The death penalty cannot be reformed.
Suppose you were charged with the task of putting to death 13 convicted criminals from a pool of more than 50. How would you decide whom to kill and whom to pass over? |
In 2020, after a 17-year lull in federal executions, President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr did exactly what I've asked you to consider: They marked 13 inmates on federal death row for death and executed them in rapid succession, multiple deaths per week, killing the last less than a week before President Biden took office. |
And the Trump administration still hasn't produced a coherent explanation of why they killed the people they did. |
That's true of this specific selection process, but also of capital punishment in general. "Getting the death penalty is like getting struck by lightning," one career public defender told me. There isn't much sense in who gets it and who doesn't. Some states allow for the death penalty and others don't; prosecutors have enormous discretion in seeking it, and juries in applying it. In turn, executions have dwindled since the 1990s. |
Yet the decline of capital punishment across the board did not deter Trump and Barr's last-minute killing spree and may well have made it all the more politically enticing, a revanchist gesture meant to antagonize political opponents. |
Biden has denounced the wave of executions, and objects to the death penalty generally. And there are several steps he could take to reduce the likelihood of another president carrying out the same sudden, unilateral, irreversible actions — but, as I write in an Op-Ed today, there is only one way to eliminate the possibility altogether: Abolish it. It may have political costs, but the other side of the scale is a basin of human blood. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
"The Argument" podcast returns Feb. 24. with new host Jane Coaston. The news tells you what's going on, but not what to make of it. Every week Jane and her guests will debate an argument from multiple angles, so you can decide where you stand and how to persuade the opposition. Listen to the trailer and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. |
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