Skip to content Skip to footer

Trump’s DOJ Is Resuming the Death Penalty. Bernie Sanders Vows to Abolish It.

The last federal execution was in 2003.

A police officer warns activists to leave during an anti-death penalty protest in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on January 17, 2017, in Washington, D.C.

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday vowed to abolish the death penalty at the federal level if elected president after news broke that Attorney General William Barr has directed the Bureau of Prisons to resume capital punishment for the first time in nearly two decades.

“There’s enough violence in the world. The government shouldn’t add to it,” tweeted Sanders, the first 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to respond to the news. “When I am president, we will abolish the death penalty.”

In his directive, Barr ordered the Bureau of Prisons to schedule the execution of five inmates currently on death row.

According to the Washington Post the “last federal execution was in 2003.”

“In the years since, there has been an informal moratorium on executions of federal prisoners, as Justice Department officials reviewed its lethal injection procedures,” the Post reported. “That practice was underscored during the Obama administration by then-Attorney General Eric Holder’s personal opposition to the death penalty, even while he approved prosecutors’ decisions to seek the death penalty in specific trial.”

We’re not going to stand for it. Are you?

You don’t bury your head in the sand. You know as well as we do what we’re facing as a country, as a people, and as a global community. Here at Truthout, we’re gearing up to meet these threats head on, but we need your support to do it: We must raise $16,000 before midnight to ensure we can keep publishing independent journalism that doesn’t shy away from difficult — and often dangerous — topics.

We can do this vital work because unlike most media, our journalism is free from government or corporate influence and censorship. But this is only sustainable if we have your support. If you like what you’re reading or just value what we do, will you take a few seconds to contribute to our work?