Times are changing. Minds change.
Two decades ago, I to caution Abolitionists take up the cause of America’s most heinous criminals: mass murderers, serial killers, domestic terrorists, and the like. So why did I feel such a deep sense of disappointment when I heard the news that President Joe Biden was commuting the death sentences of thirty-seven people on federal death row but not on death row? Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers?
Roof committed a racially motivated mass murder; Tsarnaev is one of the perpetrators of the infamous Boston Marathon bombings, and Powers, “whose vicious anti-Semitism drove him to shoot his way into a place of worship and target people for their religious observance,” killed eleven people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. .
My disappointment was not motivated by sympathy for the three of them. If anyone deserved the death penalty, they would certainly be eligible for it.
No, my disappointment is rooted in the belief that by omitting Rove, Tsarnaev, and Bowers from his mass pardon, President A missed opportunity to move the needle In the ongoing struggle to end the death penalty in the United States. Joe Biden, who would never have to face voters again, could have used the bully pulpit to explain why even Rove, Tsarnaev, and Bowers should not be executed.
His explanation was to stimulate a national conversation about whether this country should abandon the death penalty once and for all. By leaving these terrorists and mass murderers on death row, we have lost the opportunity to have that conversation.
This country is ready for this. Abolitionists did Made great strides In weaning the United States from its attachment to the death penalty, it paved the way for the next steps.
That’s why I am consideration Biden’s refusal to commute the sentences issued against Rove, Tsarnaev, and Bowers was considered a missed opportunity. But as I mentioned above, I didn’t think this way until recently.
In January 2001, I published Editorial article in Los Angeles Times Titled “Let Timothy McVeigh Go, Let Him Go Quiet.” McVeigh, who bombed a building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people, was carried out by the FBI Named “The worst act of domestic terrorism in the nation’s history. He was found guilty of mass murder and sentenced to death.”
When I wrote my article, McVeigh wanted to end all legal challenges and get an execution date. I asked:
Should those who oppose the death penalty take up his case as they did that of Gary Gilmore, who in 1977 abandoned efforts to prevent himself from becoming the first person executed after the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court? Should abolitionists now protest, as they did in the face of Gilmore’s stated death wish, that no one should be allowed to receive government assistance in what amounts to suicide?
Should they ask Americans to empathize with McVeigh’s plight by reminding us that, as horrific as his act was, he is a human being with the capacity to love and be loved, to hope and fear, to cry, and perhaps even to change?
I answered these questions with an unequivocal “no.”
“If McVeigh wishes to carry out the death penalty, no one should stand in his way, including those who staunchly oppose the death penalty.” The reasons I said this were mostly strategic.
I feared that openly siding with McVeigh would hinder the progress that abolitionists were making at the time.
She urged opponents of the death penalty to “continue to focus attention on the inadequacy of defense attorneys in capital cases, the unfairness of limiting appellate and habeas corpus rights for those on death row, and the real threat of executing innocent people.” In the end, I said, “This is not the time to save McVeigh…”
So why was 2024 the right time to save Rove, Tsarnaev and Bowers from facing execution?
Much has changed since 2001. These changes provide reason to believe that the United States is on the path toward abolition of the death penalty, and that abolitionists are now able to do what I did not think they could do 23 years ago.
Signs of progress abound
In 2001, more than 155 death sentences were issued It was delivered All over the country. In 2024, that number He is 26. According to the Death Penalty Information CenterHe added, “2024 is the tenth consecutive year in which fewer than 50 people have been sentenced to death, which is further evidence of the reluctance of juries to impose death sentences.”
And in 2001 there 66 executions were carried out. This year, that number is 25.
Additionally, as DPIC reported, “Public support for the death penalty remains at its lowest level in five decades (53%), and a recent Gallup poll reveals that more than half of young American adults between the ages of 18 and 43 now oppose the death penalty.” Fewer people found the death penalty morally acceptable this year (55%) than last year (60%).
While these developments are not irreversible, they indicate that the anti-death penalty movement has enough “capital” to deal with the most difficult issues without losing momentum. If that is not enough to provide hope, remember that in some cases Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz For Sayfullo Saipov, who carried out an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in New York, the jury chose life imprisonment without parole instead of the death penalty.
In 2001, Ma I called The “new abolition movement” was just beginning to take hold. Opponents of the death penalty began to attract public attention by arguing “against the death penalty not by claiming that it is immoral or cruel, but instead by pointing out that it has not been, and cannot be applied, in a manner consistent with death sentences.” Our legal system’s basic obligations to fair and equal treatment.
By focusing on what other They called our death penalty system brokenFor example, false convictions, racial discrimination in sentencing, and botched executions, opponents of the death penalty were achieving what I called “a position of political respectability while allowing them to change the subject from the legality of execution to the imperatives of due process.”
Today, these arguments are woven into the belief systems of millions of Americans. As DPIC noted last September, “The Gallup Crime Survey has questioned the fairness of the death penalty in the United States since 2000. For the first time, the October 2023 poll reported that more Americans believe the death penalty is applied unfairly ( (50%) to some extent (47%).
“Between 2000 and 2015,” DPIC explains, Gallup found that “51% to 61% of Americans said they believe the death penalty is applied fairly in the United States, but that number has declined since 2016. This year’s number represents 47 %”. Historical low in the history of Gallup polls.
Given this success, abolitionists now have the political space to argue that people like Roof, Tsarnaev, and Bowers have the right to be treated with dignity and allowed to live. If that is not enough, we know that the death penalty does not deter mass murderers and terrorists like them.
In fact, research And it showed “Since the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976, 80% of… mass shootings (killing ten or more people) have occurred in states with the death penalty or on federal property subject to the federal death penalty.” .
So, in the end, Biden could have saved the lives of Rove, Tsarnaev, and Powers without jeopardizing the progress made by abolitionists or the lives of people in this country. The reason for ending the death penalty It would have been better if he had done so.
