On Thursday night, a press release from the Department of Justice announced that Attorney General Merrick Garland was issuing a memo imposing a moratorium on federal executions.
The attorney general also ordered a review of recent policy changes from the Trump administration. Such a review is set to include:
- A review coordinated by the Office of Legal Policy of the Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol, adopted in 2019, which will assess, among other things, the risk of pain and suffering associated with the use of pentobarbital.
- A review coordinated by the Office of Legal Policy to consider changes to Justice Department regulations made in November 2020 that expanded the permissible methods of execution beyond lethal injection, and authorized the use of state facilities and personnel in federal executions.
- A review of the Justice Manual’s capital case provisions, including the December 2020 and January 2021 changes to expedite execution of capital sentences.
There will be no executions scheduled while the review is being conducted.
The press release, however, does not mention the abolition of the death penalty.
The moratorium begins by reading:
The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws ofthe United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely. That obligation has special force in capital cases. Serious concerns have been raised about the continued use ofthe death penalty across the country, including arbitrariness in its application, disparate impact on people ofcolor, and the troubling number of exonerations in capital and other serious cases. Those weighty concerns deserve careful study and evaluation by lawmakers. In the meantime, the Department must take care to scrupulously maintain our commitment to fairness and humane treatment in the administration of existing federal laws governing capital sentences.
Neither the press release nor the memorandum referenced the case of Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Last year, a court of appeals turned over his death penalty sentence. As Spencer reported, the Biden administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the sentence.
However, before Biden took office, Americans were told in November that "the President-Elect opposes the death penalty, now and in the future, and as president will work to end its use."
As I've also covered, the Catholic faith, which Biden is a member of, is opposed to the death penalty.