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There hadn’t been a federal execution for 17 years until this summer, when Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death. What’s more, there hasn’t been a federal execution during a presidential lame-duck period for 130 years. The last one was in the 1890s during the presidency of Grover Cleveland. “It’s hard to understand why anybody at this stage of a presidency feels compelled to kill this many people,” the director of the Death Penalty Information Center said. “This is a complete historical aberration.”

The ‘pro-life’ party strikes again

Donald Trump is on a killing spree: as his time in power comes to an end, the president seems intent on executing as many people as possible. On Thursday night, Brandon Bernard was put to death by lethal injection at a prison in Indiana. Bernard’s was the ninth federal execution this year; four more are planned before Joe Biden’s inauguration on 20 January.

It’s hard to overstate just how unprecedented and sadistic the Trump administration’s flurry of federal executions is. The overwhelming majority of prisoners who are put to death in America are executed under state law, rather than by the federal government. Since 1927, when record keeping began, 37 federal executions have occurred. There hadn’t been a federal execution for 17 years until this summer, when Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death. What’s more, there hasn’t been a federal execution during a presidential lame-duck period for 130 years. The last one was in the 1890s during the presidency of Grover Cleveland. “It’s hard to understand why anybody at this stage of a presidency feels compelled to kill this many people,” the director of the Death Penalty Information Center said. “This is a complete historical aberration.”

Racking up executions during the last weeks of your presidency would be disgusting at the best of times. Doing it during a pandemic that has killed almost 300,000 Americans takes callousness and cruelty to a whole new level. Particularly when you are a party that has branded yourself “pro-life”. I know words don’t have any meaning any more but does being pro-life really mean ramping up the death penalty, reinstating archaic practices like death by firing squad and poison gas, separating migrant children from their parents, escalating drone strikes, attempting to strip healthcare from people, and trying to cut food stamps during a pandemic? If so, then Trump is going to go down as the most pro-life president in American history. He certainly looks set to become the president who has executed the most people in over 130 years. If the next four executions proceed as scheduled, Trump will have put to death about a quarter of all federal death-row prisoners.

The Trump administration, to be clear, isn’t under any pressure from the American people to do this. A majority of Americans (60%) support life in prison over the death penalty, according to a 2019 Gallup poll. A majority of Americans, it should be noted, also want to keep abortion legal. Republicans don’t really care what the majority of Americans want. They don’t care about democracy. They don’t care about the “sanctity of life”. All they care about is power. In many ways, this end-of-term execution spree is nothing more than a perverse power trip: Trump is killing people to “own the libs”.

First federal execution of a woman in 70 years

Lisa Montgomery is scheduled to die on 12 January; the first woman to be federally executed since 1953. Montgomery was sentenced to death in 2007 after murdering Bobbie Jo Stinnett and cutting an unborn baby out of her womb. Her crime was undeniably awful, but her lawyers and activists have argued that she committed it while in the middle of a psychotic episode. Montgomery was reportedly sexually trafficked by her mother as a small child; she has suffered horrific sexual and physical abuse since childhood. Montgomery is also set to be transferred to an all-male prison for execution, which her lawyers say would trigger a “catastrophic psychiatric breakdown”. None of this absolves Montgomery – but there is nothing to be gained from killing her except a compounding of cruelty.

Chap wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 12, 2020 2:49 pm

So why now? Most Americans would prefer giving life in prison to killing prisoners, so it's not a matter of popular clamour.

It's obvious. Somebody's got to die because he lost the election. So he kills the ones he can get at.

Gunnar wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 12, 2020 3:34 pm

Chap wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 12, 2020 2:49 pm

So why now? Most Americans would prefer giving life in prison to killing prisoners, so it's not a matter of popular clamour.

It's obvious. Somebody's got to die because he lost the election. So he kills the ones he can get at.

I am convinced that you're right. Trump is not just a narcissist, he is an unconscionable sociopath. He knows he is not likely to be able to get away with killing his political opponents, however much he would like to, so, as you said, "he kills the ones he can get at." The scariest thing to me is that a disturbingly high number of his diehard base sympathize with that sentiment. Even if this discord doesn't quite arise to the level of actual civil war, I very much fear that there will be a lot more murders, assassinations and terrorist acts committed by the more idiotic of his deplorable base before things settle down to any semblance of normality, if they ever do. Most of these extremists will probably even regard their violent acts as their moral, patriotic and even Christian duty, which is as antithetical as it can possibly be to any rational view of Christian belief and teachings.

Gunnar wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 12, 2020 3:34 pm

The scariest thing to me is that a disturbingly high number of his diehard base sympathize with that sentiment.

And he's ruining so many millions of people's Christmas this year to boot..... it's obvious people are bored and looking for something to do, unfortunately Trump gets them into a frenzy of their basest instincts. That enough is reason to get rid of him.

ajax18 wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 13, 2020 5:34 pm

And he's ruining so many millions of people's Christmas this year to boot..... it's obvious people are bored and looking for something to do, unfortunately Trump gets them into a frenzy of their basest instincts. That enough is reason to get rid of him.

And that alone is reason enough to never trust anything that any of you on this thread have to say.

Chap wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 12, 2020 2:49 pm

Trump's end-of-term execution spree is nothing more than a perverse power trip

There hadn’t been a federal execution for 17 years until this summer, when Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death. What’s more, there hasn’t been a federal execution during a presidential lame-duck period for 130 years. The last one was in the 1890s during the presidency of Grover Cleveland. “It’s hard to understand why anybody at this stage of a presidency feels compelled to kill this many people,” the director of the Death Penalty Information Center said. “This is a complete historical aberration.”

So why now? Most Americans would prefer giving life in prison to killing prisoners, so it's not a matter of popular clamour.

It's obvious. Somebody's got to die because he lost the election. So he kills the ones he can get at.

A judge has further delayed the planned execution of the only woman on federal death row in the US.

In a ruling that will potentially leave the Trump administration with no choice but to postpone the execution beyond its term in office, a federal judge found that an attempt to reschedule it for January was unlawful.

Lisa Montgomery, 52, was convicted of killing 23-year-old Bobbie Jo Stinnett in the north-west Missouri town of Skidmore in December 2004.

After strangling Stinnett, who was eight months pregnant, Montgomery cut the baby girl from the womb with a kitchen knife. The child survived and prosecutors said Montgomery then attempted to pass it off as her own.

Montgomery was previously scheduled to be put to death in December at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, but the US district court judge Randolph Moss delayed the execution after her attorneys contracted coronavirus and asked him to extend the time allowed to file a clemency petition.

Moss prohibited the Bureau of Prisons from carrying out Montgomery’s execution before the end of the year and officials rescheduled her execution date for 12 January. But on Wednesday Moss ruled that the agency was also prohibited from rescheduling the date while a stay was in place.

“The court, accordingly, concludes that the director’s order setting a new execution date while the court’s stay was in effect not in accordance with law,’” Moss wrote.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice (DoJ) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under the order, the Bureau of Prisons cannot reschedule Montgomery’s execution until at least 1 January. Generally, under DoJ guidelines, a death row inmate must be notified at least 20 days before the execution.

Because of the judge’s order, if the DoJ chooses to reschedule the date in January, it could mean the execution would be scheduled after Joe Biden’s inauguration on 20 January.

A spokesperson for Biden told the Associated Press that the president-elect “opposes the death penalty now and in the future” and would work as president to end its use in office.

Biden’s representatives have not said whether executions would be paused immediately once he takes office.

Montgomery’s legal team have argued that she has serious mental illnesses. One of her lawyers, Sandra Babcock, said in a statement: “Given the severity of Mrs Montgomery’s mental illness, the sexual and physical torture she endured throughout her life, and the connection between her trauma and the facts of her crime, we appeal to President Trump to grant her mercy and commute her sentence to life imprisonment.”

Dr. Shades wrote: ↑

Sat Dec 26, 2020 9:31 pm

Someone help me out here. . .

How does Trump have the power to kill anyone? I don't see how he has the power to sentence anyone to death; only judges do that.