Bills
| 3.23.22

Should the Federal Government be Banned From Using the Death Penalty? (H.R. 4052)

Do you support or oppose this bill?

What is H.R. 4052?

(Updated December 12, 2020)

This bill would ban the federal government from using the death penalty. It would also require that any person sentenced to death under federal law before its passage be resentenced.

Argument in favor

There are numerous problems with the death penalty, including cases where innocent people have been wrongfully executed, its geographically arbitrary application, and racism in juries’ decisions in capital punishment cases. The federal death penalty should be abolished.

Argument opposed

The death penalty is an important form of retribution for heinous crimes and deters people from committing those same crimes. The death penalty should available for federal prosecutors to bring in response to horrific crimes committed by dangerous and unrepentant individuals.

Impact

Federal death row inmates; federal imposition of the death penalty; and resentencing of those sentenced to death.

Cost of H.R. 4052

A CBO cost estimate is unavailable.

Additional Info

In-Depth: Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) introduced this bill to prevent the federal government from using the death penalty. She introduced this bill in response to the Dept. of Justice’s (DOJ) announcement that it will resume using the death penalty after not using it for more 16 years: 

“The same racist rhetoric coming from the occupant of the White House - who called for the execution of the Exonerated 5 [also known as the Central Park 5, five black and Latino teenagers who were accused, and eventually exonerated, of raping a woman in Central Park in 1989], is what led to this racist, vile policy. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now and I am proud to introduce a bill that completely abolishes the use of capital punishment as a punitive measure. The cruelty is the point - this is by design.”

Critics of the federal death penalty argue that it’s plagued by many of the same problems as state death penalty systems. These problems include racial bias (55% of defendants sentenced to death in the last decade were people of color), geographical arbitrariness (only three states — Virginia, Texas, and Missouri — accounted for almost 50% of all federal death row prisoners), and disparities in defense counsels’ quality and funding. 

Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, says, “The death penalty is plagued by racial bias and geographic bias. Junk science has played an outsized role in who gets the death penalty and who does not."

President Trump has frequently expressed support for the death penalty both before taking office and while serving as president. He has spoken favorably of the death penalty for drug dealers, suggesting that the government is “wasting [its] time” in not executing them, and tweeted “YES!” in response to a question about whether he supported the death penalty in May 2013. In April 2013, Trump tweeted, “...Who says the death penalty is not a deterrent?” 

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Cory Booker (D-NJ), who are both seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, both oppose the death penalty. Explaining her reasoning, Sen. Warren says, “Our criminal justice system has a long history of mistakes when it comes to capital punishment—especially when it comes to Black and Brown people. We cannot let a broken system decide the fate of incarcerated Americans. I oppose the death penalty.” Similarly, Sen. Booker says: 

“Throughout our nation’s history we have seen how the death penalty is not only ineffective and immoral, but also fraught with biases against people of color, low-income individuals, and those with mental illness. It is a waste of taxpayer dollars and does nothing to improve public safety. Instead, capital punishment seeks to satisfy a desire for vengeance and retribution. Our government must represent the best of who we are, not the worst.”

Hannah Riley, communications manager at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, argues that the U.S. is in the middle of a “death penalty crisis” that can only be resolved by abolishing the death penalty. Riley argues that the death penalty is cruel, often resulting in gruesome deaths and suffering, and concludes: 

“For many Americans, the idea of a torturous execution is acceptable ― justified, even. But this doesn’t change the fact that the American death penalty as we know it violates our Constitution’s ban against cruel and unusual punishment and our constitutional guarantee of due process and equal protection under the law. Our death penalty practices are unconstitutional. Period… Each death-row exoneration chips away at public faith in the system’s ability to get it right, and every botched execution serves as a stark reminder that there is no way to ensure death comes without suffering… Still, some states continue fighting to retain the right to kill prisoners. They fight to uphold a fallacy of justice: the notion that suffering and pain are somehow redemptive. They fight to uphold a punishment that is ineffective, costly and long shunned by the rest of the industrialized Western world. No person ― regardless of their worst act ― should be subjected to a death like that at the hands of their own government.”

Those who support the death penalty typically argue that it serves retributive and deterrent purposes. They also argue that it prevents re-offending, provides victims’ families with closure and vindication. Sometimes, they cite examples of condemned persons taking the time before their deaths to repent, express remorse, and experience profound spiritual rehabilitation as proof that the death penalty can serve as rehabilitative purpose.

This legislation has 16 House cosponsors, including 15 Democrats and one Independent (former Republican Rep. Justin Amash). Its Senate companion, sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), has 10 Senate cosponsors, including nine Democrats and one Independent. This legislation is virtually guaranteed not to pass the Senate or gain President Trump’s signature.


Of Note: In July 2019, the Dept. of Justice (DOJ) announced its intention to resume capital punishment. Attorney General William Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to adopt a change to the federal execution protocol to make it possible to execute inmates on death row. He also directed the BOP’s Acting Director, Hugh Hurwitz, to schedule the executions of five convicted murderers who have exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies (Daniel Lewis Lee, Lezmond Mitchell, Wesley Ira Purkey, Alfred Bourgeois, and Dustin Lee Honken). In a press release, AG Barr said: 

“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President. Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding.  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.”

In response to the DOJ’s announcement, Rep. Pressley tweeted, “The death penalty has no place in a just society” alongside an image of this bill.

Three people have been executed under the federal death penalty since its enactment in 1988. The last federal execution was in March 2003, when Louis Jones, Jr. was executed at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Jones — a Gulf War veteran who blamed Iraqi nerve gas for turning him into a killer — was executed by lethal injection for the 1995 kidnap, rape, and murder of a young Army recruit in Texas. 

The death penalty is legal in 29 states and at the federal level. About 70% of countries, including many democratic industrialized nations like the U.S., have abolished the death penalty.

The Economist notes that “strong evidence” suggests Texas has killed innocent men more than once since the 1970s. Carlos Deluna and Cameron Todd Willingham, who were executed in 1989 and 2004, respective, are among that number. Additionally, death penalty abolitionists argue that the application of the death penalty is racist (over 75% of those executed were sentenced to death for killing white people, even though about half of all murder victims are black) and that executions are exorbitantly expensive because of the lengthy appeals and retrials they prompt and the expensive and hard-to-obtain cocktails used in executions.

In a 2018 survey, the Pew Research Center found that 54% of Americans supported the death penalty. This was a 5% increase over 2016, when 49% of Americans supported it. Robert Dunham, head of the Death Penalty Information Center, attributed the uptick in support to political rhetoric, especially from President Trump.


Media:

Summary by Lorelei Yang

(Photo Credit: iStockphoto.com / EyeJoy)