[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, PENN., FLA., OHIO, TENN., OKLA., USA

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 13



TEXAS:

El Paso shooting: Prosecutor plans to pursue death penalty after capital murder 
indictment



The man accused of opening fire in an El Paso, Texas, Walmart, killing 22 
people and wounding several others, has been indicted on a capital murder 
charge, the El Paso County District Attorney's Office said following the grand 
jury's Thursday decision.

District Attorney Jaime Esparza intends to seek the death penalty in the August 
3 massacre, according to a statement.

"The District Attorney's Office will continue to work hard to ensure that 
justice is done and is committed to assisting the victims through the judicial 
process," the statement said.

Capital murder is the highest charge in Texas, Esparza's office said, and is 
punishable by death or life in prison without parole.

In the days after the deadly rampage, suspected gunman Patrick Crusius of 
Allen, Texas, was placed on suicide watch based on the recommendation of 
medical staff, El Paso County Sheriff's spokeswoman Leslie Antunez told CNN on 
Tuesday.

The 21-year-old is being held at the El Paso County Detention Facility without 
bond.

He is accused of opening fire on unsuspecting shoppers at the Cielo Vista 
Walmart in the west Texas city near the Mexican border.

He surrendered and identified himself as the shooter following the massacre, 
police said. He told police that he was targeting Mexicans, according to an 
arrest affidavit.

While in custody, the suspect has been "cold" in his interactions with police, 
authorities told CNN last month.

Days after his arrest, Police Chief Greg Allen told reporters that the suspect 
had been cooperative, though he's shown no remorse and "appears to be in a 
state of shock and confusion."

The suspected shooter is believed by investigators to have authored a racist, 
anti-immigrant document that stated his disdain for Hispanic immigrants whom he 
said were overtaking America.

The 4-page document, titled "The Inconvenient Truth," was published on the 
online message board 8chan about 20 minutes before the shooting, authorities 
said.

The writing is filled with white supremacist language and racist hatred aimed 
at immigrants and Latinos, and the author says he opposes "race mixing" and 
encourages immigrants to return to their home countries.

(source: CNN)








PENNSYLVANIA:

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Hears Argument on Constitutionality of Death Penalty



The Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard oral argument on September 11, 2019 on 
whether to exercise its extraordinary “King’s Bench” powers to determine 
whether the death penalty, as currently applied in the Commonwealth, violates 
the Pennsylvania constitution. If the court agrees to reach the constitutional 
issue, it has the power to strike down the death penalty, uphold its 
constitutionality, or issue directives or standards regarding its future use.

Assistant federal defender Timothy Kane of the Federal Community Defender 
Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania argued on behalf of death-row 
prisoners Jermont Cox and Kevin Marinelli, who challenged the state’s death 
penalty after a June 2018 report by the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory 
Committee on Capital Punishment raised numerous concerns about the way the 
death penalty is administered in Pennsylvania. Before a packed courtroom in 
Philadelphia, with an overflow audience listening in an adjacent room, Kane 
described what he called a broken and arbitrary death-penalty system skewed by 
an overly broad statute and plagued with racial and geographic disparities. 
Kane asked the court to declare the Commonwealth’s death penalty 
unconstitutional and to reduce the sentences of the state’s 137 death-row 
prisoners to life in prison without parole. Kane’s argument emphasized the 
unreliability of Pennsylvania death-penalty verdicts, noting that courts have 
overturned more than half of the 441 death sentences imposed since the 
Commonwealth reinstated the death penalty in 1974. “The reliability of the 
system as a whole is cruel and the systemic problems affect every case,” Kane 
argued. “If the system is cruel, it’s incumbent for this court to say so.”

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office joined with the defenders in 
calling for the end of the Commonwealth’s death penalty. Supervisory Assistant 
District Attorney Paul George, of the D.A.’s appeals division, told the court 
that the systemic provision of deficient representation to indigent capital 
defendants has produced a constitutionally indefensible death penalty. Paul 
cited a study by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office of 155 death 
sentences imposed in Philadelphia from 1978-2017. In that forty-year period, he 
said, 72% of the death verdicts had been overturned, most as a result of 
ineffective defense representation. “When you’re talking about having a 72% 
error rate, you’re not talking about a reliable system,” George said.

Ronald Eisenberg, a long-time appeals lawyer for previous Philadelphia District 
Attorneys who is now senior appellate counsel in the Pennsylvania Attorney 
General’s office, told the court that the issues presented by the prisoners 
were essentially legislative in nature and that they should only vacate 
existing death sentences if prisoners have proven that prejudicial 
constitutional errors occurred in their cases. Eisenberg argued that the court 
had alternative means to address the flaws in the death-penalty system, 
including creating a remediation process for defense lawyers who are found to 
be ineffective, and mandating better funding for court-appointed counsel. The 
Attorney General’s brief in the case argued that problems with the application 
of the death penalty “are important, and should be thoroughly considered and 
resolved, by the General Assembly.” Attorney Matt Haverstick, who argued on 
behalf of 12 Republican state senators who were granted permission to intervene 
in the case, argued that the legislature’s report had been intended to be 
“advisory only.” He threatened that the senators would not authorize any 
further study commissions if the court employed their studies as a basis for 
judicial remedies.

Prior to the argument, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner highlighted 
the discriminatory nature of the city’s death penalty. “It wasn’t the worst of 
the worst [being sentenced to death],” Krasner said. “It was the poorest and it 
was [the] blackest and brownest.”

(source: Death Penalty Information Center)

**************

Prosecution seeks death penalty for man accused of killing sister, niece



Prosecutors with the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office will be 
seeking the death penalty against a man accused of fatally stabbing his sister 
and niece.

James Sterbinsky, 56, was charged in July with fatally stabbing his sister 
Christine Ross, 53, and niece, Autumn Ross, 20.

Police said Sterbinsky also stabbed his 33-year-old nephew Christopher 
Jacyszyn. Jacyszyn survived his injuries.

Prosecutors filed the notice of intent to pursue death penalties on Wednesday, 
citing the following factors to be considered by a jury at trial:

•There were multiple homicide victims.

•Sterbinsky provided a grave risk of danger to others, including 2 children who 
were in the home at the time of the stabbings. The children were able to run to 
a neighbor’s house and were not harmed.

•Christine Ross was a potential witness in a separate pending case against 
Sterbinsky.

Christine Ross, 53, and Autumn Ross, 20, were killed in a stabbing in the 500 
block of High Street, Lancaster City, on July 18, 2019. Christine's brother, 
James Sterbinsky, 56, has been charged with homicide and attempted homicide.

Police were called to an apartment complex in the 500 block of High Street in 
Lancaster around 10:38 p.m. on July 18 for a report of a stabbing, according to 
charging documents.

Police were told that a man was running around with a “giant kitchen knife,” 
according to court documents. Officers were also told that another man was in 
front of another residence on the block with a stab wound to the back, 
according to court documents.

Officers found Jacyszyn, who said his “uncle” had stabbed him, according to 
court documents.

Officers then went to the apartment complex and found a trail of blood that led 
them to where the 2 women had been stabbed, according to court documents. 
Christine Ross had multiple stab wounds to her arms and chest, and Autumn Ross 
had multiple stab wounds to her upper body, police said. Christine Ross was 
pronounced dead at the scene, according to court documents.

Autumn Ross was transported to Lancaster General Hospital, but later died from 
her injuries around 1 a.m. on July 19, according to court documents.

(source: pennlive.com)








FLORIDA:

Opening State­ments May Start Thursday In Granville Ritchie Murder Trial



The attempt to seat a jury in the trial of a Tampa accused of raping and 
killing a 9-year-old girl stretches into its 4th day Thursday.

The hold up with jury selection is mostly due to the possibility of the death 
penalty in this case.

Police say Granville Ritchie raped and murdered Felecia Williams and placed her 
body in a suitcase and then left her by the Courtney Campbell Causeway in 2014.

All jurors must vote unanimously for someone to be sentenced to death. Despite 
the delay, opening statements could still begin Thursday.

Ritchie, again sitting in the courtroom in a suit and tie, watched as lawyers 
questioned more than 150 potential jurors. By the end of Wednesday, the jury 
pool was down to 60 people.

Another major challenge has been finding jurors who are impartial.

A woman who attorneys dismissed, said she attended a memorial for Felicia 
shortly after the child's death.

"This would not be the right case," Judge Michelle Sisco told the woman. "That 
makes perfect sense so thank you so much for letting us know and we’ll be with 
you shortly okay."

The trial could take longer than the expected 3 weeks, due to jury selection 
taking longer than expected and close to 100 witnesses who could be called to 
testify.

(source: baynews9.com)

**********************

Marion County man resentenced to death for killing, dismembering 
teen----Michael Bargo was convicted for his role in the murder of 15-year-old 
Seath Jackson.



A judge on Thursday agreed with a second jury's capital punishment 
recommendation and resentence Michael Bargo to death for his conviction in the 
slaying of a 15-year-old Marion County boy.

Bargo, now 27, was first sentenced to death in 2013 for the 2011 killing of 
Seath Jackson. The original jury reached the recommendation for death in a 10-2 
vote but in 2016, the Florida Supreme Court ruled juries must be unanimous in 
recommending the death penalty. As a result, the court ordered resentencing for 
people on death row who did not receive a unanimous jury recommendation.

During Bargo's resentencing in April a jury unanimously recommended the death 
sentence. On Thursday, the judge officially handed down Bargo's death sentence.

In 2011, Bargo and 4 friends lured Jackson to a home in Summerfield, where 
Bargo shot the 15-year-old multiple times. The group then burned the body in a 
fire pit and disposed of the ashes by putting them in buckets and dumping them 
in a quarry.

Bargo's 4 co-defendants were each convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

During the resentencing, the state detailed the crime and Bargo's role in it. 
The prosecution called the crime cold, calculated and premeditated, and asked 
the jury to recommend the death penalty.

The defense went through Bargo's history of family problems and mental illness. 
Bargo's attorney said those factors played a role in his decision-making, and 
she asked the jury to recommend life in prison without the possibility of 
parole.

Both the state and the defense called several witnesses before a jury 
recommended death for Bargo.

Bargo was returned to the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections 
after the new sentencing.

Bargo is the youngest person on Florida's death row.

(source: clickorlando.com)








OHIO:

Ohio appeals court: Feeling of suffocation during execution not 
unconstitutional punishment----Court ruled Wednesday that just because an 
inmate feels like he's being suffocated after a lethal injection, it doesn't 
amount to cruel and unusual punishment



The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that just because an 
inmate feels like he's being suffocated after a lethal injection, it doesn't 
amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

The 3-judge panel, sitting in Cincinnati, said a federal judge in Dayton was 
wrong when he ruled in January that Ohio's execution protocol is likely to make 
one feel like one is drowning and then burning when another drug is 
administered.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine put Ohio executions on hold and ordered corrections 
officials to come up with a new intravenous protocol after U.S. Magistrate 
Judge Michael Merz decided that the existing protocol almost surely caused 
unconstitutional suffering. Merz said he'd block the execution of convicted 
killer Warren Keith Henness if not for a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

One cause of the suffering, Merz wrote, was the drowning sensation produced by 
the first drug in the protocol, Midazolam. Another cause, according to the 
judge, would be the burning sensation caused by the third, heart-stopping drug 
because Midazolam doesn't have the pain-killing properties that drugs such as 
opioids do.

Not so, the three-judge panel wrote. Citing a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision, 
they wrote, "Consider: Midazolam may cause Henness to suffocate. But the Eighth 
Amendment only prohibits forms of punishment that seek to intensify an inmate's 
death by 'superadd[ing]' feelings of 'terror, pain, or disgrace.'"

They were quoting from Justice Neil Gorsuch's opinion in Bucklew v. Precythe, 
the U.S. Supreme Court's most recent ruling regarding the death penalty. In 
discussing hanging, Gorsuch was arguing that at the time the Eighth Amendment 
was adopted, people didn't see hanging as intentionally cruel, unlike practices 
such as disemboweling or burning the condemned while they were still conscious.

Despite the appeals court ruling, it's still an open question whether DeWine 
will now allow executions to proceed. When he initially delayed them, he said, 
"Ohio is not going to execute someone under my watch when a federal judge has 
found it to be cruel and unusual punishment."

And then, after The Dispatch reported that Ohio was using drugs in executions 
over their manufacturers' and distributors' objections, DeWine in July said 
Ohio could no longer get the drugs because the suppliers threatened to cut off 
all medicine to the state for any purpose. DeWine said the state would look for 
a non-intravenous execution protocol.

But at the same time, the state's lawyers have been in court fighting to use 
the existing one. Or at least, the 6th Circuit believes that's the case.

"Ohio has said that it intends to resume executions with this protocol if we 
approve," the judges wrote in their 6-page ruling.

DeWine press secretary Dan Tierney said further litigation in the case is 
likely, so he can't comment on whether DeWine might allow further use of the 
protocol if the supply problems can be solved.

"That concern remains — regardless of the ruling or concerns about cruel and 
unusual punishment," Tierney said.

The Office of the Federal Public Defender, which represents Henness and other 
Ohio death row inmates, hasn't decided whether to ask for the case to be 
re-heard by the entire 6th Circuit or whether to appeal to the U.S. Supreme 
Court, said David Stebbins, a lawyer in the office. However, he did take issue 
with Wednesday's ruling.

"After an extensive evidentiary hearing on the complex medical and scientific 
issues with Ohio's 3-drug lethal injection protocol with the risky sedative 
Midazolam, the district court issued a nearly 150-page decision finding the 
protocol causes pain and suffering beyond what the U.S. Constitution permits," 
Stebbins said in an email.

"Today's brief opinion concludes that the district court was incorrect, despite 
the court's reliance on the extensive testimony of some of the nation's leading 
experts that Midazolam cannot prevent pain, and indeed causes severe pain 
comparable to 'a torture tactic.'"

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said 
Tuesday's ruling gives Henness's lawyers grounds for appeal. He said the 
court's job is to determine if the facts described by Merz were supported by 
the record. In this case, the record consists of testimony by what Merz 
regarded as leading experts in anesthesia and the physiology of pain. The 
appellate court's second job, Dunham said, was to determine if the district 
judge's legal conclusions were sound.

But the 6th Circuit panel's opinion mixes those jobs together, saying that 
Henness didn't show that he was likely to suffer severe pain and even if he 
did, it would still not violate the Eight Amendment, Dunham said.

"It looks like (the 6th Circuit) doesn't want to admit the reality of what 
Ohio's protocol does," Dunham said. He added, however, that with the current 
conservative majority on the Supreme Court, Henness's chances of prevailing 
there may be slim.

Meanwhile, an anti-death-penalty group said the decision illustrates the 
absurdity of the entire process.

"Rather than debating how much pain we are willing to allow people being 
executed to endure, we should be debating whether the death penalty truly 
serves the justice system and people of our state," Hannah Kubbins, program 
director of Ohioans to Stop Executions, said in an email. "Governor DeWine said 
he wouldn't use the Midazolam execution method and the 6th Circuit's opinion 
shouldn't change that. The facts and science about the protocol have not 
changed."

(source: The Repository)








TENNESSEE:

Judge says death penalty can be pursued in Carter County murder case



Judge Lisa Rise denied a defense motion on Thursday from attorneys for murder 
suspect Chad Benfield in Carter County to declare Tennessee's death penalty 
unconstitutional.

This decision means that capital punishment will be pursued as Benfield stands 
trial in January on murder and rape charges.

Prosecutors say Benfield should be put to death if convicted of raping and 
killing 89-year-old Mary Nolen. It happened in 2017 at her home in Stoney 
Creek. Benfield was a neighbor who had recently been released from a North 
Carolina prison.

Prosecutors say the death penalty is warranted because of the severity of the 
crimes and the age of the victim.

(source: WCYB mews)




OKLAHOMA:

OK Innocence Project proves Willard O’Neal was wrongfully convicted after 
serving 17 years in prison



The Oklahoma Innocence Project (OKIP) announced in a press release on 
Wednesday, September 11 that Tulsa resident Willard O’Neal was wrongfully 
convicted. In 2001, O’Neal was found guilty of first-degree murder of a strip 
club owner and attempted murder of his bodyguard. He was sentenced to life 
without parole in 2004.

“We are incredibly happy that Willard’s long journey to freedom has ended 
today,” said Vicki Behenna, OKIP’s Executive Director Emeritus in the OKIP 
release. “He is now a free man. It would not have been possible without the 
hard work of so many OCU law students who have been working on his case since 
2015.

“Their dedication to review and investigate Willard’s case has resulted in his 
walk to freedom today,” Behenna added. “We will continue to work on behalf of 
all Oklahomans who have been wrongfully convicted.”

The plea agreement hearing will take place Thursday, September 12 at 9:30 a.m.

The Oklahoma Innocence Project at Oklahoma City University School of Law has 
been working on the O’Neal case since the summer of 2015 when they filed the 
initial application for post-conviction relief.

The only evidence tying Mr. O’Neal to the murder was the fabricated testimony 
of the state’s main witness, who received a plea deal for her testimony, the 
release stated.

Dana Hertneky reported for News9 that the brief filed by OKIP in 2015 laid out 
the case showing that O’Neal was innocent. The “witness the State used to 
directly link Mr. O’Neal to the crime” “fabricated a false story” to “shield 
herself from criminal punishment.”

In 2016, the OKIP filed a motion with the District Court in Tulsa County to 
have some of the evidence collected from the crime scene tested for DNA. Last 
year, the OSBI confirmed that Mr. O’Neal was not a contributor and his DNA was 
excluded from the tested items.

While this finding was a significant development toward proving O’Neal’s 
innocence, it was not enough for the District Attorney’s Office to agree to 
release O’Neal.

According to the release, on Wednesday, September 4, the Tulsa District 
Attorney offered to resolve O’Neal’s case with an “no contest” plea to Murder 
in the 2nd Degree and a sentence of time served.

“It is a huge victory for Mr. O’Neal, who has spent the last 17 years in prison 
for a murder he did not commit,” the release said.

Founded in 1992 by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck at Cardozo School of Law, The 
Innocence Project exonerates the wrongfully convicted through DNA testing and 
reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. To learn more, 
visit innocenceproject.org.

The Oklahoma Innocence Project at Oklahoma City University School of Law is 
dedicated to identifying and remedying cases of wrongful convictions in 
Oklahoma. OCU School of Law students work together with the OKIP legal director 
to pursue only cases in which there is credible evidence of factual innocence.

“After 4 years of amazing effort from our OCU Law Students and the Oklahoma 
Innocence Project at Oklahoma City University School of Law, an innocent man 
finally goes free today after 17 years in prison wrongfully convicted of a 
crime he did not commit,” said OCU School of Law Dean Jim Roth on Facebook. 
“Our Students and Staff (thank you Vicki Behenna!) were able to prove through 
retesting of the evidence that Mr. O’Neal’s DNA was in fact not present at the 
crime scene in spite of trial testimony.

So Proud of these students who are bringing Justice to Oklahoma’s Criminal 
Justice system.”

On Sept. 6, OKIP announced that attorney Andrea Miller was selected to be 
group’s new Legal Director.

Prior to joining the OKIP full-time, Miller was the Appellate Division Chief 
for the Oklahoma County Public Defender’s Office where she handled capital, 
general felony and misdemeanor cases on direct appeal and post-conviction.

She served as an adjunct professor at Oklahoma City University School of Law 
and has previously taught courses in legal writing and Wrongful Convictions. 
She still serves as the adjunct clinical professor for the Oklahoma Innocence 
Project Clinic.

Miller served as president of the Oklahoma Criminal Defense Lawyers Association 
for 3 years and remains active on its board of directors. She is a 1996 
graduate of the University of Oklahoma College of Law where she served as the 
Research Editor of the Oklahoma Law Review.

For more information, visit okinnocence.com

(source: city-sentinel.com)








USA:

Democrats Can Become the Party of Death Penalty Abolitionism----“The death 
penalty has no place in a just society,” said Representative Ayanna Pressley. 
Tonight's Democratic debate in Texas presents the candidates with the chance to 
unify around that cause.



Democrats will debate tonight in Texas, the state that executed more people in 
2018 than all other states combined. As Texas Monthly noted just this week, 
“The Texas Death Penalty Machine Has Become Increasingly Grotesque.” For a 
party that has too frequently sent mixed signals on issues like gun violence 
and the death penalty, this can be a moment of clarity. Tonight, leading 
Democratic presidential contenders have the opportunity to demand, in one 
voice, an end to the state-sanctioned executions—solidifying Democrats as the 
death penalty abolition party and presenting a unified front on one of the 
biggest moral issues of our time.

It’s no secret that Democrats are contending with a troubled history on the 
death penalty. As recently as 2000, the party platform celebrated the 
commitment of President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and many of their 
congressional allies to “tougher punishments—including the death penalty.” Only 
in 2016 did the party platform promise that “We will abolish the death penalty, 
which has proven to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment. It has no place 
in the United States of America.” Yet, that same year, the party’s nominee, 
Hillary Clinton, explained during the primary campaign that “I do not favor 
abolishing it, however, because I do think there are certain egregious cases 
that still deserve the consideration of the death penalty.”

The party has to stop sending mixed signals, and tonight’s debate is the place 
to begin. High-profile debates always offer candidates opportunities to 
distinguish themselves from one another. But, on this issue, Democrats should 
seek to distinguish their party.

Exploiting the Death Penalty for Political Gain

To some extent, this is a required response to Donald Trump, whose attorney 
general moved in July to begin scheduling federal executions, after a 16-year 
moratorium. William Barr’s action sent a signal to Democrats that they could 
well face a 2020 campaign in which the Republican nominee sounds a cynical cry 
for vengeance that makes capital punishment central to the domestic debate. To 
counter that cry, Democratic presidential contenders must recognize Barr’s 
announcement for what it is: a political gambit that is rooted in the past but 
that need not frame the future. That’s one of the reasons it makes political—as 
well as moral—sense to use the debate in Texas to push back. A unified show of 
opposition to capital punishment in a state that executes so many would signal 
that the Democratic Party will not be derailed and distracted by an issue where 
it can stand, finally, on the right side of history.

Exploitation of the death penalty for political purposes is nothing new. 
Republicans and Democrats have, for generations, engaged in the crudest of 
political calculations by arguing at election time that there was an “urgent” 
need to haul prisoners out of cells where they are securely incarcerated—and 
serving long sentences—so that they could be killed.

That’s what Trump is doing now. There is a good chance that the courts and 
common sense will delay, and perhaps prevent, the deaths by lethal injection 
that Barr proposes. But that won’t be the end of it. Rest assured that, whether 
or not executions occur, Trump will turn up the volume of the cry for vengeance 
just in time for the 2020 election season. “The only surprising part of the 
Trump administration’s choice to restart federal executions is that it took the 
president this long to make it. As a matter of pure politics, Donald Trump 
would probably like nothing more than to have a national debate over the next 
year about what sort of justice ought to be meted out to convicted murderers,” 
explains Brennan Center for Justice fellow Andrew Cohen. “Such a dialogue 
during the primary season will likely rile his base, track [with] his ‘American 
carnage’ motif, and distract reporters away from coverage of the 
administration’s malfeasance and the president’s own legal troubles.”

That’s not speculation. Trump has a record. Few figures in public life have 
been so consistently vile in their exploitation of capital punishment for the 
purpose of dividing Americans against one another. His 1989 agitation to “bring 
back the death penalty” in the aftermath of the rape and assault of a woman who 
had been jogging in Central Park has been well documented. Trump did everything 
he could to whip up outrage against five African American and Hispanic 
teenagers who were wrongly charged and then convicted in 1990. “All five were 
exonerated in 2002 after Matias Reyes confessed to raping the woman, which was 
backed up by DNA evidence,” USA Today reminds us. Yet, instead of recognizing 
the injustice, Trump refuses to apologize. And he refuses to recognize the 
evolution of the criminal justice debate in recent years.

“It doesn’t matter to Trump, or to Barr, that violent crime rates are down in 
America and at generational lows in many jurisdictions,” argues Cohen. “It 
doesn’t matter that, as more states abolish the death penalty, executions are 
down across the country and that the imposition of death sentences in murder 
cases also is waning for good and practical reasons. It does not matter to this 
administration that conservative opposition to capital punishment has grown 
significantly over the past decade or so. Or that the American people, slowly 
but surely, are turning away from it as well, with less than 1/2 of Americans 
saying that the death penalty is applied fairly.”

Democrats Are Responding

But the shift in the debate should matter to those who oppose what Trump and 
Barr are now doing. It is not enough to wait for the courts. Every Democratic 
presidential contender should speak up boldly—as some already have. Senator 
Elizabeth Warren was appropriately blunt when she said, “Our criminal justice 
system has a long history of mistakes when it comes to capital 
punishment—especially when it comes to Black and Brown people. We cannot let a 
broken system decide the fate of incarcerated Americans. I oppose the death 
penalty.” So was Senator Cory Booker, when he pointed out that:

Throughout our nation’s history we have seen how the death penalty is not only 
ineffective and immoral, but also fraught with biases against people of color, 
low-income individuals, and those with mental illness. It is a waste of 
taxpayer dollars and does nothing to improve public safety. Instead, capital 
punishment seeks to satisfy a desire for vengeance and retribution. Our 
government must represent the best of who we are, not the worst. We can, and 
should, do better.

Even former vice president Joe Biden, a former supporter of capital punishment, 
now says “we must eliminate the death penalty.”

Polls suggest that the nation remains divided on the issue. But as Trump seeks 
to exploit this division, responsible leaders must address it with information 
and clear statements of moral conviction. That’s what Massachusetts 
Representative Ayanna Pressley has done, in a move that defines a way forward 
for her party.

With significant support from Democratic House members—and Michigan independent 
Justin Amash, a former Republican—Pressley has introduced legislation “to 
prohibit the imposition of the death penalty for any violation of federal laws, 
and for any purposes.”

Pressley calls out “racist rhetoric coming from the occupant of the White 
House—who called for the execution of the Exonerated 5” and decries Barr’s 
latest initiative as “this racist, vile policy.” She says, “I am proud to 
introduce a bill that completely abolishes the use of capital punishment as a 
punitive measure. The cruelty is the point—this is by design.”

To counter the cruelty, Democrats debating in Houston tonight should echo the 
moral clarity of Ayanna Pressley when she says, “The death penalty has no place 
in a just society.”

(source: John Nichols is The Nation’s national-affairs correspondent----The 
Nation)