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Thread: Federal Capital Punishment News

  1. #41
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Jeff Sessions out as Attorney General

    Washington (CNN) - President Donald Trump on Wednesday fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

    "At your request I am submitting my resignation," Sessions wrote in a letter to White House chief of staff John Kelly.

    Matthew Whitaker will take over as acting attorney general, the President said.

    Whitaker is expected to take charge of the Russia investigation and special counsel Robert Mueller from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Whitaker has been openly critical of Mueller and the investigation and Democrats immediately called on him to recuse himself, just as Sessions had.

    "We are pleased to announce that Matthew G. Whitaker, Chief of Staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions at the Department of Justice, will become our new Acting Attorney General of the United States. He will serve our Country well ...We thank Attorney General Jeff Sessions for his service, and wish him well! A permanent replacement will be nominated at a later date," Trump tweeted.

    The move is an abrupt end to what had been a tumultuous tenure for Sessions, originally one of Trump's earliest and most loyal surrogates as an Alabama Republican senator. He was a key figure in implementing Trump's vision for America and significantly rolled back Obama-era policies on immigration, police reform and civil rights.

    Sessions was an enforcer of much of the Trump administration's hardline approach on immigration and regularly praised the President's tough words on crime. But even as he continued to carry out the Trump agenda, his relationship with the President remained strained and fraught for months due to the ongoing Mueller investigation.

    Sessions received the request to resign from Kelly, not the President, on Wednesday morning, an administration official said. It is not clear whether Mueller was told ahead of time.

    Trump constantly criticized Sessions

    Sessions' ouster came a day after the midterm elections saw Republicans hold onto control of the Senate -- which would confirm Trump's eventual permanent choice to head the Justice Department -- and just weeks after Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to multiple counts of campaign finance violations, tax fraud and bank fraud and Trump's former campaign chair Paul Manafort was found guilty of eight charges including tax fraud and bank fraud.

    Sessions was aware that Cohen was facing bank fraud and tax violations but had been walled off from the campaign finance aspects of the investigation into Trump's former lawyer, a source with direct knowledge of the matter told CNN.

    Trump's distaste for Sessions was well known -- and publicly reinforced by the President himself on a regular basis -- after the attorney general recused himself from all matters related to the 2016 campaign early in Trump's term.

    The President mocked Sessions in August as "scared stiff and Missing in Action." Later the same month as Trump continued to rail against him, Sessions issued a statement firing back at Trump and declaring, "While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations. I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action."

    Just days later, Trump knocked the Sessions-led Justice Department for indicting two Trump-supporting Republican congressmen ahead of the midterm elections. Both lawmakers won their re-election bids Tuesday.

    But Sessions hung on, and although there was no formal reconciliation, the President allowed him to stay, even despite the unwillingness of White House spokespeople to publicly confirm, for days, that Trump had confidence in the attorney general.

    In early August, Trump tweeted that Sessions "should stop" Mueller's investigation, raising questions as to whether the President was attempting to obstruct justice. Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani told CNN's Dana Bash that Trump was merely "expressing his opinion on his favorite medium."

    Sessions, for his part, consistently maintained that his recusal decision was made in consultation with career ethics officials at the Justice Department and was in the works from the time he was sworn in.

    Democrats demand continued independence for Mueller

    Top Democrats immediately called for Mueller's investigation to be allowed to proceed.

    Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on the new acting attorney general to recuse himself from oversight of the Mueller probe.

    "Given his previous comments advocating defunding and imposing limitations on the Mueller investigation, Mr. Whitaker should recuse himself from its oversight for the duration of his time as acting attorney general," Schumer said.

    Former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder declared interference with the special counsel "a red line."

    "Anyone who attempts to interfere with or obstruct the Mueller inquiry must be held accountable. This is a red line. We are a nation of laws and norms not subject to the self interested actions of one man," Holder tweeted.

    New York Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler tweeted a vow for accountability. Nadler is poised to chair the House Judiciary Committee next year.

    "Americans must have answers immediately as to the reasoning behind @realDonaldTrump removing Jeff Sessions from @TheJusticeDept. Why is the President making this change and who has authority over Special Counsel Mueller's investigation? We will be holding people accountable," Nadler tweeted.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2018/11/07/p...ign/index.html

  2. #42
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Donald Trump keeps bringing up the death penalty

    President Donald Trump has been talking a lot about the death penalty recently.

    On Friday, he pushed for capital punishment for people who kill police officers.

    "We will protect those who protect us," he said during a speech to law enforcement officers in Kansas City. "And we will believe the right punishment, and we all do, for cop-killers, is called the death penalty. And you know in some circles, that's very controversial to say that? You have all the television cameras rolling back there, for me it's not even a little controversial. You kill a cop, and it's called the death penalty."

    The US federal government has not executed a prisoner since 2003 and most prosecutions and convictions for murder occur in state courts. There are currently 62 prisoners on federal death row compared to more than 2,500 on death row in states, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

    On Wednesday, Trump tweeted in support of using the death penalty for drug dealers in China, weighing in on the domestic affairs of another nation and contradicting bipartisan criminal justice reform efforts, which Trump has endorsed.

    Trump was praising the Chinese government and President Xi Jinping for criminalizing fentanyl, but he also took the step of making clear he has no problem with China's government killing "pushers" of the drug, which has also helped fueled the opioid crisis in the US.

    It's not the first time Trump has spoken admiringly of other countries' use of the death penalty for drug dealers. He's mooned after the Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte's liberal use of execution for drug dealers, meted out by mobs, even though it's drawn international concern about the rule of law.

    In March he suggested during a White House summit on the opioid epidemic that the death penalty for drug dealers be imported to the US.

    "Some countries have a very tough penalty, the ultimate penalty, and they have much less of a drug problem than we do," Trump said.

    He repeated the sentiment a few weeks later during a speech in New Hampshire, which has been hard hit by the opioid crisis.

    "If we don't get tough on the drug dealers, we are wasting our time," Trump told the audience in Manchester, New Hampshire. "And that toughness includes the death penalty."

    Not long afterward, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo calling for prosecutors to seek "capital punishment in appropriate cases" and cited various laws that allow for the death penalty for drug-related offenses, including a 1994 law explicitly allowing the death penalty for drug crimes.

    It is hard or impossible to square Trump's clear interest in the death penalty for drug pushing with the separate bipartisan efforts undertaken by members of his administration, notably Jared Kushner, to institute criminal justice reform, which could include sentencing reform. It's one of the few truly bipartisan efforts on display in Washington at the moment.

    Add to that Trump's stated interest in delivering pardons and commutations to drug dealers.

    That's what he did to Alice Johnson after public lobbying by Kim Kardashian, granting Johnson clemency in June.

    "While this administration will always be very tough on crime, it believes that those who have paid their debt to society and worked hard to better themselves while in prison deserve a second chance," the White House statement at the time said.

    Johnson's crime, by the way, was drug trafficking. She was the linchpin of a massive drug ring that "dealt in tons of cocaine," according to news reports about her conviction.

    She turned into a model prisoner and mentor, and that's why she ultimately got Trump's clemency.

    Support for executing murderers, not drug dealers

    The bipartisan effort to overhaul the criminal justice system would seek to change some mandatory minimum guidelines, and there is some bipartisan support for changing sentencing guidelines specifically to give nonviolent drug offenders second chances.

    While Trump did endorse those efforts, he pays much more lip service to toughness -- in endorsing fellow Republicans, he routinely promises they'll be "tough on crime." That's a phrase that brings to mind the 1990's era, which saw a race to make criminal penalties increasingly strict and which the criminal justice reform effort, to some extent, is seeking to unwind.

    A majority of Americans think capital punishment is morally acceptable for murderers, but the numbers flip when they are asked if it should be applied to drug dealers.

    After Trump's comments in March, Quinnipiac asked about the death penalty in a poll and found 58% of Americans support the death penalty for people convicted of murder, but another majority, 51% , said they would prefer a sentence of life without parole.

    In that same poll just 21% said they supported the death penalty for people who sold drugs that contributed to a fatal overdose. A similar 20% said they thought capital punishment for such people would help stop the opioid crisis.

    The Supreme Court has held that the death penalty should not be instituted for any offense that does not result in the death of a victim, and has said it is not appropriate for rape.

    Large-scale drug trafficking is a capital crime under US law, but the death penalty has not been instituted for that purpose, and would certainly raise a court battle.

    The use of the death penalty has been on the decline in the US in recent years, according to a trove of data maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center.

    Thirty states and the US government have the death penalty, although three of those -- Colorado, Pennsylvania and Oregon -- have placed a moratorium on its use in recent years, according to the center. Seven of the 20 states that have abolished the death penalty have done so since 2007, either by court decision, legislative action or, in the case of New Mexico, by vote.

    The rate of executions has fallen markedly, from more than 60 each year nationwide in the late 1990's to fewer than 30 each year since 2015, and the drop in death sentences has been even steeper.

    Executions today are clustered in a few states. There have been 65 people put to death in the US in the past three years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, and 40% of those were in Texas alone.

    Oklahoma has not had an execution for years, in part because it cannot get the drugs needed to carry them out.

    Nebraska set a new precedent in August, when it conducted its first execution in 21 years and put Carey Moore to death for the double murder in 1979 of Omaha taxi drivers Maynard Helgeland and Reuel Van Ness Jr. The four-drug cocktail used to execute Moore included fentanyl, the drug Trump suggested seeking the death penalty for illegally pushing, as a painkiller.

    https://www.wthitv.com/content/national/502049872.html

  3. #43
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    Justice Department says FDA ‘lacks jurisdiction’ over death penalty drugs

    The Justice Department on Tuesday posted a legal opinion saying the Food and Drug Administration does not have authority over drugs used in lethal injections, a move sure to draw the ire of death penalty opponents.

    The action came in a legal opinion by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel saying that “articles intended for use in capital punishment by a state or the federal government cannot be regulated as ‘drugs’ or ‘devices.’” Therefore, the opinion states, the FDA “lacks jurisdiction.”

    The FDA’s role in regulating death-penalty drugs has been hotly disputed in recent years. In 2015, the agency blocked Texas from importing shipments of an anesthetic from an overseas distributor, finalizing the decision two years later. The agency argued the importation was illegal because the drug, sodium thiopental, was not approved in the United States and was improperly labeled.

    Texas responded by suing the FDA in early 2017, claiming the agency was interfering with the state’s responsibility to carry out its law enforcement duties. The lawsuit was filed shortly before President Trump took office. Trump has long been a supporter of capital punishment while his Senate-confirmed attorneys general -- Jeff Sessions, who left the post last year, and William Barr, who assumed the job this year -- have also both backed the practice.

    The legal opinion sides against the FDA and with Texas. It does not appear the opinion will have any immediate effect, however, because the agency is operating under a 2012 court injunction that bars it from allowing the drug into the country. It isn’t clear whether the Justice Department will now seek to have the injunction lifted, a move that could spark a long legal tussle.

    States have struggled in recent years years to obtain lethal injection drugs, an ongoing shortage fueled by drug companies’ objections to having their products used in executions. Some pharmaceutical firms have gone to court to block states from using their drugs, a tactic that stopped an execution in Nevada last year but failed to stop several in Arkansas in 2017.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.adfc6b680c79

  4. #44
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    AG Barr orders reinstatement of the federal death penalty

    Barr also directed the federal government to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murder

    By Daniel Arkin
    NBC News

    Attorney General William Barr has ordered the reinstatement of the federal death penalty after a 16-year pause, the Department of Justice announced Thursday.


    Barr also directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murder, the Justice Department said in a news release.


    The executions are slated to take place in December 2019 and January 2020.


    “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," he added.


    The last federal execution occurred in 2003.


    In 2014, President Barack Obama ordered the Justice Department to carry out a review of capital punishment and lethal injection drugs. The review led to what was effectively a moratorium on federal executions.

    There are currently 62 inmates on federal death row, according to a list compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit.

    The list of current inmates includes convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof.

    The federal inmates whose executions have been scheduled are Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group convicted of killing a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl; Lezmond Mitchell, convicted of stabbing to death a 63-year-old woman; Wesley Ira Purkey, convicted of raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl; Alfred Bourgeois, convicted of sexually molesting and beating to death his 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter; and Dustin Lee Honken, convicted of shooting five people to death.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...m_npd_nn_tw_ma
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  5. #45
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Ted's Avatar
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    Wow! Can we rely on these going ahead?
    Violence and death seem to be the only answers that some people understand.

  6. #46
    Senior Member CnCP Addict johncocacola's Avatar
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    I'm cautiously optimistic.

    Every leading 2020 Democrat now says that they will scrap the federal death penalty, this may be the last chance to conduct a federal execution.

    I'm still surprised Jeff Sessions did not move to do so two years ago despite how much he would bring up the death penalty in the senate.

  7. #47
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Ted's Avatar
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    Does anyone have dates of birth for Lee, Mitchell, and Bourgeois? I need to put a note on the Wikipedia page.
    Violence and death seem to be the only answers that some people understand.

  8. #48
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    If they are actually serious about this I have so many questions.

    What happened to that lawsuit that stopped the executions since 2003?

    Do they have drugs?

    Why has there been a 2 year delay since Trump took over the DOJ for this to occur?
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  9. #49
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    The official statement from the Office of Public Affairs

    Federal Government to Resume Capital Punishment After Nearly Two Decade Lapse

    Attorney General William P. Barr Directs the Federal Bureau of Prisons to Adopt an Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol and Schedule the Executions of Five Death-Row Inmates Convicted of Murdering Children

    Attorney General William P. Barr has directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to adopt a proposed Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol—clearing the way for the federal government to resume capital punishment after a nearly two decade lapse, and bringing justice to victims of the most horrific crimes. The Attorney General has further directed the Acting Director of the BOP, Hugh Hurwitz, to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our society—children and the elderly.

    “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,” Attorney General Barr said. “Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of

    Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding. 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.”

    The Federal Execution Protocol Addendum, which closely mirrors protocols utilized by several states, including currently Georgia, Missouri, and Texas, replaces the three-drug procedure previously used in federal executions with a single drug—pentobarbital. Since 2010, 14 states have used pentobarbital in over 200 executions, and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have repeatedly upheld the use of pentobarbital in executions as consistent with the Eighth Amendment.

    Upon the Attorney General’s direction, Acting Director Hurwitz adopted the Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol and, in accordance with 28 C.F.R. Part 26, scheduled executions for the following individuals:

    Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group, murdered a family of three, including an eight-year-old girl. After robbing and shooting the victims with a stun gun, Lee covered their heads with plastic bags, sealed the bags with duct tape, weighed down each victim with rocks, and threw the family of three into the Illinois bayou. On May 4, 1999, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas found Lee guilty of numerous offenses, including three counts of murder in aid of racketeering, and he was sentenced to death. Lee’s execution is scheduled to occur on Dec. 9, 2019.

    Lezmond Mitchell stabbed to death a 63-year-old grandmother and forced her nine-year-old granddaughter to sit beside her lifeless body for a 30 to 40-mile drive. Mitchell then slit the girl’s throat twice, crushed her head with 20-pound rocks, and severed and buried both victims’ heads and hands. On May 8, 2003, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona found Mitchell guilty of numerous offenses, including first degree murder, felony murder, and carjacking resulting in murder, and he was sentenced to death. Mitchell’s execution is scheduled to occur on Dec. 11, 2019.

    Wesley Ira Purkey violently raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl, and then dismembered, burned, and dumped the young girl’s body in a septic pond. He also was convicted in state court for using a claw hammer to bludgeon to death an 80-year-old woman who suffered from polio and walked with a cane. On Nov. 5, 2003, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri found Purkey guilty of kidnapping a child resulting in the child’s death, and he was sentenced to death. Purkey’s execution is scheduled to occur on Dec. 13, 2019.

    Alfred Bourgeois physically and emotionally tortured, sexually molested, and then beat to death his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. On March 16, 2004, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas found Bourgeois guilty of multiple offenses, including murder, and he was sentenced to death. Bourgeois’ execution is scheduled to occur on Jan. 13, 2020.

    Dustin Lee Honken shot and killed five people—two men who planned to testify against him and a single, working mother and her ten-year-old and six-year-old daughters. On Oct. 14, 2004, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa found

    Honken guilty of numerous offenses, including five counts of murder during the course of a continuing criminal enterprise, and he was sentenced to death. Honken’s execution is scheduled to occur on Jan. 15, 2020.

    Each of these inmates has exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies, and currently no legal impediments prevent their executions, which will take place at U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana. Additional executions will be scheduled at a later date.

    https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/feder...o-decade-lapse

    So they are saying there are no hurdles and they will schedule more. If these actually happen this is a huge white pill and a shot in the arm for the death penalty nationwide. This also answers all my key questions about delays.

    Also I want to point out a few things here. 4 of the 5 are from states that have executed a person in the past 5 years. Of the 6 men on federal death row for killing children who have exhausted appeals they chose 5 of them. Jorge Torrez wasn't picked.
    Last edited by Mike; 07-25-2019 at 12:23 PM.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  10. #50
    Senior Member Frequent Poster NanduDas's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mike View Post
    Do they have drugs?
    The DOJ did sue the FDA earlier this year over imports. Seems like they could resolve this by the end of the year.


    Quote Originally Posted by Mike View Post
    Why has there been a 2 year delay since Trump took over the DOJ for this to occur?
    I’ve been asking this question for a long time, but better late than never.

    With Biden pledging to end the death penalty yesterday, seems like Trump is finally taking a firm stand on this issue.
    "The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer." -Theodore Roosevelt

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