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The US government is picking up the pace of executions of death row inmates, announcing five as of Thursday and even days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.
If these five executions are carried out, there will be 13 since July, when the administration of President Donald Trump resumed the execution of death sentences, despite reduced support for such sentences within the Republican and Democratic parties.
In a recent interview, Attorney General William Barr advocated extending executions to the period after the Nov. 3 presidential election, and said he will likely schedule others before leaving the Justice Department.
Barr added that Joe Biden should continue the practice after taking office as the 46th president of the United States.
The plan breaks the tradition of outgoing presidents, who present decisions on pending death sentences to the next occupant of the White House.
Joe Biden has already said that he opposes the death penalty and a spokesman for him has assured that the president-elect will work to end those sentences when he is in office.
“I cannot understand why someone in this final phase of the presidency feels compelled to kill so many people, especially knowing that the American people voted for a candidate who opposes this practice,” said Robert Durham, director of an independent agency. of information on the death penalty.
Since the last days of Grover Cleveland’s presidency, at the end of the 19th century, the Federal Government has not executed prisoners during the transition of power phase.
Anti-death penalty groups want Biden to lobby politically to halt the executions scheduled for the next few weeks, before taking office, although the president-elect can do little to stop them.
One such group, Ohio-based Action Against the Death Penalty, obtained around 3,000 signatures on a petition asking Biden to make “a clear and forceful statement” demanding an end to the executions.
The executions in progress this year have been carried out by lethal injection, in a prison in the state of Indiana, where all the death sentences on federal charges are produced.
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