{"id":19,"date":"2020-08-18T19:40:58","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T23:40:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/?page_id=19"},"modified":"2021-02-06T13:16:52","modified_gmt":"2021-02-06T18:16:52","slug":"8-13-death-penalty-abolition","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/8-13-death-penalty-abolition\/","title":{"rendered":"8\/13 | Abolish the Federal Death Penalty!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/U_TYittnpy8\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">On this historic day, the <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/fonda-shen-joe-biden-the-first-abolitionist-president\/\">first day in American history<\/a> that the U.S. President is abolitionist,<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/adriano-espaillat\/\">House Representative Adriano Espaillat<\/a>, who has just <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/representative-adriano-espaillat-introduces-the-federal-death-penalty-abolition-act-of-2021\/\">introduced legislation<\/a> to abolish the federal death penalty<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/kelley-henry\/\">Kelley Henry<\/a>,\u00a0attorney for\u00a0Lisa Montgomery who <a href=\"https:\/\/assets.documentcloud.org\/documents\/20449379\/statement-from-attorney-kelley-henry-on-the-pending-execution-of-lisa-montgomery.pdf\">was executed on January 13, 2021<\/a><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/alexis-j-hoag\/\">Alexis Hoag<\/a>, death penalty attorney and Practitioner-in-Residence at Columbia<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/lee-greenwood\/\">Lee Greenwood,<\/a>\u00a0mother of Joseph Nichols who was <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/oral-history-with-lee-greenwood-transcript\/\">executed by the state of Texas in 2007<\/a><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/liliana-segura\/\">Liliana Segura<\/a>, journalist at The Intercept who has <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/staff\/liliana-segura\/\">covered all 13 federal executions<\/a>,<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/susannah-sheffer\/\">Susannah Sheffer<\/a>, trauma psychotherapist and Access to Treatment coordinator at the <a href=\"https:\/\/texasafterviolence.org\/?p=2640\">Texas After Violence Project<\/a><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-host\/\">Bernard E. Harcourt<\/a>, death penalty attorney and director of the <a href=\"https:\/\/cccct.law.columbia.edu\/\">CCCCT<\/a><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">discuss the trauma of executions on families of the condemned and the abolition of the federal death penalty.<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/8-13-death-penalty-abolition\/espaillat\/#main\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1860\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1860\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/files\/2021\/01\/espaillat-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"783\" height=\"441\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/files\/2021\/01\/espaillat-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/files\/2021\/01\/espaillat-768x433.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/files\/2021\/01\/espaillat.jpg 946w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 783px) 100vw, 783px\" \/><\/a><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">House Representative <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/adriano-espaillat\/\">Adriano Espaillat<\/a> (D-NY-13) has introduced legislation to end the federal death penalty.<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), who is the incoming chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has introduced similar legislation in the U.S. Senate, as has Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass-7).<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">President-elect Joe Biden is <a href=\"https:\/\/joebiden.com\/justice\/\">committed to supporting the abolition of the federal death penalty<\/a>.<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Update: On January 22, 2021, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2021\/01\/22\/politics\/democrats-urge-biden-commute-death-row-sentences\/index.html\">a group of Democratic lawmakers called on President Biden to commute the sentences of individuals on federal death row<\/a>.<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">~ ~ ~<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>Thursday, January 21, 2021<\/strong><\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Columbia University<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Watch also on our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCaGHPeF3DwtOcq5ThbdbnOg\">YouTube Channel<\/a>.<\/h1>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">~~~<\/h1>\n<p>The horror. Unimaginable. Intolerable.<\/p>\n<p>It is not just the <em>scale<\/em> of the inhumanity. Thirteen executions. <em>Thirteen <\/em>executions in less than six months. No, we had already become numb to the inevitability of the next execution\u2026<\/p>\n<p>It is not simply the complicity of our most august court. We realized quickly that the United States Supreme Court had blood on its hands, as it lifted one stay after another\u2014for one execution, sweeping aside, within a few hours, the reasoned decision of not one, not two, but <em>three separate United States Courts of Appeals<\/em>, including one issued <em>en banc<\/em> by the D.C. Circuit, the court with perhaps one of the highest reputations among jurists. No, we had quickly lost faith in their sense of justice. We soon began to realize that a majority of justices had themselves become the nation\u2019s executioners\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Nor is it the fact that the execution spree was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/pr\/federal-government-resume-capital-punishment-after-nearly-two-decade-lapse\">concocted<\/a> by an attorney general, William P. Barr, who had lost all respect among reasonable jurists, having become a knave of the president. The killing spree was devised by an attorney general who had openly flouted and breached the independence of the Department of Justice, placing it at the very feet of a tyrant.<\/p>\n<p>No, it is not even the fact that the killing spree\u2014which began on July 14, 2020\u2014was implemented <em>during a presidential campaign<\/em>, no less, and used as a purely instrumental tool to gain political votes. Here too, we had become numb to the politics of the death penalty\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Nor is it the fact that six of the executions were conducted <em>after<\/em> the presidential election, when we all knew there would be a presidential transition. These were lame duck executions. Even more, William Barr resigned before the last three executions, leaving in place an <em>acting<\/em> attorney general to carry out the executions&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>No, what is most shocking is that a woman and two men were executed within just hours of a moratorium on federal executions. Lisa Montgomery, Corey Johnson, Dustin Higgs\u2014they were executed literally days away from the transfer of presidential power to a new administration that has vowed, in its <a href=\"https:\/\/joebiden.com\/justice\/\">own words<\/a>, \u201cto pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Had their execution dates been pushed just a few hours forward, had the courts taken just a few days longer to resolve the stays of execution, had some unforeseen event slowed things down by a day or two\u2014 Lisa Montgomery, Corey Johnson, Dustin Higgs would be alive today and likely never face execution.<\/p>\n<p>A day or two away.\u00a0A chance event.\u00a0That is all that stands between life and death.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing shows more patently the arbitrariness of the death penalty.\u00a0Nothing demonstrates more powerfully how cruel and unusual the death penalty is.\u00a0Lisa Montgomery, Corey Johnson, Dustin Higgs were rushed to the gallows by an administration as it was turning out the lights and packing its bags.<\/p>\n<p>It is time for abolition of the death penalty.<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to Abolition Democracy 8\/13!<\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/8-13-death-penalty-abolition\/death-row-family\/#main\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1745\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1745 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/files\/2021\/01\/death-row-family-300x215.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"855\" height=\"613\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/files\/2021\/01\/death-row-family-300x215.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/files\/2021\/01\/death-row-family-1024x735.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/files\/2021\/01\/death-row-family-768x551.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/files\/2021\/01\/death-row-family-1536x1102.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/files\/2021\/01\/death-row-family.jpg 1804w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 855px) 100vw, 855px\" \/><\/a><\/h1>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In this seminar, we will explore the hidden damage that death sentences and executions wreak on family members of the condemned, wardens and prison guards, attorneys, chaplains, and others. The hidden traumas have, so far, received too little attention in the long struggle to abolish the death penalty. And we turn to the abolition of the federal death penalty under the presidency of Joseph Biden!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;If we think about capital punishment as an inheritance of slavery, its abolition would also involve the creation of those institutions about which DuBois wrote\u2014institutions that still remain to be built one hundred forty years after the end of slavery. If we link the abolition of capital punishment to the abolition of prisons, then we have to be willing to let go of the alternative of life without possibility of parole as the primary alternative.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">\u2014\u00a0Angela Davis,\u00a0<em>Abolition Democracy<\/em> (2005)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On this historic day, the first day in American history that the U.S. President is abolitionist, House Representative Adriano Espaillat, who has just introduced legislation to abolish the federal death penalty Kelley Henry,\u00a0attorney for\u00a0Lisa Montgomery who was executed on January&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/8-13-death-penalty-abolition\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1603,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/abolition1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}