Leave nothing on the table – “President Biden, commute all federal death penalty sentences now!”

Please add your voice to that of Rev. Sharon Risher!:

Rev. Sharon Risher‘s mother, two cousins and a childhood friend were among the nine people killed by White supremacist Dylann Roof, who was sentenced to death in 2017. However, after studying the racial disparities in the application of the death penalty, and the lack of evidence that it deters violent crime, she asked President Biden to commute his punishment to a life sentence without parole instead. And she wants this to happen for the 40 others on federal death row too, before sociopathic Felon/President-elect Donald Trump restarts the killing spree he began in his first administration. In his final six months in office, he executed 13 people, more than any president in the past 120 years. She hasn’t heard back from Biden yet and those 40 people are still at risk. Let’s pile on!

Action: Urge President Biden to eliminate the death penalty for those under his watch.

(Example script -You can make your own, up to 2000 characters.)

Email Joe here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Dear President Biden:

As your constituent, I urge you to seize this moment before you leave office to make history as the first U.S. president to commute all federal death sentences. For decades, the federal death penalty has disproportionately affected people of color, the poor, and those with disabilities – while offering no improvements to public safety.

You came into office committed to eliminating the death penalty because these fundamental flaws. Your campaign website noted that “over 160 individuals who’ve been sentenced to death in this country since 1973 have later been exonerated. Because we cannot ensure we get death penalty cases right every time, [I] will work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example. These individuals should instead serve life sentences without probation or parole.“

It is unfortunate that Congress has not yet passed legislation to abolish the federal death penalty, and we doubt this Trump-packed Supreme Court will strike it down either. Your moratorium against its use won’t last, but right here and now, the lives of 40 human beings, over half being people of color, depend on your mercy, your conviction, and your courage. This is your chance to prevent irreversible miscarriages of justice and leave a legacy rooted in racial justice and compassion.

Other “Leave nothing on the table” actions:

(Indivisibleventura) Resistance Action to Help Dreamers & DACA recipients!

Deeper Dive

QUICK SUMMARY: (ScientificAmerican) “Study after study shows that the death penalty does not deter crime, puts innocent people to death, is racially biased, and is cruel and inhumane. It is state-sanctioned homicide, wholly ineffective, often botched, and a much more expensive punishment than life imprisonment. There is no ethical, scientifically supported, medically acceptable or morally justifiable way to carry it out…The criminal justice system has killed at least 20 people now believed to have been innocent and uncounted others whose cases have not been reexamined. Too many of these victims have been Black or Hispanic. This is not justice. These are state-sanctioned hate crimes.“

ACLU SUMMARY:(ACLU)”[The death penalty] is out of step with the fundamental values of our democratic system. Trump’s return to the White House, and his unprecedented, extreme, and inhumane stance on capital punishment, only threaten to make an already cruel system more dangerous.

Already, Trump has called to unconstitutionally expand the death penalty to include non-homicide crimes, such as drug-related offenses. He has also reportedly called for the death penalty as punishment for those who leak information against him in the press or undermine him politically. He has suggested bringing back firing squads, the guillotine, and hangings by noose – a symbol and tool of our country’s sordid legacy of lynching and racial terror.

Trump’s promise to expand the death penalty magnifies the systemic inequities that already plague our capital punishment system. The federal death penalty, like state capital punishment systems, is error prone, racially-biased, and a drain on public resources. More than half of those under federal death sentence in 2024 are people of color, some of whom were convicted by all-white juries. People with serious mental illnesses, intellectual disabilities, brain damage, and histories of trauma are also overrepresented on death rows across the country, including the federal row. Additionally, as long as the death penalty exists, we risk executing innocent people, as evidenced by the 200 people who have been sentenced to death and exonerated since 1973.

In 2020, Biden made history as the first president to openly oppose the death penalty. Under his leadership, the Department of Justice (DOJ) acknowledged the death penalty’s disparate impact on people of color as well as the staggering number of people who have been sentenced to death and, subsequently, exonerated over the past five decades. Though Biden stopped short of acting on his promise to secure an end to capital punishment, he can still save lives and help build a legacy rooted in racial justice by commuting all federal death sentences to life in prison.”

Why It Matters

Studies show that the death penalty does not keep our communities safer. In fact, research has consistently shown that the death penalty does not deter homicides and that in states that homicides are lower in states that do not have the death penalty.

Trump has consistently ignored these facts. Instead, during his last term, he went on a killing spree and rapidly executed 13 men in quick succession without regard for serious miscarriages of justice. Of the 13 people Trump executed in his last term, two were Black men sentenced as teenagers, one was a woman with mental illness who had survived a lifetime of horrific sexual abuse and torture, another was a man with intellectual disabilities, and there was also a 67-year-old man whose Alzheimer’s disease left him unaware of the reason he was sentenced to die. A majority of the 13 executed were people of color, including seven Black men and one Native American man.

(Scientific American) “The methods used to kill prisoners are inhumane. Electrocution fails, causing significant pain and suffering. Joel Zivot, an anesthesiologist who criticizes the use of medicines in carrying out the death penalty, has found (at the request of lawyers of death row inmates) that the lungs of prisoners who were killed by lethal injection were often heavy with fluid and froth that suggested they were struggling to breathe and felt like they were drowning. Nitrogen gas is used in some veterinary euthanasia, but based in part on the behavior of rats in its presence, it is “unacceptable” for mammals, according to the American Veterinary Medical Association. This means that Smith, as his lawyers claimed in efforts to stop his execution, became a human subject in an immoral experiment.”

These executions, particularly of people with mental illness and intellectual disability, demonstrate that no amount of procedure eliminates the fundamental flaws of the death penalty.

Information for top graphic:

(Scientific American) Evidence does not support the use of the death penalty
(ojp.gov) Five Things About Deterrence
(Project 2025) Project 2025 – Chapter 17 – DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE – FIVE THINGS ABOUT DETERRENCE
(chwilliamslaw.com) SEXUAL HARASSMENT VS. SEXUAL ASSAULT VS. SEXUAL ABUSE – WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? “Sexual abuse is a term most often used to describe sexual assault perpetrated against children. Until an individual turns 16 or 18, depending on the state, they cannot legally consent to sexual activities. If a sexual activity occurs with a child who has not reached the age of consent, it’s considered sexual abuse.“ Hey Matt, the age of consent in Florida is 18, not 17.
(Axios) Matt Gaetz sexual misconduct allegations
(Rolling Stone) TRUMP PLANS TO BRING BACK FIRING SQUADS, GROUP EXECUTIONS IF HE RETAKES WHITE HOUSE – The former president wants to expand the use of the death penalty, and expand the federal government’s options for carrying out death sentences
(Guardian) “I’m terrified I’ll be executed’: Trump win could bring spree of death row killings
(PewResearch) What the data says about crime in the U.S.

(AP) Fuller picture emerges of the 13 federal executions at the end of Trump’s presidency
- Daniel Lee – condemned to death for a 1995 killing of three family members; his co-defendant, considered the “ringleader”, got life in prison. The lead prosecutor, judge and victim’s family opposed execution.
- Wesley Purkey – His attorneys had argued that the 68 year old man was mentally unfit for execution because he suffered from advanced Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and schizophrenia.
- Dustin Higgs – was not the shooter and had asserted his innocence
- Corey Johnson: During his execution, he suffered pulmonary edema, a painful condition akin to drowning.
- Lisa Montgomery: She had killed an expectant Missouri mother and cut the baby from her womb. “Her lawyers momentarily considered taking her off her medications so she’d “go absolutely psychotic,” proving mental fragility exacerbated by sexual abuse in childhood, said her lawyer, Kelley Henry.”