[S]en. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and other Senate Democrats introduced legislation Wednesday that would ban the death penalty, a move that comes less than a week after the Trump administration’s Department of Justice announced it would resume executing prisoners on death row for the first time in nearly two decades.
After Attorney General William Barr directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to commence executing prisoners, five men were immediately scheduled to be killed, ending what had been a more than 16-year suspension of the federal death penalty while the Justice Department investigated the drugs used to execute prisoners.
The legislation introduced by Leahy and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee would immediately ban the use of the death penalty by the federal government.
In a statement, Leahy said the death penalty is inhumane and, although many states have used their power to ban the practice, it should be eliminated at the federal level.
“The death penalty fails by any objective measure. It is too final and too prone to error. It fails as a deterrent. It is racially biased. And it is beneath us as a nation,” Leahy said.
Leahy was joined by Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., in introducing the bill, while Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., introduced a companion measure in the House of Representatives last week.
The bill was also co-sponsored by a number of Democratic candidates for president, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — who has long called for an end to capital punishment — Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. Former Vice President Joe Biden has also said he would ban the death penalty, though he supported capital punishment as a senator.
Both of Hawaii’s Democratic senators — Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz — and Sen Tim Kaine, D-Va., also co-sponsored.
The announcement by Barr reflects the well-established position of President Donald Trump, who has pressured the Justice Department to liberally pursue the execution of prisoners.
The five men on death row who have had their executions scheduled include a member of a white supremacist group who was convicted of murdering a family of three and another man who was found guilty of shooting and killing five people.
The U.N. was among the many organizations that spoke out against the federal policy change.
The federal government hasn’t executed an inmate since 2003, and over the last five decades, there have only been three cases of federally ordered capital punishment.
The five executions ordered by Barr are scheduled to take place in less than a two-month span in December 2019 and January 2020.
