Biden’s silence on executions adds to death penalty disarray

CHICAGO — Activists widely expected Joe Biden to take swift action against the death penalty as the first sitting president to oppose capital punishment, especially since an unprecedented spate of executions by his predecessor ended just days before Biden took office. Support for the death penalty among Americans is at near-historic lows after peaking in the mid-1990s and steadily declining since, with most recent polls indicating support now hovers around 55%, according to the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. Biden didn’t make capital punishment a prominent feature of his presidential run, but he did say on his campaign website that he would work “to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.” That simple-sounding promise was historic because it wasn’t just about the federal death penalty, which, before former President Donald Trump, had been carried out just three times in the previous five decades. Justice Department lawyers said in court filings Monday that a lower court was wrong to toss the 27-year-old’s death sentence over concerns about the jury selection process, saying the Supreme Court should “put this case back on track toward a just conclusion.” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in an email regarding the Tsarnaev decision that the Justice Department “has independence regarding such decisions.” Bates added that the president “believes the Department should return to its prior practice, and not carry out executions.” Meanwhile, states have resorted to other means as drugs used in lethal injections have become increasingly hard to procure. “Execution processes are becoming more and more out of touch with core American values,” Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said about Arizona’s purchase. Dunham said death by hydrogen cyanide stands out as uniquely brutal, invariably leading to an “extended, torturous death.” Even if there’s virtually no chance the U.S. government would ever embrace an execution method favored by Nazis, Dunham said the very idea that it’s theoretically possible should horrify Biden administration officials and spur them to act with an even greater sense of urgency.