Anti-capital punishment activists fear Donald Trump will execute dozens of prisoners if he is re-elected in the “largest wave of federal executions of civilians” in US history.
There are currently 40 inmates on federal death row, which is located at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. None have been executed during Joe Biden’s presidency.
Biden, 81, is the first president to openly oppose capital punishment and had promised in his 2020 campaign to “pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level.”
However, he instead introduced a moratorium, which Trump could end immediately if he returns to the White House.
“There will very likely be a bloodbath through executions if he returns to office.” Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Policy Project, told DailyMail.com
An undated image of the execution chamber on federal death row located at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Former President Donald Trump would oversee historic number of executions if re-elected, anti-death penalty activists say
A series of 13 federal executions were carried out in Trump’s final six months in office. They were the first since 2003.
It included three after the 2020 election — the first time an outgoing president executed federal prisoners since Grover Cleveland in 1889.
A sign of what could happen in a second Trump term is contained in ‘Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,’ a lengthy document produced by Project 25, which is involved in planning for a future Trump administration.
In a chapter on the Department of Justice it says about the death penalty: “Imposing this punishment without ever applying it does not provide justice for either the families of the victims or the accused.”
“Therefore, the next conservative administration should do everything possible to achieve finality for prisoners currently on federal death row.”
Joe Biden introduced a moratorium on federal executions and his activists want him to commute all death sentences.
The federal death row is located in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Trump himself has strongly supported the execution and has called for those “caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.”
His first term executed more federal prisoners than any president since Franklin Roosevelt carried out 16 executions in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Among those executed in the final months of Trump’s first term was Brandon Bernard, who was executed for his role in the 1999 murder of an Iowa religious couple.
Bernard, who was 18 at the time of the murders, was a rare execution of a person who was a teenager when the crime was committed.
Reality TV star Kim Kardashian West had appealed to Trump to commute Bernard’s sentence to life in prison, citing, among other things, Bernard’s expressed remorse.
Kim Kardashian appealed to President Trump to commute Brandon Bernard’s sentence
An activist opposing the death penalty protests during a snowstorm outside the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, USA, January 15, 2020.
Lisa Montgomery in a booking photo released on December 20, 2004 in Kansas City, Kansas.
Nine days before Trump left office, the federal government carried out the first execution of a woman in nearly seven decades.
Lisa Montgomery, 52, was executed by lethal injection after being sentenced to death for strangling an expectant mother in Missouri and tearing the baby from her womb.
Overall, in 2020, the US government carried out more executions in a single year than all the states that still carry them out combined.
Among the inmates remaining on federal death row are two who were sentenced in 1993.
They also include Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Dunham called on Biden, if he loses the election, to commute all death sentences to life in prison without parole before leaving office.
The outgoing President could do it “with a stroke of the pen.”
The federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana
40 men are sentenced to death in Terre Haute, Indiana
He said: ‘The proposal advocating killing all death row inmates at the federal level is so extreme, so unprincipled and lacking in human dignity that it creates a moral imperative for President Biden to prevent this from happening if he loses the election.
‘Events that presidents do not anticipate often define their presidential legacy. This is one of those events.
“If President Biden loses and does nothing, his legacy will be largely defined by his role in facilitating the largest wave of executions of federal civilians in the history of this country. I don’t think I want that to be his legacy.”
Executed in 2020/21: (Pictured clockwise) Alfred Bourgeois, Brandon Bernard, Orlando Cordia Hall, Christopher Vialva, William Emmett Lecroy, Jr and William Emmett Lecroy,
The death penalty has not been a major issue in the US presidential race since 1988.
Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis, an opponent of the death penalty, was criticized for showing little emotion when asked during a debate whether he would be in favor of his wife being raped and murdered.
However, it could quickly become a major issue if Trump retakes the White House.
Executed in 2020/21: (Pictured clockwise) Lezmond Charles Mitchell, Dustin Lee Honken, Daniel Lewis Lee and Wesley Ira Purkey
According to Gallup polls, support for the death penalty against convicted murderers has fallen from 80 percent in 1994 to 53 percent last year.
In November, Gallup found, for the first time, that more Americans believe the death penalty is applied unfairly than fairly: 50 percent to 47 percent.
The vast majority of convicted inmates are sentenced at the state level. In addition to the federal government, the death penalty is legal in 27 states, although most of them have not carried out executions for years.
