AG Barr Reinstates Federal Death Penalty after 16-Year Hiatus
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Attorney General William Barr has reinstated the death penalty for federal crimes following a 16-year moratorium, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.
Barr’s order includes instructions to schedule the executions of five inmates currently incarcerated on death row for murder.
“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President,” Barr said in a statement. “The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
Under the new guidance provided by Barr, the Bureau of Prisons will begin conducting executions using one drug, pentobarbital, rather than the three-drug cocktail that was employed when the last federal execution occurred in 2003. The one-drug system is currently employed in Georgia, Missouri, and Texas and is believed to reduce the potential for mishap.
There are currently 62 federal inmates on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Boston Marathon bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev and Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof are among them.
The five inmates whose executions have been scheduled are Dustin Lee Honken, who killed five people; Daniel Lewis Lee, a white supremacist who killed a family of three; Wesley Ira Purkey, who raped and killed a 16-year-old girl; Alfred Bourgeois, who molested and killed his two-year-old daughter; and Lezmond Mitchell, convicted of stabbing an elderly woman to death. All five inmates have exhausted their appeal options.
JACK CROWE is a news writer at National Review Online
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After all this time it is still a difficult issue. For Conservatives it is at least one that should be guided by logic. As Aristotle defined it; The law is reason, free from passion.
And what of those cases where we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a fully functioning individual committed a calculated act of murder?
A true dilemma.
One question that maybe still can't be answered; Is there a deterrent factor? How would we really ever know?
How do you know that?
That is a very good question.
As the fear of accountability for many crimes ( and other actions) has been removed or subdued over the years, there is little to deter a person from venturing down that path.
Criminality takes place in plain sight with little to no ramifications for the criminal, relatively speaking. For many of us the notion of any time spent in prison is enough of a deterrent, for some not so much.
Not a question I am capable of answering.
It is justice for every slain child, every woman raped and murdered, every person who has been murdered in the name of politics or religious beliefs, those innocents murdered by gangs, and those who lost their lives due to domestic violence. Their voices have been silenced so society must speak for them and say "Not on our watch!"
Nor is anyone else, since we can't get into the minds of others. Let us assume that those who commit robberies with toy guns do so to avoid having them go off, killing someone and then facing capital punishment.
Figures released by the FBI show that the estimated number of murders in the nation was 15,696 in 2015.
In that year only 28 prisoners were executed
It seems the considerations for offenders has outweighed the security of citizens.
I'm with AG Barr
"Barr also directed Hurwitz to schedule executions for five death-row inmates at a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, in December 2019 and January 2020. According to the Bureau of Prisons, no federal executions occurred in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Three executions were carried out in the 2000s, including the June 11, 2001 lethal injection of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Louis Jones Jr. was the last federal prisoner executed. A veteran of the first Gulf War, Jones was convicted for the 1995 murder of Army private Tracie McBride. He was executed on March 18, 2003.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there are currently 62 federal death-row inmates. One of those is Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who murdered nine black churchgoers in Charleston on June 17, 2015. He was sentenced to death on Jan. 10, 2017."