Democrats Scrub Death Penalty From Campaign Platform

LOADING ERROR LOADING In 2016, the Democratic Party became the country’s first major political party to formally call for abolishing the death penalty. The party’s platform that year, released in the aftermath of a high-profile botched execution, called the punishment “cruel and unusual,” “arbitrary and unjust,” expensive to taxpayers and ineffective in deterring crime. During the 2020 campaign, the Democratic platform reiterated support for abolishing the death penalty. When Joe Biden entered office the following year, he became the first president to publicly oppose capital punishment — a dramatic shift from his time in the Senate, when he once bragged that the sweeping crime bill he was pushing did “everything but hang people for jaywalking.” Advertisement However, as his term winds down, Biden has little to show for the party’s promise to abolish capital punishment. On Monday, the Democrats approved their 2024 platform, which includes no mention of the death penalty. This year’s platform marks the first time since 2004 the platform has not mentioned the death penalty (the 2008 and 2012 platforms called for making the punishment less arbitrary). During the last six months of Donald Trump’s presidency, his administration executed 13 people, ending a 17-year de facto moratorium on federal executions. Advertisement At the time, Biden’s campaign website pledged to work with Congress to abolish the federal death penalty and incentivize states to put an end to the practice. Once he entered office, the Justice Department reinstated the execution moratorium and launched a review into death penalty policies and procedures. In January, the DOJ announced it would pursue the death penalty against Payton Gendron, who has admitted in state court to killing 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket because they were Black. For years, death penalty abolition bills in the House and Senate have languished. “I wouldn’t say that the White House has been actively engaging people to support the bill,” Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), the sponsor of one of the death penalty bills, told HuffPost earlier this year. In a footnote, the document notes that this would require convincing the Supreme Court to overrule its previous findings on when the death penalty is appropriate, but that “the [Justice] department should place a priority on doing so.” Trump reportedly plans to announce his support for expanding the death penalty to non-homicide crimes. When Harris became San Francisco’s district attorney in 2004, she promised to “never charge the death penalty.” She upheld that promise, even under pressure to pursue capital punishment for a man accused of killing a police officer. When she ran for California attorney general, she said she would “enforce the death penalty as the law dictates.” After narrowly defeating her Republican opponent, her office defended use of the death penalty in court. In addition to dropping any mention of the death penalty, this year’s Democratic platform noticeably backs away from several criminal justice reforms the party embraced in 2020, when the police killing of George Floyd prompted nationwide protests against police brutality. The 2020 platform includes support for several specific policies that are either absent from the 2024 platform or have been considerably toned down, including: ending life-without-parole sentences for people under 21, banning police from using chokeholds, decriminalizing cannabis, eliminating cash bail and repealing mandatory minimum sentences. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrats-scrub-death-penalty-campaign-platform_n_66c67a0de4b0b9c7b360296b