Justice Department Quietly Updates 1 Rule, Clears the Way for Execution by Firing Squad
The Department of Justice has finalized amendments to authorize federal executions by firing squad.
Before the proposed new protocol, lethal injection was the most widely used method for capital punishment.
While the optics of a firing-squad execution may be harsh, experts say it’s less prone to error, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Therefore, they contend that it’s actually more humane.
Executions via firing squads are simpler and more effective than lethal injections, which have a shocking 7.1 percent error rate.
Indeed, lethal injections had the highest rate of botched executions, according to research compiled by Austin Sarat, a professor of jurisprudence at Amherst College.
According to the Justice Department’s amended rule, which takes effect on Dec. 24, “Federal executions are to be carried out by lethal injection ‘or by any other manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence was imposed,'” which in some states includes death by firing squad, electrocution or inhalation of nitrogen gas.
Presumptive president-elect Joe Biden “opposes the death penalty now and in the future” and will try to abolish it, his campaign press secretary told The Associated Press.
However, Biden stopped short of definitively declaring that he would pause all federal executions if he were installed as president.
Ironically, Democrats oppose the death penalty as cruel and inhumane, even though they gleefully supporting aborting a baby until the moment of birth.
Presumptive vice president-elect Kamala Harris — who has been slammed for throwing countless black men in jail during her controversial tenure as California attorney general — said there should be a federal moratorium on executions.
In 2019, when she was running for president in the Democratic primary election, Harris said there would no federal executions if she won the White House.
That was a major flip-flop for Harris, who staunchly defended the death penalty as California’s attorney general.
Harris reversed her stance on the death penalty by playing the race card to pander to black and Latino voters, claiming they were more likely to be executed than white defendants. In so doing, Harris blasted the death penalty as “immoral, discriminatory, ineffective, and a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars.”
Capital punishment is currently authorized by the federal government, the U.S. military and 28 states.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the death penalty for cop killers.
“We believe the right punishment for all cop killers is called the death penalty,” Trump said in 2018 at an event for law enforcement officials in Kansas City, Missouri.
Trump said he understands that capital punishment is controversial, but to him, it only makes sense to authorize the death of a thug who murders police.
“You know in some circles that is very controversial to say that — and we have all of the television cameras rolling back here — for me it’s not even a little bit controversial,” Trump said. “You kill a cop, and it’s called the death penalty, OK.”
The comical irony of Democrats opposing the death penalty for violent criminals while allowing babies to be torn out of their moms’ uteruses until the moment of birth underscores the yawning chasm between the political left and the right.
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