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Opinion: All Executions Are Political and Biden Should End Them for That Reason

The lethal injection room at San Quentin State Prison, completed in 2010. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

At his confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate on Feb. 22, President Biden’s pick for attorney general continued the Democratic Party’s slow walk back from its historical support of the death penalty. In opposing the death penalty that they once favored, centrist Democrats demonstrate a fundamental truth about executions: They are all political.

Merrick Garland, a centrist on the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, told senators, “I am very concerned about the large number of exonerations that have occurred through DNA evidence,” noting that the “most terrible thing happens if someone is executed for a crime they did not commit.”

The Biden administration that Garland will join has indicated a willingness to put a moratorium on federal executions. But as a senator, President Biden authored the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. The act codified federal death penalty procedures for 60 offenses, including 28 newly created capital crimes. It wasn’t until 2019 that President Biden gave any indication that he was rethinking his enthusiastic support of capital punishment and executions.

If confirmed, Garland will also be a Johnny-come-lately to the death penalty abolitionist movement. Famously, he secured the death penalty in the federal prosecution of Timothy McVeigh, the white domestic terrorist who bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

Pushed by progressive Democrats while crafting the 2020 Democratic Party platform, the Biden campaign committed to ending federal executions. A temporary moratorium carries the least political risk and requires the least political courage. If the next president is a Republican, he or she can immediately resume federal executions.

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