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Trump promises “Death to Americans” [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2024-12-31
Based on the existing climate change data I published an article addressing Trump supporting Death to America. This article, however, addresses another of Trump’s direct threat to Americans. It deals specifically with Trump’s reimplementation of the capital punishment/death penalty in the federal justice system for the second time.
On 23 December 2024, President Biden commuted the death penalty for 37 of the 40 prisoners currently held on federal “Death Row.” They were not pardoned or released, as some critics have stated, As stated in the document, “Those individuals will have their sentences reclassified from execution to life without the possibility of parole. From a practical standpoint, during his administration had established a moratorium on federal executions. Controversially he did not commute the death sentences for three very high-profile cases. Those included Dylann Roof the white supremacist who shot nine black victims as the worshiped at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Robert Bowers, who gunned down 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the infamous 2013 Boston Marathon Bombers.
Responding on his Truth Social, Trump wrote, “Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country.” He then added "When you hear the acts of each, you won't believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can't believe this is happening!" Trump used his Christmas message in the most unchristian manner by stating, “I refuse to wish a Merry Christmas to those lucky ‘souls’ but, instead, will say, GO TO HELL!” Such are the values of the white Christian nationalists who support Trump. As stated by Eri Ortiz on NBC, “Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump signaled he would resume federal executions if he won and make more people eligible for capital punishment.”
Before continuing, it is necessary to address the fundamental philosophical issues involved. First, there are people in the world who do very bad, even horrendous things, and who deserve punishment. Second, execution is irreversible. Third, the Justice System is fallible. Fourth, some unknown numbers of innocent people have been executed by governments in the U.S. Those facts override any and all arguments in favor of government-initiated executions of criminals.
While there have been 50 federal executions since 1927, after the execution of Victor Feguer for kidnapping on 15 March 1963, there were none nearly three decades. On 11 June 2001, under George W, Bush, Timothy McVeigh was executed for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The following week Juan Raul Garza and Louis Jones were put to death. There were no more federal exactions until Donald Trump became POTUS.
Following a 17-year moratorium, Trump resumed federal executions in 2020 and set the record for number of executions (10) in a single year under any president. His killing spree included Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on the federal Death Row. As a lame duck POTUS he hastened executions for a total in short order of 13 including three executions in January 2021 before Biden took office.
It should be noted that Trump does not appear to be concerned with guilt or innocents of those he thinks should be executed. Remember it was Trump who, in 1989 took out full-page ads in four local papers, The New York Times, New York Post, New York Daily Mail, and New York Newsday, stating in very large bold print “Bring Back the Death Penalty, Bring Back our Police.” Trump’s effort was to have New York reinstate capital punishment so that the young black suspects, known collectively as the Central Park Five, could be put to death for the attempted murder and rape of 28-year-old Trisha Meile who was jogging in New York City’s Central Park on April 19th, 1989. Volumes have been written about this case and the vicious assault that left Meili in a coma.
While the five black and Hispanic young (teenagers) men were arrested, tried, convicted and spent many years in jail, in 2002 they were all exonerated. Through DNA evidence that the real attacker, Matias Reyes, was identified and all of the Central Park Five cleared of any participation. The actual attacker was a serial rapist who was already imprisoned and confessed to the crime.
For their failures in the prosecution of this case, “In 2003, the Central Park Five filed a civil lawsuit against New York City for malicious prosecution, racial discrimination and emotional distress. City officials fought the case for more than a decade, before finally settling for $41 million dollars.” What would New York have done if Trump had been successful in his 1989 quest for vengeance?
But it gets worse. Trump has never apologized for his actions attempting to get the five men executed. Instead, during his presidential campaign in 2024, Trump continued to accuse these men. As recently reported by NPR, “during the September debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Trump said that at the time the teenagers ‘admitted – they said, they pled guilty. And I said, well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately.’ The victim in the case is still alive and deals with lingering health effects from her attack. The five never pled guilty for the crimes they were charged with.” As has been observed in other areas, Trump is not a fan of facts and science.
Of course, when Trump was in office the first time, it was his incompetent response to the Covid pandemic resulted in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Slate reported, ”The British medical journal the Lancet, on Wednesday, published a damning assessment of Donald Trump’s presidency and its impact on Americans’ health, concluding that 40 percent of the nearly 500,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. over the past year (2020) were avoidable.” Several additional hundreds of thousands of deaths occurred under Biden’s Administration. But those victims mainly were following the Trump-oriented political herd that refused the available vaccine, The CDC found that unvaccinated adults were 97 times more likely to die from Covid and this was a political issue for Trump’s MAGA supporters.
Following Biden’s clemency announcement, on Truth Social Trump posted, "As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.” (emphasis added). This is a fallacy. Trump is not “protecting American Families,” but rather satisfying his own ego and the bloodlust of his low-educated base. For Trump personally it is his own emotional state, rather than facts that determine his actions. That is very scary for a national leader with access to immense power and was afforded near-absolute protection by the subservience of his SCOTUS.
As many rigorous studies have shown there is no evidence that the death penalty has any deterrent effect on crime. This is not a new finding. Personally, I remember the issue being addressed in an undergraduate criminology course over half a century ago. The professor pointed out that failure of deterrence had been known for centuries as evidenced by serious crimes being committed during public executions that were popular in Europe. He also noted that states with similar homogeneous populations, but varied state laws regarding the death penalty, showed no difference in violent crime rates.
As Jonathan Groner of Ohio State University pointed out, “Most crimes are crimes of passion that are done in situations involving intense excitement or concern. People who commit these crimes are not in a normal state of mind — they do not consider the consequences in a logical way.” He continued with the obvious, “The murder rate is most closely associated with the socioeconomic health of the country. The murder rate in the U.S. was highest during the Depression. Also, the majority of people on death row are from the most blighted parts of the U.S. They are very poor and very impoverished. A very high percentage have mental health problems.”
It is notable that all European countries with the exception of Belarus have abolished the death penalty. Technically, Russia still has capital punishment on the books but suspended all executions in 1999. (That does not count Tall Building Syndrome, and other incidents resulting from Vladimir Putin being displeased) On the global scale, America ranks fifth in total executions behind China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. No other “advanced society” is on the list. Other than the U.S, Japan is the only other G7 country to still have capital punishment. They have not executed anyone in over two years.
Of course, a very significant issue is that courts get both convictions and sentencing wrong. How many cases have been overturned on appeal? As is reported by the Death Penalty Information Center, “Since 1973, 200 former death-row prisoners have been exonerated of all charges related to the wrongful convictions that had put them on death row.” See the map in the associated link to find out by state how many have been exonerated by state. Florida leads with 30. Followed by Illinois and Texas.
There is a very significant racial component to who gets the death penalty. The Innocence Project noted that of 191 cases of exoneration from death row, 103 were black. They state, “Most homicides are intra-racial (white people are more likely to kill white people, Black people are more likely to kill Black people, etc.), but the use of the death penalty for inter-racial crimes has always been lopsided. Nearly 300 Black people accused of murdering white people have been executed since 1976. That’s almost 17 times more than the number of white people executed for murdering Black people.” While the Black population is 14 percent of the country, they account for 48 percent of the prisoners on death rows in America. White prisoners are 42 percent of death row while comprising 71 percent of the total population.
With improvements in DNA and forensic science research and technology the number of people exonerated has increased. The leading cause of wrongful convictions is misidentification by eyewitness. The National Institute of Justice quotes The Innocence Project listing “six “contributing causes” for wrongful convictions:
- Eyewitness misidentification
- -False confessions or admissions
- Government misconduct
- Inadequate defense
- Informants (e.g., jailhouse snitches)
- Unvalidated or improper forensic science
Eyewitness testimony is very questionable. Consider this expert statement “as we delve deeper into the fascinating world of eyewitness testimony psychology, we uncover a complex web of factors that can influence, distort, and even fabricate memories. It’s a topic that has sparked heated debates in legal circles and psychological research alike, challenging our assumptions about the reliability of human memory and perception.” If you have any doubt about the fallibility of human perception, check out The Invisible Gorilla and similar experiments.
Note that false confession is second on the list. It is known that many innocent people have confessed to crimes they did not commit. Some agreed in plea bargaining to take the death penalty off the table. There are many reasons for innocent people confessing. See this link for a comprehensive discussion. Obviously, Trump is willfully ignorant of these facts but more concerned with the “monsters” he perceives to be among us. Here again transactional Trump chooses emotions over facts and the MAGA base is easily excited.
If you believe that the death penalty deters murder, then Texas should be nearly serious-crime free. Not only does Texas lead in exonerations, but they also lead in the number of people put to death. Texas has executed 586 prisoners since 1977. That far exceeds Virginia with 113 executions, and Florida with 105. Mississippi and Louisianna lead the country in murder rates, yet both have the death penalty. Conversely, Vermont and Maine have among the lowest murder rates in the country and do NOT have capital punishment. So much for the deterrence argument.
How many innocent people have been executed in U.S. prisons is unknown, but it is far more than a few. On this web site you can learn about 21 cases of questionable executions since 1989. There were certainly many more before 1989. Most import is that the death penalty is irreversible. Apologies don’t come close to equitable resolution. Yes, there are horrendous crimes committed by some humans. But sometimes the justice system gets it wrong and, it is long past time for American to join the civilized world and end the death penalty.
A criminal becomes a criminal at the time of unlawful act, NOT at the time of conviction. A murderer becomes a murderer at the time he or she unlawfully takes the life of another person. America cannot claim to be a country of law and order when flagrant crimes are committed in public, and the perpetrator aided and abetted by the likes of Mitch McConnell who led GOP senators in failing to convict the malefactor and then supports his election. 2024 is not the year Trump became a criminal. However, it is the year that voters of America knowingly selected a serial criminal to be our president. And 2024 is the year that voters chose kakistocracy as their form of governance and gave Trump the anachronistic legal authority to kill more American citizens.
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