Without mercy
I am opposed to capital punishment for all the usual reasons. First, that it’s racist. People of color are overrepresented on death row. Second, that it’s barbaric and sends a hypocritical message: “thou shalt not kill, except us.” Third, that it re-victimises the victims. However they define “justice,” it only comes years or even decades later. Fourth, it is unconstitutional. Any sane person would call it cruel and unusual. Fifth, it is sometimes accidentally used on the innocent, which is a double offense. If you execute the innocent then by definition you have exonerated the guilty.
But above all, capital punishment is a favoured tool of totalitarianism. Name me a fascist regime that doesn’t merely use it, they glory in it, they positively relish it. In the run up to Joe Biden’s inauguration, Donald Trump and his concierge attorney general Bill Barr ghoulishly oversaw the execution of five people — breaking with a 130-year-old presidential tradition of pausing executions amid transitions. It was a fast-tracked orgy of murder that no doubt gave those two “pro-life” assholes enormous satisfaction.
So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Joe Biden preserved the tradition of presidential clemency. He reduced the sentences of 37 out of 40 prisoners on federal death row to life in prison without possibility of parole. (The exceptions were clear instances of terrorism or hate crimes, including the Boston Marathon bomber.) This has sent Donald Trump and his bloodthirsty cabal into paroxysms of fury. “[T]o the 37 most violent criminals,” Trump wrote on “Truth” Social, “who killed, raped, and plundered like virtually no one before them, but were just given, incredibly, a pardon by Sleepy Joe Biden. I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky ‘souls’ but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL!” (Note: the prisoners were not “pardoned.” Again, their sentences were reduced to life without parole.)
During his first shameful term of office, Trump restarted federal executions after a seventeen year hiatus, ultimately overseeing more executions than the previous ten presidents combined. Where Trump was typically vengeful, Biden was merciful. Moreover, the majority of those whose sentences Biden commuted were people of colour, and 38% were black, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Trump is no stranger to advocating the execution of people of colour. In one of his earliest forays into the political arena Trump ran a full-page ad calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty after the rape of a jogger in New York City’s Central Park in 1989. The case resulted in the subsequent arrests of five black and Latino teenagers, who were charged and eventually convicted of the crime. All five, who denied involvement, were ultimately exonerated and released from prison after another man belatedly made a confession that was confirmed by DNA evidence.
The men, now in their 50s, sued Trump for defamation after he falsely said during a presidential debate with Kamala Harris in Philadelphia in September that they had admitted guilt and that the victim had been killed.
Trump clearly adores the death penalty, and he doesn’t care when it’s unjustly applied. I’m sorry to say one of the many “features” of the Trump “administration” will be more executions ghoulishly endorsed and fast-tracked by this monster. Justice applied entirely without mercy is never truly just.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.