In the United States resume the death penalty: how the Americans responded and what will change for those sentenced

US Attorney General William Barr ordered to resume the death penalty for crimes punishable under the jurisdiction of the federal authorities of the country. The last three executions at the federal level were carried out in 2001-2003, and before that the US government executed a man in 1963.

Фото: Depositphotos

Motivating his decision, Barr said that "during the reign of both parties, the US Department of Justice sought to apply the death penalty to the most dangerous criminals," writes Medusa. In 1963, Democratic President John F. Kennedy was in power, in 2001-2003, Republican George W. Bush. According to Barr, the Ministry of Justice "respects the principle of the rule of law and is obliged to fulfill its duty to the victims and their families, carrying out the sentences imposed by our justice system."

In the list of federal criminals sentenced to death, 62 person. The first five of them are to be executed in December of this year and in January of 2020. The execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, a racist, who killed a family of three in 9, including an eight-year-old girl, was appointed to December 1996. Lesmond Mitchell, whose execution is scheduled for December 11, killed an 63-year-old woman and made her nine-year-old granddaughter drive about 50 kilometers in the car next to the corpse, after which she cut her throat twice. Wesley Ira Perki was sentenced for rape and murder of an 16-year-old girl and for having smashed the head of an 80-year-old woman suffering from polio with a hammer - he should be executed on December 13. Alfred Bourgeois is guilty of rape and murder of his two-year-old daughter, his execution is scheduled for January 13 2020. On 15, January, the execution was scheduled for Dustin Lee Honken, who killed five people - two of them planned to testify against him in another case.

The Prosecutor General is accused of imposing state powers

More than 2600 prisoners have been sentenced to death in total in the United States, and the vast majority of them have been convicted by state courts. At the same time in twenty-one states, as well as in the capital district of Columbia, the death penalty is prohibited, and in four more governors imposed a moratorium on its execution. In 1972, the US Supreme Court suspended the use of the death penalty throughout the country, but four years later revised its own decision.

However, it was only in 1988 that a law was passed that allowed federal courts to sentence to certain types of crimes. Their list was expanded in 1994. Among them are treason, terrorism, espionage, the murder of a federal official, political assassination, murder in a federal prison, as well as a number of other fatal crimes.

On the subject: The US federal authorities resume the death penalty after a long break: there are first applicants

Meanwhile, according to experts, no one from 62 people sentenced to death by federal courts was convicted of espionage or treason, and only one person for terrorism - Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who committed an explosion at the Boston Marathon in 2013. In other cases, it is a question of different types of homicides that could be considered by state courts. At the federal level, these cases were sent on fairly formal grounds - for example, due to the fact that the parts of the car hijacked by the murderer were produced in factories of different states.

Critics Barra believe that his decision, he encroached on the autonomy of the states and deprives them of their traditional powers in order to extend the death penalty. They also call the “common myth” claims that federal courts only impose death sentences in the most extreme and most obvious cases. In their opinion, these courts are no less susceptible to the racist prejudices and are not inclined to consider the social circumstances of the crime, such as poverty, belonging to oppressed ethnic racial minorities and the mental ill-health of the criminal.

Фото: Depositphotos

The government decided to review the composition of the lethal injection given to prisoners.

As The Washington Post notes, since 2003, the federal authorities have introduced an informal moratorium on the death penalty because of the assumptions that an injection given to convicts can bring them severe suffering before death. In the 2014 year, after several similar cases in individual states, Barack Obama considered the possibility of introducing an official moratorium on the death penalty, but this was not done.

On the subject: Who is executed first after the resumption of the death penalty

According to Barr, the government will follow the example of the states of Georgia, Texas and Missouri and change the composition of the injection, in which instead of the three substances will enter one - pentobarbital. Other substances had to be abandoned, in particular, due to the fact that manufacturing companies did not want to sell them for the death penalty. At the same time, some experts doubt that the government will be able to purchase a substance of such a quality that definitely will not lead to severe pain before death.

Some US experts believe that executions can be postponed due to lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of using lethal injections as “harsh punishment.”

The number of Americans advocating the death penalty is declining. But among her supporters - Trump

Barr, who first held the post of Prosecutor General in 1991, under George W. Bush, was already actively defending this measure of punishment. The success of Bush in the 1988 election of the year, many explain by the fact that his Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis during the debate said "No" to the question of whether he would support the death penalty if his wife were raped and killed.

In recent years, public opinion, however, has changed a lot. While in 1996, the death penalty was supported by about 78% of Americans, in 2018, the number of its supporters was 54%. Among them is Donald Trump, who nominated Barr for the post of Prosecutor General at the start of 2019. Opponents of the current administration immediately called the decision of the official "inhuman and flawed." This was written, in particular, by Kamala Harris - a possible candidate for the presidency of the United States from the Democratic Party in the presidential election 2020 of the year.

Bernie Sanders promised to abolish the death penalty when he becomes president. Another favorite of the race, Elizabeth Warren, said that one should not allow "a ruined judicial system to decide the fate of imprisoned Americans," and stressed that too many mistakes had already been made, especially with regard to black people.

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