If Donald Trump wins the election, he is expected to pursue a spree of executions that could fast-track the cases of people on federal death row, and threaten the life of a man with a longstanding innocence claim.
Advocates for people on death row fear a second Trump term could be worse than his first, which saw an unprecedented 13 federal executions. Under Trump, more people incarcerated in the federal system were put to death than under the previous 10 presidents combined, a staggering number that raised grave human rights concerns.
Among those who were executed were people with intellectual disabilities. Defendants were deprived of opportunities to present new evidence. Some were killed after lawyers said the execution method was “tortuous”. In some cases, executions occurred over the objections of both victims and prosecutors.
Since his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s pro-death penalty rhetoric, which dates back to his 1989 campaign against the Central Park Five, has only escalated. He’s recently called for executions of “everyone who gets caught selling drugs” and has reportedly suggested government leakers should be executed for treason. Last year, Rolling Stone reported, Trump allegedly floated bringing back firing squads and hangings and pursuing group executions and televised killings.
Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint for a second Trump term that was written by Trump’s allies, although it has been disavowed by the former president, calls for the US government to do “everything possible to obtain finality” for the 40 people on federal death row. It also urges the president to expand capital punishment to non-homicide crimes and push the US supreme court to overrule precedent limiting death sentences to murders.
“Trump has said he plans to finish what he started,” said Billie Allen, 47, in a recent call from federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana. Allen, convicted of a 1997 robbery and murder, has maintained his innocence, but he has exhausted his appeals. “I’m terrified that I will be executed – not just because I’m going to die, but because I’m going to die for something I didn’t do … I can only hope that as someone who is innocent he would do the right thing.”
‘Lawless’ killing spree
The federal killings under Trump all took place during his final months in office, and they raised significant concerns about the rights of US capital defendants.
The first execution, in July 2020, was of 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. But the justice department pushed to proceed, even when there was a court injunction halting the execution. Lee was strapped to a gurney for four hours while the government fought to move forward, and the supreme court greenlit the proceeding at 2am. He was killed by lethal injection.
Days later, the US executed a 68-year-old man whose lawyers had won a brief injunction after arguing he was unfit due to advanced Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and schizophrenia.
Other cases included a man who was not the shooter and had asserted his innocence; a man who suffered a painful condition akin to drowning during his execution; and a case where five jurors and a prosecutor objected.
“There was a big rush to kill with a lot of trampling on fairness, procedure and just basic decency,” said Ruth Friedman, director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, which represents death row defendants and was Lee’s counsel. “It was a parade of horribles.”
Across 13 executions, she said, courts issued more than 20 stay orders halting the killings. But the supreme court and appeals courts repeatedly rejected the rulings.
“It was the lowest point in my 34 years of practicing law, not only because of the breathtaking speed of those 13 executions, but also the ways in which the court system utterly failed our clients,” said Kelley Henry, a federal public defender. “The brokenness of the death penalty system was on full display in a way that shook me to my core.”
Henry represented Lisa Montgomery, who was executed in the final week of Trump’s presidency, the first woman put to death by the US government in nearly 70 years. Montgomery had been convicted of murdering a pregnant woman; her attorneys said she suffered profound mental illness stemming from horrific abuse and argued she should be barred from execution due to incompetency.
In Montgomery’s final weeks, four courts sided with her lawyers and issued stays. But the US bureau of prisons plowed ahead, and the supreme court, at around midnight on the day of her scheduled lethal injection, tossed out the lower court rulings. Montgomery was pronounced dead at 1.31am on 13 January 2021 – before her competency claim had been resolved.
“The 13 executions were lawless,” said Henry. “I never believed the legal system could be so politicized. It’s untenable to me that it could happen again.”
40 men on death row
The 40 men currently held on federal death row represent systemic problems with capital punishment, experts said. The majority are people of color, and 38% are Black (while Black people comprise 14% of the American population), said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. In 58% of cases, at least one victim was white. And nearly one in four men were 21 or younger during the crime.
“By every objective measure, the federal death penalty is irretrievably broken,” said Maher, noting that some death sentences were secured during the racist crackdown on “superpredators” in the 1990s, and some relied on discredited “junk science” techniques.
It’s unclear how many men could be immediately vulnerable under Trump, as their litigation is in varying stages, but advocates fear a chaotic rush led by his justice department. Trump’s former attorney general, Bill Barr, spearheaded the last execution spree and approved the use of the drug pentobarbital. Advocates have little hope that he’d use his presidential authority to issue clemency grants or pause federal executions.
“I feel fairly confident that [a second Trump] administration, if it comes to pass, could try to cut some corners,” said Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project.
Kamala Harris has previously opposed the death penalty, but has been silent on it during her presidential campaign, and a call to abolish capital punishment was left out of the Democratic party’s platform this year for the first time in 12 years. The Harris campaign didn’t respond to inquiries. Joe Biden issued an executions moratorium in 2021.
Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, didn’t respond to questions about Trump’s executions and his plans for federal death row, but said in an email: “President Trump has repeatedly stated he supports the death penalty for drug dealers. He will carry out that promise when elected.”
‘I deserve to live’
Billie Allen, the defendant at risk of execution, was convicted of a 1997 bank robbery in which two men killed a guard.
One suspect was arrested on the scene; Allen was arrested hours later.
Allen has said he was shopping at a mall during the robbery, and a mall guard told police that he saw Allen at that time, his lawyers told the federal pardon office earlier this year. Blood on the scene believed to belong to a robber did not match Allen’s, DNA tests showed. And while the getaway car exploded, Allen tested negative for traces of gasoline. His lawyers say his trial attorney was ineffective.
In a statement, a US attorney’s office spokesperson defended Allen’s conviction, pointing to a 2001 appeals court ruling that said that Allen confessed after his arrest, that eyewitnesses identified him in a lineup and that he was “primarily responsible” for firing the fatal shots.
Allen has said he didn’t confess, an officer testified he “threw away” notes from the confession, and other eyewitnesses described a suspect who didn’t match him.
“I’m hopeful because I have evidence of my innocence,” Allen said. “I believe if someone in Biden’s administration examines this, I’ll be home after 26 years convicted for a crime I didn’t commit.”
“But we’re dealing with a system that’s flawed,” he continued, pointing to the recent Missouri execution of a man prosecutors suggested was innocent. Allen has focused on writing and art while imprisoned: “If I’m executed, I want people to look back on my art and see this guy was documenting the trauma he went through on death row … he documented for us that he’s human, he deserves to live and is innocent.”
Allen has remained scarred from Trump’s executions, recounting hearing guards walking by his cell, not knowing whether he’d be taken to be killed. And he lost close friends, one by one: “I came in at 19. These are people I grew up with. I’m seeing them be carried out, never to return again, never to see them smile or hear them laughing.”
Allen said he wished people recognized death row defendants were capable of change: “The majority of people here become better men for themselves, their family and friends and supporters.”
Yvette Allen, his sister who has been fighting for his release, said the stress of the high-stakes election has been overwhelming: “There is no time to breathe. Every day is a sense of urgency. We’re working every day making sure the world sees he’s innocent before it’s too late.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
