes the death penalty based on a piece of paper often pushed by hospitals these days just to reduce costs. Who is more barbaric? Is it our flawed justice system or is it the medical community? I submit it is every human's right to die naturally, to live until their own bodies give out. Nobody knows if a last, hoped for breakthrough, however unlikely, will show up. Just like no one knows when new evidence proving innocence is likely to find its way through the court systems - otherwise, there would be five innocent men dead instead of now free. Expediency should never be the deciding factor in the death of another human being.
1
I am against the death penalty because there is no human knowledge on the exact nature of death. It is unfair, inhumane, arbitrary, useless and irrevocable.
2
Given what we know about DNA and people convicted of heinous crimes being proven innocent, having the death penalty becomes a real problem. All it takes is for one person executed being proven to have been innocent for the entire criminal system to be doubted by everyone. But the right wing vote is important to Republicans and they want criminals to know that they will die if they are convicted of serious crimes. The question really will be, how many innocent people convicted and executed will they condone before they don't.
Even if you agree with the death penalty, it can’t be allowed as long as the Innocence Project is exonerating innocent people from prison and death row. You can release and compensate innocent people, but you can’t undo executions of innocent people.
4
Where's Mitch? I thought it was the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse?
1
Sorry to dust off this belief again and again, but these are the people who preach about the sanctity of life and are presently waging war on the reproductive rights of women throughout the USA and the world - yes world - it is called the gag order. Yet they are so willing to kill people at the state and now federal level. If life is something which should be preserved we need to also understand that the death penalty has killed innocent people and targets minorities more so than Caucasians which fits in with Trump.
4
How can a government be adequately criticized and challenged when it has given itself the ability to murder it's own citizens? In a free and just government, there is no need for capital punishment
2
You can always count on the Trump maladministration to do the wrong thing.
Say what you like about them, but they are consistent. Consistently awful but consistent nonetheless.
2
But for DNA evidence, Trump may have been involved in the execution of the Central Park Five.
2
Sure, they do this because they are the pro-life party. Life is very sacred to them.
Well, as long as the life isn't breathing on its own, of course.
The State should not be in the business of killing its citizens. Capital punishment has no effect on crime. We too often kill innocent people. The process of rendering a death sentence is biased. People of color and, occasionally, poor whites are killed; wealthy people? Not that I've noticed.
The Republican Party is defined by spite, vindictiveness, cruelty, viciousness, greed, and bigotry. If they were dogs, you would have to either keep them caged or put them down as a danger to others.
I wouldn't want a single one of them for a neighbor.
Vote this scourge out of office and by a wide, unmistakable margin. Then, keep them there for a good, long time.
2
So this so-called Pro Life administration is for governmentally-sanctioned killing of living, breathing humans (some of whom have been shown to be wrongly or inequitably incarcerated) but not for a woman’s right to control her reproductive rights with counsel from her physicians. Just another shiny object to keep the cult-like followers appeased and distracted from this administration’s own high crimes and misdemeanors including those ploddingly highlighted yesterday.
Reach out to your family, friends and acquaintances in areas that gobbled up Trump’s snake oil and work hard to convince them to vote for anyone but the charlatan-in-chief and his supplicants in 2020. I was able to convince my mother-in-law in 2016, but we needed about 77,000 more folks then....
2
Well, the Trump administration is joining the ranks of despotic governments in another major way. The death penalty has no perceivable deterrent effect and there are many proved cases that we have executed innocent people as well as people of impaired mental ability. This is a horrible step in the wrong direction.
I don't really have a huge philosophical problem with it. Most of these guys deserve it.
Two points: I get a distinct feeling that Good Christians like Barr and Hawley wouldn't mind going further and staging public beheadings and hangings. And Trump? He would preside over them and make self serving speeches and offer up Trump properties as venues for these festivities.
As our trust in the institutions like DOJ and Executive Branch and Congress is now greatly diminished, the thought of these liars having a power to kill is disturbing.
Why wouldn't he bring it back? It's a great way to deal with your political enemies.
2
The resumption of executions are sad news. The state killing even disgusting criminals serves no real purpose and instead pulls the government down to the same level as murderers. Death penalties never scared criminals from committing the same type of crimes as those carrying execution as the penalty. This is a well known fact demonstrated in criminology over end over again. I am certain that the three gentlemen in the picture accompanying the article are well aware of this. So much greater their shame. And the shame of their country.
3
Is this step two in a multi-step process to allow the federal government, under minority rule, to execute political prisoners?
Is the ongoing step one McConnell packing federalist society judges into the courts?
How many steps from the ignorant mob screaming 'lock her up' to the ignorant mob screaming 'hang her'?
From democratic republic to tyranny is far to few steps.
1
No wonder he came back. Caging children, murdering adults, poisoning the environment, defending the creepiest politicians, putting a protective arm around all that is oppressive, repressive and hateful about this country. Who has the opportunity to do all that.
How frustrating, lonely and empty he must have felt.
3
Something is very wrong with Trump and his Republican lackeys. They are attempting to re-shape the U.S. into the country that it was prior to the end of World War II. They imagine that jobs will re-appear and only white men will compete for them. Women will go home to have children and will have no voice in politics. African Americans will resume life under Jim Crow. Gay people will be subjected to discrimination. There will be no prison or justice reform. They have already dismantled environmental regulations and are attempting to sell off government owned, beautiful country. It really is time for these largely white, wealthy men to be removed from positions of power. It cannot happen soon enough. VOTE! IT IS YOUR DUTY!
5
The death penalty is perceived to be a deterrent by some and a just punishment by some, but pretty much never even thought about by most people. If it becomes apparent that innocent people are executed, the popular will could be to eliminate it.
However, Trump is clearly only governing to satisfy about thirty percent of the electorate, and that small segment seems to think that the death penalty is only unjust when it's seldom done.
129
@Casual Observer
The Five scheduled for execution leave no doubt about their guilt.
5
@Casual Observer The idea that capital punishment is a deterrent, is incorrect. People have committed murder since people began. Actions should have consequences, and if someone commits murder, he (it’s usually a he)
deserves the ultimate punishment, but only if - and it’s a big if - we can be very sure that we have the right guy.
Murderers cannot be rehabilitated, and a murderer might very well murder again.
6
@GregP
Yes, can you imagine if the Central Park Five were given the death sentence? Hopefully, it would have been discovered before they were sent to their deaths, that this was a tragic nightmare.
Of course, president 45 would never have made an apology. He hasn't so far.
24
I'm a progressive... I'm almost entirely liberal and generally I at least question the idea of capital punishment.
And yet, on it's face, I'm for this.
In clear instances, some people are beyond rehabilitation and their crimes so severe and transparent, capital punishment is the right answer.
But coming from this administration, what's the catch?
If this administration comes out tomorrow and says "breathing is good, everyone should breath as much as possible..." -- I might actually suffocate myself.
I don't trust anything these guys do or that there isn't some shady motive behind anything they do. EVERYTHING has some underlying nefarious nature.
148
@J
Human justice is imperfect.
Innocent people have been executed after trials and appeals.
"I'm sorry," is inadequate when judicial error leads to violent death at the hands of the state.
The death penalty should be banned.
28
@J nobody is beyond redemption
7
@J
Do you think the President thought it would gain the approval of authoritarian personalities who would then vote for him? (Just an idea.)
7
99.9999 percent of death penalty cases are state cases. That is because the states have jurisdiction over virtually every violent crime. The most prominent federal death penalty case in recent years was the Boston Marathon case.
As the article indicates, the new policy will result in five executions that were on hold for the last 16 years. (And then they'll look at some others???) Texas executes more inmates in a month than the feds do in decades. And since the feds haven't executed anyone since 2003, there will likely be all kinds of delays before there any executions are scheduled.
If a Democrat is elected in 2020, I would expect that the scheduled executions would still be pending and Barr's ruling would be reversed. You never know, but the likelihood of the feds executing anybody after all this time is questionable.
26
@michjas yes but as we learn more and more about the breadth of the problems with the 2016 and states’ systems being hacked, it seems to me that having won in 2016, and facing no real punishment as a result the same actors who hacked our elections in 2016 are unlike to stop in 2020. Thus anyone could be made president in 2020 regardless of the will of the people again.
1
I am profoundly saddened by this development. Everything that is good about this country is being destroyed by Trump & Co. Why do they (looking at you, GOP) hate America?
29
Why does the GOP hate America so much? - is the question. When an entire political party represents a greater threat to our nation than any individual country, we are in a terrible moment in our history.
Should we be having mass protests like in Hong Kong and Puerto Rico? Will impeachment or electing a Democrat really affect the fact the republicans don’t care about Americans, and seek to damage our democratic values with lies and violence.
1
@Lifelong New Yorker It's not America they hate, it's the brown folk who call America home. Who do you imagine will suffer the most from this ruling? Who do you think winds up on death row the most? People that look like me, BLACK AND BROWN.
1
@Keely Yes, I am aware of who this impacts the most.
1
Is Justice John Paul Stevens even in his grave yet to roll over in it?
Wishing he could only take a standing 8-count, and come back swinging...
6
The slippery slope to Fascism.
People, Barr has admitted to not giving a hoot about anything he does as AG. He simply doesn't care. He's got "power" and he intends to use it.
13
@Moehoward
His father was the headmaster who appointed Epstein to teach at the Dalton School, even though Epstein had no college degree, no teaching credentials, no nothing except an interest in young girls.
3
It's not the "slippery slope" to fascism--fascism is already here.
The criminals to be executed are bona fide sociopaths, which is another way of saying they are evil. They must be permanently removed from society. Anybody who thinks that it is an injustice to put these criminals to death should consider the injustices that sociopaths perpetrate every day. We should not be fainthearted in the never-ending battle against evil.
8
@MM
Every convicted person sentenced to death is proven to be an evil person, unless subsequent evidence proves that they were innocent and the actual criminal remained free to do more evil.
1
This is not an either-or situation: either execute them or release them. How about lock them up for a long time or for life.
Also, they are not responsible for crimes committed by other sociopaths, so that cannot be a justification for state-sanctioned murder.
Remember, people have confessed to horrific murders, been convicted of them, and been killed, only to find out later they were innocent. Innocent people do confess to crimes they didn't commit, prosecutors suppress evidence, defense lawyers do poor jobs, and juries make mistakes. But once the person is dead, there's no do over. Oops, sorry, doesn't cut it.
2
And all I can say about that is you better make sure you have the right sociopath. Unless you think it’s okay for the state to incorrectly sacrifice a human life - and that’s happened.
“Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn abolished the death penalty more than a decade after the state imposed a moratorium on executions out of concern that innocent people could be put to death by a justice system that had wrongly condemned 13 men.”
I also highly recommend the movie “When They See Us.” It’s about the Central Park Five and their wrongful convictions and sentences.
You remember them, right? Trump took out a full page ad calling for their executions before the trials concluded.
Not only scary but shameful.
2
It’s part of the Campaign to Re-elect. Dylan Roof’s execution will be an attempt to appeal to Black voters, building on the embarrassing announcement by DJT about how ‘we’re all one’ after calling Sweden on behalf of a Black rapper he never heard of nor cares about. (I don’t know how he kept a straight face.) The Boston Bomber will satisfy his anti-immigrant/anti-Muslim base.
Next up, various ‘enemies of the people,’ journalists, ‘socialists,’ etc.
Get back to me when they line the Sacklers up against the wall.
2
Feels like America got the death penalty the day Putin put Trump in office. Now we are strapped in, waiting for the executioner to inject that last lethal dose to push us past the point of no return.
Just a little pinprick...nod if you can hear me.
We have become comfortably numb.
14
Wow! Even Russia does not have capital punishment.
Is the Trump administration thinking this through? What if they all wind up in jail, as some of them have? The death penalty has been used for treason, to name just one high crime or misdemeanor. Be careful what you sow, Trumpsters!
9
Where are the Prolife Christians ?
16
Barbaric. So much for the pro-life GOP. Children in cages, executions, control of women's bodies, president who welcomes election interference from an enemy and is openly corrupt.
14
And in the process, killing some innocent people. Not surprised to see Boot lickers Barr and Graham on this.
6
Now; This should be at the top of the NYT front page- NOT the amount of "electricity" sparked my yesterday's Mueller testimony. Do better NYT.
7
Another backward-lookiing decision from a real neanderthal administration. The only bright side is that some could pay the ultimate price for treason.
6
Fresh off his magic carpet of lies, to celebrate exoneration of obstruction of justice, and still pumped with the savagery of his demands to exile non-white Congressional critics, our Caudillo cast his gaze about for an utterly trapped population to destroy, and settled upon his base's favorite since Calvary. Well well well. What shall the weekend bring?
State sponsored murders and terrorism heralded by none other than Donald trump , the man who wanted to execute five innocent teenagers in the Central Park rape case.
Time to leave .
4
Is anyone surprised? This Administration makes every decision based on what the uninformed, angry white guy at the end of the bar wants...
5
I swear this administration is determined to drag us backward. They have no humanity.
5
Ought the Federal Penal Code to even have a death penalty? How does Federal Death penalties take precedence over State Death penalties, so far as our Constitution’s line between the two? “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Tenth Amendment
What if enough states decide that they have the right to end not only the states’ executions as barbaric, but the states, as some did for fugitive slaves, also refuse to release condemned prisons to federal executions? Would we have the making of another Civil War?
The mere idea of condemning to death another human being twice, at the state as well as at the federal level, is not just spitefully cruel such that it nullifies the purpose of the 8th Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment ( for without the 8th Amendment, it would be legally possible to torture someone to death). But jurisdictions imposing legal executions twice seem to contradict the idea of justice only for spite not once but twice.
I am a lawyer who has represented people on death row. I wish our country could move toward restorative justice, toward healing each other and our divisions. I wish for a world where we all have compassion for each other, where we work together to eliminate the causes of so many of these crimes: poverty, drug addiction, and unstable families, among others. These crimes do not occur in vacuums but are products of so many social inequalities. But instead of solutions, Attorney General Barr chooses violence, to ignore humanity, and to placate a retributive lust for blood. We could have had healing instead.
10
@SPN And what restorative justice could there be for Dylan Roof? How can we "heal" him of whatever affects him? Some people are beyond redemption--case in point Albert Flicker, the 77 year old who was released from prison because the judge believed an older man could cause no harm--and he subsequently murdered a woman he was obsessed with.
1
@Hexagon I never advocated releasing certain people who are a proven danger. Once a person has murdered another, there is no bringing that victim back. Instead of choosing blind retribution and violence that has been shown to do little to deter crime, we could take restorative efforts, such as providing counseling and funds to support the victim's family and help them heal.
Then, we should work to reduce violent crime's causes. If we invest to reduce poverty, treat mental illness and drug addiction, give families social support, etc. we can prevent so many of these crimes before they happen.
For the person who has committed the crime, we owe them nothing more than we owe each other, which is to respect their basic humanity and treat them fairly and justly. We don't have to release them.
Lifetime solitary confinement (no human interaction, no communication, no media, no windows) is more humane and compassionate than state-administered death.
3
I don't particularly grieve the deaths of people who have committed heinous crimes. Nor do I worry excessively about the "barbarity" of capital punishment. Frankly, our prisons are barbaric. Death may be a mercy.
However, the execution of a wrongfully convicted human is both tragic and a terrifying abuse of state power. It is inconceivable (especially if you are conservative Republican) that the government has created a system with a 0% error rate in the conviction and execution of defendants in capital cases. In other words, so long as we have a system for capital punishment, it is a certainty that innocent people will be executed in our name and paid for with our tax dollars.
So if you are pro-death penalty, I guess the moral calculus here is that the killing of some small number of innocents is justified by the great benefits that accrue from having a system designed to take retribution against a larger number of very bad humans. For my part, I'm against capital punishment, primarily because I can't sanction a program that requires this human sacrifice of innocents in order to ensure the guilty receive a penalty more severe than lifelong incarceration.
7
Presumably this is what is meant by "Making America Great Again". Taking us back to the 1950s (at the very least).
2
I say it should be up to the victims parents to decide considering the unimaginable pain they have went through. If they get any satisfaction out of watching or knowing these animals will not walk on the face of this Earth again then so be it.
1
It is amazing that the same people who believe in the death penalty also define themselves as fully supportive of right to life for all women no matter the circumstances. I’m confused
3
@mcb@nj
You aren’t confused. They are.
The Trump Administration wants to make the statement that it is totally just and equitable, so its supporters will realize that their desire to see their political opponents dead (as Putin has acted without criticism from Trump) or in jail (as Trump has demanded) is really perfectly OK. It is comforting to know that our violent impulses are actually vurtuous.
3
When something as grave as state killing is performed for political reasons the killers lose stature in the eyes of the rest of us. Mr. Barr has diminished himself to a considerable degree.
6
Why? We have the ADX Florence Supermax
We all die eventually, sometimes painfully, sometimes peacefully, but living decades in an isolated concrete cell 23 hours a day, with no real human contact, is guaranteed punishment, incapacitation, deterrence, and so much more.
3
If I were sentenced to life in prison, a shot of pentobarbital would seem like a pretty good thing to me.
1
Capital punishment does not deter crime. It brutalizes those who carry it out as well as creating an enormously complex and expensive system of appeals and counter-appeals. This said, the men who are slated to be executed are a waste of space. I have no sympathy or pity for rapists, torturers and murderers. Perhaps it’d be better if they were discreetly given an overdose of something or other in the prison infirmary. But capital punishment as part of the legal system has no place in a civilized society.
1
Good. One of the few things I can be proud of the Trump Administration for.
3
And the onward march to our base instincts continues ...
3
So Attorney General Barr wants our government to resume executions. Why am i not surprised. It takes a certain kind of human being to want to do this or should i say, relish? Barr is one who would want this.
There are those who walk among the stars in this Universe and know it not. Yesterday, i watched one for seven hours.
3
The pro-life party certainly has no problem being pro-death when it suits their political needs.
7
DNA has proved the innocence of too many people to even consider reinstating the death penalty. Convictions of innocent people happen for many reasons. Eyewitness testimony? Surprisingly unreliable. Confession? Easily obtained by police interrogators. Bad lawyering? All too common. Bad prosecutors who cut corners and refuse to turn over exculpatory evidence? Hey, prosecutors measure quality in terms of conviction rate, not in terms of truth or justice.
Reinstating the death penalty, even for heinous crime, does not deal with the fact that convictions for are quite often convictions of the innocent.
Killing innocents? Except if it is a fertilized egg in utero, killing innocents is the stock and trade of the god-forsaken Republican Party.
2
I think of William Barr as a monarchist searching for a ruthless Christian kingdom. He might have been happy with Franco a couple generations earlier. He's got Trump but doesn't he really want Putin?
4
Oh, so now the Attorney General thinks that "the Justice Department upholds the rule of law".
3
The most important reason for abolishing the death penalty is this:
What if the death-row inmate is innocent?
That decision can NEVER be walked back.
5
All this talk is as useless as prayer. Trump and his cohorts as well as the Republicans that enable them have no respect for the social contract, constitution or rule of law, they are outlaws. We need the next great american patriot(s) to step forward and put an end to this
1
What happened to “Vengeance is mine” as stipulated in both the Old and New Testaments?
3
@Peretz David
The Bible only matters to conservatives for an hour on Sunday morning.
2
@Peretz David
If all citizens were required to take a turn as executioner, as we are for jury duty, would you be happy when you were called?
Perhaps with his enthusiasm, we should permit (compel?) Mr Barr to christen the trigger which kills the convicted? Do you suspect he'd savor the blood or cringe at the inhumanity?
1
The USA:
“Detains” children in ICE concentration camps, where agents reportedly subject them to horrendous abuses as described by survivors.
Allows the president to order his employees to refuse to cooperate with federal investigators.
Executes people.
Protects multi-billion dollar corporations from paying any federal taxes, but requires middle class families to contribute 20% of their income to fund the government.
Takes away citizen’s rights to healthcare including preventive care, while at the same time demanding citizens to be healthier.
Pollutes the air by rolling back enforcement of regulations on everything from pesticide applications to burning of fossil fuels, then quells citizens who suffer from an increase of respiratory problems.
And on, and on, and on.
Anyone who says the USA is the greatest country in the world is basically just one of George Orwell’s proles. Completely devoid of any critical thought whatsoever.
And I say all of that as a US Army veteran. One of the duties of a well informed citizen is specifically to question government and business authorities. A well informed citizen demands a quality of life that offers dignity and respect. A citizen that accepts corrupt corporate table scraps is not an ally to the Constitution. THAT kind of citizen is actually an opponent of every single tenet that the Constitution prescribes.
3
Remarkable how often Bill Barr manages to have Tim Scott in the picture with him. Does Mr. Scott realize he's being used as a prop?
3
AG Barr would not profit from the position of Jewish law that states better to let 9 men guilty go free that allow one man innocent to die. it is so easy to condemn to death the faceless. civilized countries have largely abandoned such barbarism. as we have seen over the years of this administration, we are abandoning ethics, compassion, decency and civilized speech/behavior along with any laws surrounding these essential components or our 'democracy'. When 40 per cent of our population agrees on the rush of propaganda that overwhelms any considered fact as fake 'do not believe what you hear, believe me' we are on a trump brick road to where? must be a golf course.
At this point who would expect anything other from William P. Barr, who most assuredly is carrying out Donald Trump's will to rid the country of all the criminal elements he loves to focus on.
And as an extra added benefit, this also fits in nicely into his plan to Make America White Again -- since a large proportion of the inmates on Death Row tend to be people of color.
You call this "winning"?
1
Every Roman Catholic should be adamant against this departure!
We pray for life from conception to natural death as man's human right.
Will we hear a clamor or silence from the Pro Life movement?
Let's watch if the born (prisoners) are as valued as the unborn.
The Pope(s) have addressed both matters.
1
I probably shouldn't be watching A Handmaid's Tale. This razor-wire photo gives me the willies.
It's all so wrong, and the "never again" or "never here" chants seem to have been silenced. But we can't just let the mad bullies take over our lovely country.
1
This is really sinister. The president, in an attempt to change the news story from the negative Mueller publicity he was receiving, has chosen today to announce the federal government will start killing people again. One of the main reasons for the moratorium on capital punishment was because we were learning that some were wrongly on death row. Innocent people had been killed. Now, to return to that same policy of killing suspected wrongdoers? This is a bad day for American history.
317
@Glenn Graves
We remain the only "civilized" country that allows capital punishment. What an embarrassment! Where are all of those pro life Christians?
37
@Glenn Graves
This defies fact-checking. Negative Mueller news? Have you bothered to read the transgressions of the first five death row inmates that will be executed? "Suspected wrongdoers"? What is the America you value?
8
@Glenn Graves It seems that most days under this regime are bad days for American history.
18
I have yet to hear a conservative explain how the state should have the power of life and death over the individual.
6
Something tells me that Dylann Roof will not be among those scheduled to be executed.
11
Haiku - This is US
Kidnap and cage kids.
Murder adults by the state.
We're number one, right?
God bless America.
7
I would say every eligible voter of a so-called democratic society that sanctions capital punishment is guilty of pre-meditated murder.
3
Trump administration finally resorts to human sacrifice to appease an unforgiving god.
7
Got to love this "pro life" party...
11
Seriously, can you stop using the term "inmate" to describe incarcerated people?
1
@Clarence Hall
“inmate definition: 1. a person who is kept in a prison or a hospital for people who are mentally ill”
Cambridge English Dictionary
1
I say we hand Barr the gun or hypo or gallows lever and have him lead the way.
4
Barbarism or socialism.
It's your choice, folks.
3
One of America's (growing) number of barbaric actions perpetuated by its most barbaric administration. To this we've come. Well, America was a nice ride while it lasted.
5
Will the new use by the Trump regime of the death penalty apply to those who commit treason by colluding with hostile foreign powers to hack elections and subvert our democracy.
Asking for a friend.
3
Here’s a cynical thought: if the federal government is bringing back execution despite its well documented flaws - racial disparities, innocent people put to death - can we bring back making rape a capital offense?
Or is that #MeToo going too far?
3
On the bright side, they execute people for treason, which Robbespierre Barr hasn't seemed to have discussed with traitor tRump.
3
These Republicans are just a barrel of laffs, aren’t they? Query - is Tim Scott aware of the racial bias at work when the death sentence is imposed?
Wait, hear that sound? It’s the drip, drip, drip of fascism - a little here, a little there, a little more over that way. Pretty soon, you’ve got a flood.
2
Good, about time!
2
I don't understand why republicans are so in favor of the death penalty. If you are a supporter of less government, which is what I thought republicans stood for, then why would you want to give the government the power to take a life?
4
The cruelty of the Trump Administration is bottomless; the immorality of Attorney General Barr is shameful. God bless America because these people are a curse.
1
The purpose of this is to force the left to put capital punishment on its headline agenda along with its already staggering list and push it to the Supreme Court, which will affirm 5-4 the legitimacy of capital punishment, despite the staggering and ever-mounting evidence from the Innocence Project and others of the racist i.e. anti-black taint of death penalty sentences. This will throw more red meat the Republicans' white extremist flank. There is no other rationale.
1
Since the Trump cabal is still trying to hide various criminal activities they need more cover. What better than to start killing people...LEGALLY?
3
The evil of this administration is relentless.
6
So, based on many of the comments its "save the prisoners" who committed horrible atrocities and "kill the unborn children" who have done nothing but be a potential nuisance to its mother. Ok, yeah that makes perfect sense.
Those three guys in that picture--Barr, Graham, and Scott--ought to be behind that prison wall instead of in front of it.
4
Is this what is supposed to delight Trump’s base and get the Trumpian Republicans elected in 2020?
Making America meaner and crueler —again!
Hey all you evangelicals: What would Jesus say?
1
The pro-life party demonstrates its faux bonafides once again.
4
As per usual, the good Christian Right wing, the right to lifers (all protesting abortion), ARE THE FIRST TO CALL FOR THE DEATH PENALTY to be enforced.
For them life is only sacred if it's a fetus. After birth they don't give a damn if the person starves to death: no food stamps for the poor! "Let them eat cake"!!!!!
5
When’s the coronation?
1
Power-drunk Trump is eager to torture, eager to kill. It pumps up his dictator cred; he'll be able to puff his chest out and hold his chin up higher next time he rubs elbows with Putin or Kim or Duterte. All the top fascist authoritarians are doing it, don't you know? He craves the hell he's putting those little brown kids through down on the border. He relished letting the notion of nuclear holocaust in Afghanistan roll around on his tongue. And resuming executions that will disproportionately take out blacks, possibly even innocent ones, is a boon to his sadism.
2
As I have said before; the blood lust of the scum that are part of the Trump gang of thieves knows no bounds. Unfortunately, we shall all reap the whirlwind. The planet is being destroyed and we all will suffer, including the morons that belong to the Trump cult.
The fact that his supporters don't give a damn about their children
or grandchildren is truly a mystery.
2
an ideology that holds it wrong to imperil a heartbeat but ok to kill a living human being is as sick as far right extremism gets. And here it is being pandered to by this satanic government.
2
Resuming death penalty seem to be more of a political ploy to rile up the trump base. While we have to think empathetically keeping in mind the families who lost loved one to the crime but the death penalty is expensive, does not reduce crime and is an easy way out for the murderer.
7
Just another bone to the perceived Trump base. Anyone with working knowledge of the death penalty knows that it is an extremely expensive, inconsistent but politically powerful form of punishment. It is applied unequally across crimes in a way that targets the poor, black and hispanic in numbers far greater than their presence in the population. Who did more harm, Bernie Madoff or some poor, black kid from the Miami ghettos who got caught up in a terrible swirl of abuse and violence? And we all know which of these two populate America's death rows.
But in a world in which people like Trump play to the easily pliable and reactionary uniformed for the support, the biblical perfection of an eye for an eye carries the day.
This is just another last gasp for the dying of the GOP and its desperate supporters. Another issue to turn around on a cold day in January, 2020.
4
I’m not surprised that this administration is going to take us back to our barbaric days of yesteryear. It matches up well with everything they promote.
The death penalty is wrong. PERIOD. There are certainly some evil people who have committed horrible crimes, but should our government lower the rest of us to the same level to commit “legal” murder?
There are arguments for and against, but let’s see how eager trump and barr would be if they were obligated to actually throw the switch, pull the trigger, or spring the trap door.
6
One step closer to thorough-going, undistilled barbarism. The viciousness of this government--the viciousness of a broad segment of the American populace--is breathtaking, and depressing.
The only positive thing about any of this is that it has revealed what politics has been all along: under prior governments we could pretend to be humanitarians, but the killing, the raw power maneuvering, the cynicism of protecting the interests of the hideously wealthy, all went on. Obama never had to push the button on a drone attack himself, but the missiles flew and the civilians died. The wealthy had their way--yeah, they gave back pennies here and there but took in billions everywhere.
Now at least, there is no varnish, no filter, no veil. And it's a disgusting thing to see. Other than Trump (and leaving aside the Senate and House apologists and sycophants), Barr is the vilest of the bunch, the purveyor of illegalities in the name of the law.
Brecht asked once, what is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a new one? The questions we need to ask about this regime are similar: this man is the greatest criminal.
4
Loathsomely barbarous. We have managed to grow out of the adolescent desire to torture (presumed) criminals, but can't seem to realize that the death penalty is psychological torture and, much worse, presents to the world---and in particular to its youth---the image of a government ruled by blindly murderous resentment of those who "offend" it.
2
I wonder if this ruling also stipulates improved standards of implementation and quality control to eliminate the possibility of further occurrences of so-called "botched" executions that have previously made news - i.e., executions carried out by incompetent/unqualified personnel and/or via use of ineffective or inappropriate drugs.
Or will sadism and/or torture also be customary components of this method of punishment?
2
This doesn't lend itself to a justiciable solution, but:
1. Those who support the death penalty should come to realize that, on the whole, it has been unfairly applied against minorities, and it has resulted in the murder, by the state, of at least a few wrongfully convicted people over the years. (Hey conservatives, how's that for over-intrusive government?) There's simply no way to make it up to a wrongfully convicted person who's been put to death.
2. Those who oppose the death penalty in ALL instances should understand that there are those whose crime is so heinous, whose guilt is so beyond reasonable doubt, and for whom extenuating circumstances are so totally lacking, that it can fairly be said that they deserve to die. Timothy McVeigh is a good example of this. Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer are even better examples. These are just among the most infamous cases; there are no doubt many, many others who fit into this bucket.
I guess this puts me in the category of opposing capital punishment for most, but not for all. Some do deserve to die. How to establish a workable justiciable standard for determining that is the rub.
1
@Rick
I guess “two wrongs don’t make aright” is too subtle an argument for you.
I find it intriguing that certain Christians, adherents of a religion whose founders were persecuted and murdered by the state, are so keen on judicial murder. Do they not trust their God to be the ultimate judge?
I keep seeing the word "barbaric" in these comments.
Barbaric is gunning down innocents on the basis of skin color while they attend church. Or detonating a bomb amongst women and children in accordance with a perceived religious mandate.
Those convicted and condemned to execution are the beneficiaries of infinitely more due process than their victims ever had a chance to hope for.
2
@Stephen
No one is denying your rather obvious statement. The point being made is that executing us at best lowers us to the level of the barbarian, at worst possibly kills innocent suspects.
2
@John Execution absent due process, which includes things like trial by jury and proscribed punishment for certain offenses would indeed be barbaric. We're not that.
"Innocent suspects" are not subject to state-sanctioned execution. Convicted criminals are.
1
Attorney General Barr "upholds the rule of law" except when it comes to his boss. In that context, he is no longer the Attorney General but is Trump's Captain McCluskey.
3
The death penalty is archaic, uncivilized, and cruel, even without taking into consideration its inextricable tie to racism. Death row inmates are disproportionately people of color, while prosecutors in death penalty cases are disproportionately white. It’s absurd that we should actively try to revitalize a practice that’s riddled with inequity at its core.
2
According to Amnesty International, the United States is the only country in the Western Hemisphere to still impose the death penalty. Top ten countries with the most executions: China, North Korea (these are suspected, as neither county releases data), Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt, Somalia...and the United States. Not exactly good company. However, maybe this is an attempt to vault into the top 5, because nobody beats America!
3
You should put more consideration into the language you use to describe incarcerated people, especially people being sentenced to death. Extreme punishments like the death penalty persist in our criminal justice system because of how we dehumanize people who have committed crimes, and the language we use helps normalize that dehumanization. The phrase "a person regained consciousness during an execution" has a very different affect from "a prisoner regained consciousness during an execution." The U.S. government is killing people. Language kills people.
2
Available in the NYT archives is an op-ed written by Acting AG Barr, “Bush’s Crime Bill: This Time, Pass It,” published on Sept. 24, 1991.
His thoughts then:
The use of habeas corpus (as it was constituted in 1991) is “abuse and delay” by the convicted and their attorneys to “nullify” death sentences. The death penalty is a “deterrence” to violent crime, as committed by drug dealers and gangs. The exclusionary rule (in 1991) should be amended so that law enforcement can act quickly to obtain evidence and make arrests, so as to not “second guess” motives in the courtroom.
Since 1991, how many people on death row have been proven innocent? How many have been wrongfully put to death? How many have been wrongfully convicted, period? Will Barr require conclusive DNA proof to confirm the guilt of those he wants to execute? Will “good faith” in evidence collection and arrests always be assumed?
Going forward, what other due process protections will be “amended” to expedite justice and make us “safer”?
We must consider these questions in light of Barr’s mindset then and the authoritarian bent of the administration he works for now.
“Getting tough on crime” is an attractive meme for the base, but an incredibly slippery slope for the rest of us. Taking life in the name of the state should be done with the utmost responsibility and respect for the law — if it is done at all. Barr’s words provide little faith of that.
I hope a federal court stays this directive.
1
“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
Says the man who's being held in criminal contempt.
3
@Kiska
Central Park Five
I agree with the person who commented to the effect that some individuals are proven to be inherently evil and lack remorse. One such individual is in charge of the Justice Department.
This country would be much better off if the DOJ and, more generally, this administration paid more attention to eliminating hate crimes and ensuring equal access to voting.
1
Capital punishment serves no purpose and cannot be reversed when prosecutors, attorneys and juries have made mistakes!
That argument alone should be enough to curb the bloodlust of Barr, Graham and Scott!
Since the judicial system is and has always been biased against people of color, I cannot imaging why Scott would support this!
He may be looking to score points with angry, bigoted white men who are threatened by their looming minority status but might figure into his plans for the future!
1
Picketing nun in front of the US Supreme Court: “Why do we kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” Two men who should never be entrusted with the power, directly or indirectly by appointment, to administer such punishment: William Barr and Donald Trump. They have showed us why in explicit terms.
This administration is bent on spreading worldwide revulsion for the country it is supposed to serve, unless it is just there to serve Mr Putin's kleptocracy and its own.
I'm just curious, what are progressives' objections to executing Tsarnaev and Roof specifically? There is no question as to their guilt, so that objection that we are possibly executing an innocent person does not apply. They are both white, so their execution would not be a discriminatory application of the death penalty. And both crimes are particularly heinous, calling out for retribution beyond life imprisonment. Tsarnaev forfeited his life when he placed a bomb next to a little girl; he's not human as far as I am concerned.
2
Perhaps we should have public executions again.
That’s what stopped them originally in the US.
Not so much for the “friends” of this administration.
Maybe MBS can offer some tips.
Will the current Attorney General Barr be traveling to Indiana to watch the executions? If not, why not?
Would he not want to witness the results of his decisions?
Which "Christian value" does a move like this represent? So much for "from conception to natural death."
1
It's not enough for this administration to kill people through neglect (eg. migrants), now they are moving towards (the most possible) premeditated murder. When you think they can't sink lower...
2
This is the beginning of the illegitimate Trump administration's efforts to redefine citizenship and the rights of citizens. To take from citizens, in this case their lives.
They are cunning in their cause: they choose a group no one will rise to defend, one everyone can find a reason to revile, and they single them out for the first test of their latest detestable policy.
Who will stand up for the right to go on living (albeit with a life term in federal prison) for five men convicted of murdering children? It's a heinous crime, everyone can agree on that. Surely death is what they deserve.
But two prior administrations, Republican and Democratic, passed on carrying out the sentences. Morality still had some influence on those public servants.
Here we have despotic loser, liar thieves (of the election, plus who knows what else) who test the American people every day to see if we too have fallen into the morass of moral degradation they have dominion over.
Have we? The death penalty is enormously unpopular. It has steadily been repealed in the states over the last fifty years.
The country has myriad problems which need attention, and this is what you come up with as an action worth doing?
Wake up, America. This is the beginning of the criminal depravity Trump and his cult will unleash on your lives.
You think you're immune because you're not a killer of children?
Soon, very soon, you won't have to be. The ax will find you for the crime of merely taking a breath.
2
To commenters bemoaning the death penalty for federal crimes, direct your efforts to Congress. Title 18 of the US Code provides for the death penalty for certain federal crimes - see useful summary at link below. Asking the courts for mercy or the executive branch for leniency is a stop-gap approach. Admittedly, changing this via Congress will be very hard; getting Congress to do anything important is hard. But that's the only way to permanently eradicate it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_by_the_United_States_federal_government
1
Another example of cruel GOP policies that waste money.
We are quick to condom nations where such medieval practices are common. This is simply a government approved & funded murder. Moreover, it is an unjust practice as it is overwhelmingly applied to poor and minority members of our society. Now, we are really not much better than Saudi Arabia, Iran, N. Korea, etc. I am NOT suggesting that murderers should go free, but this simply a legal barbaric act committed in our name.
4
Republicans- "Government isn't the solution to anything and should stay out of people's lives."
Republicans- "Government has to be able to execute people despite there being ample evidence that it isn't a deterrent and that innocent people end up wrongly killed."
These people are just cruel, there's nothing else to it at this point. Like, who was clamoring for this? Even more sickening is that Trump will bring this up at a rally at some point and his sycophants will cheer it.
5
So much for being pro-life.
4
This action is not surprising, given that one of Trump's heros is violent strongman Duterte. Trump wants to be the Big Man on Campus.
2
"Scientists agree, by an overwhelming majority, that the death penalty has no deterrent effect...... States without the death penalty continue to have significantly lower murder rates than those that retain capital punishment." Amnesty International-2019--So waste our time--Barr--why not. Just another added feature that the West is in huge decline. "As of 2019, in Europe, the death penalty for both civilian and military crimes has been abolished in all countries except Belarus."
2
When you're OK with killing people by taking away their healthcare, deciding to kill prisoners is really easy. Just remember: the other guys are the ones with the death panels, right?
3
For a country whose inhabitants scream for the sanctity of life of the unborn, it's highly hypocritical to promote death to people who've committed crimes regardless of how heinous those crimes. If life is sacred, then all life is sacred. We join the ranks of Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and China with our backward barbarism. Americans can rationalize anything.
4
Anyone who reviews the work of the Innocence Project in exonerating wrongly convicted people, or who reads Just Mercy by Bryan Stephenson, knows how wrong, unjust, and barbaric the death penalty is.
2
Do we own it to : God, Jesus, the Old Testament, pro life policy?
1
Saudi Arabia welcomes America back into the fold! China and Iran do as well. North Korea is sending hugs and kisses to America.
3
These are cruel, evil men at the head of our government—as well as being psychopathic liars.
71
Obviously, the Party of Right to Life is seriously conflicted about its definition of life!!!
Either you believe life is sacred or you believe your all-knowing, all-good God makes mistakes, and you in your infinite knowledge have a right to correct God's error.
Hypocrites! Every last one of them!
61
Maybe the next step in this backward policy is to make executions public and at least provide entertainment to bloodthirsty citizens.
35
@barbara harshav Pay per view would be a good idea.
@barbara harshav
They have the template from when Jim Crow lynching were a family event at a picnic. The group took picture with the hanging man or women who had been lynched and postcards were made to send to their friends across the country. We know how to be brutal animals to perfection.
Dont brother to troll me with self righteousness we have all been in contact with people who have been involved in a crime and have been convicted, we have all experienced lost, so dont brother to tell me I dont know what I am talking about.
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Once again, William Barr strikes with his ugly attitude and lack of concern for anything larger than a flea.
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@Suzanne Wheat
Well, we know he’s bigger than that.
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@db2 thanks for making me laugh!
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Because cruelty IS the point.
And the entire “Christian nation” rhetoric is clearly garbage.
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