Death Penalty Opponents Lament that Biden Broke His Promise to Abolish Federal Executions
Nation's second Catholic president's policies go against Church teachings.
By Gary Gately
President Joe Biden has reneged on his campaign promise to abolish the federal death penalty, putting the nation’s second Catholic president squarely at odds with Church teaching and dismaying death penalty opponents.
When running for president in 2020, Biden had pledged to introduce legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and “incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.”
But anti-death penalty advocates say he has done neither despite becoming the first sitting president to publicly oppose the death penalty.
“In its campaign platform, the Biden administration made a commitment to end the death penalty — a welcome and appreciated move forward, especially following the constant executions during the last six months of the Trump administration,” Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of the Catholic Mobilizing Network, a national organization working to end the death penalty, told The Catholic Observer.
Vaillancourt Murphy noted that in July 2021, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland imposed a moratorium on federal executions while the Justice Department reviewed death penalty policies and procedures. Garland said at the time that no federal executions would be scheduled while the reviews are pending.
But Vaillancourt Murphy added that the federal government continues to defend current death sentences, including those of Black men sentenced by all-white juries, those convicted based on flawed forensic evidence, those who are intellectually disabled or mentally ill, and those whose cases raise other serious constitutional issues.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Biden had sharply criticized the Trump administration for carrying out 13 federal executions during the former president’s last six months in office — the first federal executions in 17 years.
Federal prosecutors announced in January that they are seeking the death penalty for Payton Gendron, who killed 10 Black people at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo in 2022. And a jury granted federal prosecutors’ request for the death penalty against Robert Bowers, who killed 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.
Pope Francis revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018 to state that the death penalty is “inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.” The Catholic stance against the death penalty applies “even after the commission of very serious crimes,” the Catechism states.
A Gallup poll in November showed 53% of Americans support the death penalty, the lowest since 1972.
And a growing number of U.S. states — now 23 — and the District of Columbia have banned the death penalty while three states have imposed moratoriums on executions.
