WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. government's move to resume federal executions after a gap of 16 years evoked widespread criticism, including from human rights groups and leading Democrat presidential candidates.
Indian origin Democrat Kamala Harris said capital punishment is immoral and deeply flawed. She called for a national moratorium on the death penalty, 'not a resurrection' of it.
Bernie Sanders called for abolishing capital punishment. 'Our broken criminal justice system targets poor people and minorities disproportionately with the death penalty, including those who are innocent,' he said on Twitter.
Death sentences are discriminatory in the US, as race and geography were factors in determining whom to kill, according to Pete Buttigieg.
American Civil Liberties Union vowed to challenge this move.
Ruth Friedman, Director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, said the federal death penalty is 'arbitrary, racially-biased, and rife with poor lawyering and junk science'. There must be additional court review before the federal government can proceed with any execution, according to her.
Attorney General William P. Barr Thursday directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to adopt a proposed Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol, clearing the way for the federal government to resume capital punishment for the first time since 2003.
Barr also directed the Acting Director of the BOP, Hugh Hurwitz, to schedule the executions of five death row inmates convicted of murders or torturing and raping of children or the elderly.
Hurwitz has scheduled the execution of Daniel Lewis Lee for December 9, Lezmond Mitchell for December 13, Wesley Ira Purkey for December 13, Alfred Bourgeois for January 13, 2020, and Dustin Lee Honken for January 15, 2020.
They will be put to death at U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, using the single drug Pentobarbital lethal injection, replacing a three-drug procedure previously used in federal executions, the Justice Department said.
All the five murderers' appellate and post-conviction remedies have exhausted.
'The Justice Department upholds the rule of law - and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system,' Barr said in a statement.
Although there was a de facto freezing of federal executions for the past 16 years, state-directed executions were being carried out in the meantime.
Three people have been executed under federal death penalty since it was instituted in 1988 after government passed legislation.
The death penalty is legal in 29 US states. Texas has carried out the most executions.
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