From:
slider@anashram.com
Donald Trump is on a killing spree. He is turning the anger and resentment which burnishes his brand into a virtually unprecedented string of federal executions. From 14 July 2020, when the attorney general, William Barr, restarted the federal death penalty by executing Daniel Lewis Lee, through
last week, the administration has put ten people to death. Three more executions are on the docket in the days leading up to the inauguration of
Joe Biden.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/15/trump-is-spending-the-last-days-of-his-presidency-on-a-literal-killing-spree
Last week, Trump and Barr executed Brandon Bernard even though his crime
was committed when he was just 18 years old, and they killed Alfred
Bourgeois even though his IQ put him in the intellectually disabled
category.
Trump and Barr have turned the solemn process of punishment into an
assembly line of death. In doing so they have shown themselves to be indifferent to history, inattentive to the troubling problems plaguing the federal death penalty, and out of step with the country they lead.
They are behaving like vigilantes or characters in Clint Eastwood’s movie Dirty Harry, killing not because the executions will make the US a safer, saner, or more just society – but simply because they can.
The Death Penalty Information Center reports that the last time an
outgoing administration did anything remotely similar was more than a
century ago, in 1889. Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat elected
president after the civil war and the only one to serve two
non-consecutive terms in office, ordered his administration to carry out
three executions in the period between his electoral defeat and the inauguration of his successor in March 1889.
It’s also worth remembering that almost 50 years ago, the federal death penalty was held unconstitutional as part of the supreme court’s Furman v Georgia decision in 1972. Like capital punishment at the state level, it
was found to be applied in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner. The
federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988 and greatly expanded by the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994.
Unfortunately, what was true in 1972 remained true when the federal death penalty was brought back and is true today.
The use of the death penalty continues to be tinged with racism and with
the horrifying history of lynching, which has made it more popular in the
deep south than in the rest of the US.
A Department of Justice study conducted in 2000 found significant racial disparities in the department’s own handling of capital charging
decisions. It reported that from 1995 to 2000, minority defendants were involved in 80% of the cases federal prosecutors referred for
consideration as capital prosecutions. In 72% of the cases approved for prosecution, the defendants were persons of color.
Today, members of racial minorities comprise 52% of the inmates awaiting execution at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, a figure
only slightly lower than the 55% on state death rows.
But race is not the only source of arbitrariness in the federal system. Geography plays a key role. Federal death verdicts, like those in the
states, are concentrated in states from the former confederacy. Three of
them – Texas, Missouri, and Virginia – account for 40% of the total.
Recognizing those problems, recent Democratic and Republican presidents
showed restraint in using the ultimate sanction. Only three federal
executions had been carried out since 1972, all during the George W Bush administration.
Timothy McVeigh was put to death in June, 2001 for blowing up the Oklahoma
City federal building and killing 168 people. That same month, Juan Raul
Garza was executed for his role in a drug cartel-related mass killing. In
2003, the federal government executed Louis Jones for the 1995 kidnapping,
rape and murder of a female soldier.
Today, despite what would Trump have Americans think, his killing spree
does not reflect what is going on with capital punishment across the
country. Almost everywhere, the grievous errors, discriminatory
application and frequent mishaps associated with America’s death penalty
are recognized and acknowledged.
The result is that it is being used less and in fewer places. Over the
last 30 years, death sentences and executions have declined steeply. In
2019, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, 34 people were
given death sentences and 22 people were executed. This year, in part
because of Covid-19, those numbers will be even lower.
Contrast this to the late 1990s, when more than 300 death sentences were
handed out annually and almost 100 people were put to death.
Changes of these kinds are seen even in the most conservative states and
in the heart of the death belt. Take Texas, which has long been thought of
as the nation’s leader in capital punishment. In 1998, 48 people received
a death sentence in Texas; in 2019, four. Twenty years ago, the state
carried out 40 executions, the most in the United States. In 2019 it was
nine.
Covid-19 also shines a light on how out of step Trump’s rush to execution really is. Responding to the pandemic and the special dangers it causes
for lawyers, witnesses and the correctional personnel who have to carry
out executions, many states have put executions on hold. Indeed, by the
end of the year, only seven inmates will have been killed in five states – Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas.
But the Trump administration has shown no such compunction or concern. It
has ignored the pleas of religious advisors and of families of murder
victims who wished to be present at the death of the person who murdered
their loved ones but were afraid of being exposed to the virus. They have disregarded the right of the condemned to the effective assistance of
counsel, going forward with executions even if defense lawyers were not
able to fully litigate outstanding legal issues or meet with their clients
to secure their help in mounting meritorious appeals.
Trump’s execution spree manifests yet again his embrace of gratuitous violence as a centerpiece of his mode of governing. It is very much in character for someone who I have elsewhere labelled “America’s first vigilante president.”
Like others in the vigilante tradition, Trump is threatened by cultural diversity and uses violence against people whom he views as outsiders or
as less than fully human. Unlike other vigilantes, however, Trump can
enlist the apparatus of state violence, most especially the death penalty, against people who in his eyes are “dogs.”
As the president’s parting gift to America, his execution spree will leave behind a trail of dead bodies and a legacy of violence. This country
should refuse this inheritance, as Americans come to terms within death penalty’s brutality and seek to “build back better” by creating a culture of dignity, respect, and honor for all who inhabit our land.
### - was gonna mention this last week but thought better of it at the
time...
that he's pandering, of course, to certain people's 'lust for blood' in a
merry blood-letting spree?
"stand back and stand by" being his covert instruction to the far right
thugs (the proud boys heh) who sought to rise-up prematurely and initiate another civil war!?
the only 'good' he's achieved afaic, being that of helping to educate the masses as to the 'actual' nature of the right-wing, to their wholly
selfish and couldn't-care-less attitude towards ordinary common folks so
long as the elite survive, something extended to the pandemic currently ravaging & raging across the US with now over 300,000 deaths to its name
(more american deaths than that of ww2! think of that!) and while
currently causing more daily deaths than 9/11??
his avowed intent (via twitter last week) being to make it as difficult as possible for biden to clean up the mess & the sheer state of chaos he's
left behind him as a legacy, and of which it's likely to take 4 years of
biden to just undo! thus setting the scene for yet another republican
office to step in and just carry on where trumpy left off...
have people learned their lesson though? if they have then there likely
wont be another right-wing government in america for possibly a whole generation... IF we're lucky that is! (and by 'we' i mean the whole of humanity! coz that fucker's the very devil himself!
so... do ya feel lucky... punk?
plus are ya sure now that you WONT be fooled again??
absolutely _ really... sure??
81 million left-wing votes to only 74 million tends to suggest they have
indeed learned... something!
but just how long will this realisation last!
that's the only real question now ;)
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)