Trump’s death penalty record symbolizes his authoritarianism!

By Donald A. Collins | 16 December 2024
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

The 10th anniversary edition of Brian Stevenson’s landmark book entitled “Just Mercy, a story of justice and redemption”, was reissued this past week and its author was widely interviewed on CBS on 12/11 and elsewhere.

You can listen to that interview here.

I have purchased this book and acquainted myself with this gripping story about Stevenson as a young African American lawyer who took on cases of unjust convictions of minorities who were jailed, some sentenced to death.

Stevenson’s exposure to the injustice meted out to those minorities prompted him to found the Equal Justice Initiative, a law practice detonated to bringing justice to those unjustly convicted.

What a timely milestone reminder as Biden nears the end of his presidency. Biden has just issued 1500 commutations of sentences to previous offenders, most of minor drug related convictions, as well as 39 pardons for those who had been unjustly convicted.

Some of the most egregious crime case occurred on April 19, 1989 dubbed the Central Park, five young black men who were accused of raping, a young woman jogger, and subsequently four of the five were cajoled into confessing to the crime, which they did not commit because they did not have adequate legal counsel, and because one of the principal advocates for their conviction was none other than Donald J Trump then a real estate developer in New York City.

You can read some of Trump’s history in the Central Park 5 case here.

Now, as President elect, Trump prepares to take office on January 20. It is particularly important to recall his history in this matter, and also two recite his record of allowing 12 death sentences in his first term and his obvious affection for such punishments.

“Mr. Trump placed full-page advertisements in four New York City newspapers in 1989 calling for the state to adopt the death penalty”.

Of particular note you can read in the above prompt is the fact that yers later long after the truth was discovered, Trump currently in his usual manner refused to apologize for this abuse, which you can also read here.

“You have people on both sides of that,” the president said when asked about the wrongly convicted defendants.

You mean, Mr President Elect, that there were good people on both sides including the ultimate felon who did the deed and other racists who believed wrongly?

We can see the sharp differentiation between the attitude of the outgoing Biden, and the incoming Trump as far as their wishes to pursue justice.

On the general subject of capital punishment many nations have adopted policies against the death penalty, which can be argued, eloquently by those not in favor, because retaining convicted, felons in jail, allows for the correction of possible errors as well as for the convicted felons, who committed these crimes to suffer the penalty of spending the rest of their lives in jail.

Some years ago I had dinner with the head of Scotland Yard, who was strongly against capital punishment because of the uncertainty of conviction in many cases, but particularly because gaining a death penalty in the UK it was such an onerous process that keeping convicted felons in jail at least allowed for changing their sentence should new evidence be presented.

One can assume that the new Trump administration will adhere to its policies of repeating the record the Trump administration established in his first term.

In an email I just received from the Brendon center, we learn that President Biden’s last moves as his presidency closes involves issuing substantial, commutations and pardons.

This article also discloses the substantial a difference between his record and the record of the first term record of the Trump administration which carried out death penalty sentences.

Here is a quote from that article:

President Biden campaigned on a pledge to “strengthen America’s commitment to justice and reform our criminal justice system.” One way for him to ensure that his justice policies have a lasting legacy is by using the clemency power. This authority, broadly enumerated in the Constitution, allows presidents to pardon or commute sentences for federal offenses. During his term, Biden put a moratorium on federal executions, endorsed lower sentences for certain drug offenses, and allowed some medically vulnerable people to serve sentences at home rather than in prison.

These decisions make an important policy statement — the criminal justice system is too harsh, racially biased, and often doles out disproportionate justice.

Starting on January 20, however, Donald Trump will have the power to reverse many of the current administration’s policies — he has already pledged to reverse some of them. But he cannot reverse acts of clemency. That’s why we are urging Biden to use his clemency power before leaving office to protect people serving unjust sentences. Among them are more than 40 people on federal death row whose sentences can be commuted to life without parole, more than 6,000 serving racially disparate drug sentences, and more than 3,000 medically vulnerable people finishing their sentences at home and posing no threat to their communities.

When it comes to reducing our prison populations, the Brennan Center believes this power should be used more frequently as a vital mechanism of mercy, tempering the often harsh, racist, and inequitable effects of our criminal legal system. You can add your voice here.

—Lauren-Brooke Eisen, Justice Program senior director

One of the biggest risks of the incoming Trump administration is that the unthinkable will begin to seem normal. Trump has threatened to deploy a host of emergency powers — the National Emergencies Act, the Insurrection Act, the Alien Enemies Act — in unprecedented ways. To understand how radical these proposals are, the public must have access to the rules and principles that have steered administrations for decades when it comes to these emergency powers. There are several opinions by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel on these topics that haven’t been made public. The Biden administration should release them now so that we have a benchmark — one established by someone other than a Trump loyalist — to evaluate the incoming president’s actions.

—Elizabeth Goitein, Liberty and National Security Program senior director

Trump ran for office on his contempt for the “deep state” and has already proposed massive cuts to the government. The Biden administration must preserve what exists for posterity so that the important work of sustaining a functioning government is not lost to history. The current administration should make public whatever it can now and prepare other records to guarantee their accessibility. For instance, to ensure that the Freedom of Information Act can be used to achieve transparency, the administration should be finalizing draft documents and creating written summaries of data and processes.

—Sean Morales-Doyle, Voting Rights Program director

The incoming administration’s plan to deport millions of people greatly heightens the risks of racial, religious, and other types of profiling. In the face of these threats, President Biden should ensure that the Department of Homeland Security issues its profiling guidance and discloses key documents to the public. DHS started developing guidance to clamp down on unfair and unlawful profiling in May 2023. It is past time for the agency to issue these rules, which should fully prohibit reliance on race, ethnicity, and religion and strictly limit reliance on national origin across the full range of its activities from the border to inside the United States.

And, to help the American people understand the legal and policy landscape within which DHS is operating, Biden should direct the department’s agencies to make public key policy documents, such as those on domestic intelligence activities and the collection of information from travelers’ laptops and cell phones, as well assessments of the programs’ effects.

—Faiza Patel, Liberty and National Security Program senior director

Another instructive argument entitled Four Things to Know About the Federal Death Penalty begins “The cases of those on death row highlight deep concerns about racial disparities, the fairness of the process, and the inhumanity of the punishment.”

You can read it all here.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk”, “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?” and “Trump: Pardon or Punish?: The Nixon Precedence Was Not A Trump Coup Denied!”.

From the 60 Minutes archives: The true story behind “Just Mercy”

Donald Trump’s ‘Horrific’ Response to the Central Park Five Case | Opinions | NowThis

Trump’s Long Love Affair With the Death Penalty

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