Tag: capital punishment
Trump Wants His Campaign To Promote Return Of Firing Squads, Beheadings

Trump Wants His Campaign To Promote Return Of Firing Squads, Beheadings

Former President Donald Trump has turned to the politics of capital punishment — specifically, bringing back death by firing squad, guillotine, and other banned methods of execution — to supercharge his moribund 2024 campaign, according to Rolling Stone.

In a new, damning report Tuesday, Rolling Stone revealed that inner deliberations within Trumpworld have touched on making a campaign promise of, and bringing into sharp focus, expanding the use of the death penalty in America.

Several sources within Trump’s inner circle told the magazine that Trump has suggested focusing campaign speeches and policies on re-introducing extreme forms of execution, including death by beheadings, hanging, and even firing squad, due to their “dramatic” nature.

“He had a particular affinity for the firing squad because it seemed more dramatic, rather than how we do it, putting a syringe in people and putting them to sleep,” a former White House official told Rolling Stone.

Unlike President Joe Biden, who in October decriminalized cannabis possession, Trump has internally floated imposing capital punishment for drug offenses and discussed with his confidants the prospect of executing drug dealers en masse, supposedly because “they need to be eradicated, not jailed.”

“In conversations I’d been in the room for, President Trump would explicitly say that he’d love a country that was totally an ‘eye for an eye’ — that’s a direct quote — criminal-justice system, and he’d talk about how the ‘right’ way to do it is to line up criminals and drug dealers before a firing squad,” the ex-official told the publication.

“He was big on the idea of executing large numbers of drug dealers and drug lords because he’d say, ‘These people don’t care about anything,’ and that they run their drug empire and their deals from prison anyways, and then they get back out on the street, get all their money again, and keep committing crimes … and therefore, they need to be eradicated, not jailed,” the official added.

Another source directly privy to the matter told Rolling Stone that, last year, Trump considered making campaign-ad videos showing condemned prisoners in their final moments and broadcasting footage of new executions.

“The [former] president believes this would help put the fear of God into violent criminals,” this source says. “He wanted to do some of these [things] when he was in office, but for whatever reasons didn’t have the chance,” the source informed the magazine on the condition of anonymity.

A spokesperson for Trump ranted about “fake news” and “idiots” when the magazine approached for comments on the execution video campaign ads disclosed by unnamed internal sources.

“More ridiculous and fake news from idiots who have no idea what they’re talking about. Either these people are fabricating lies out of thin air, or Rolling Stone is allowing themselves to be duped by these morons,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

However, at a rally in Texas in October, Trump drew cheers from a crowd of supporters when he suggested that drug dealers be quickly tried and — “if they’re guilty” — executed, after which their families will be sent the used bullet and made to pay for it.

The Trump administration oversaw the execution of 13 federal prisoners by lethal injection in the last six months of its rule, per Rolling Stone, even though public support for the death penalty at the time was the lowest it’d been in half a century, according to an annual Gallop poll.

In 2021, attorney general Merrick Garland’s office announced it was instituting a federal moratorium on capital punishment, halting federal executions while officials review changes to policies and protocol made during the Trump era.

Trump’s New Attorney Demanded ‘Capital Punishment’ For Biden Officials

Trump’s New Attorney Demanded ‘Capital Punishment’ For Biden Officials

Peter Ticktin, an attorney for former President Donald Trump, has repeatedly gone on online shows hosted by supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory. During some of these appearances, hosts have asked Ticktin to connect them with Trump, and in one instance, Ticktin and the host suggested members of the Biden administration should be put to death.

In March, Politico reported that Trump filed a lawsuit against some of his perceived political enemies, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, and the Democratic National Committee, accusing them of a “racketeering conspiracy for allegedly joining in ‘an unthinkable plot’ to falsely accuse Trump of colluding with Russia in the 2016 presidential election.” Ticktin, who is a longtime friend of Trump’s, is serving as one of the lead counsels for Trump on the case.

Later that month, Ticktin spoke at Mar-A-Lago for an event for QAnon-supporting Florida congressional candidate Darlene Swaffar, during which QAnon influencers Ann Vandersteel and Jeffrey Pedersen — who is known online as “intheMatrixxx” — also spoke. Pedersen was photographed with Ticktin at the event.

In June, Ticktin appeared on RedPill78, which is hosted by QAnon supporter Zak Paine, who participated in the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol. During the interview, Ticktin told Paine that “the real insurrection occurred on November 3 and 4,” referring to false voter fraud claims, and that “if we had a stolen election, that means the people that are in the White House are criminals -- not only criminals but criminals guilty of capital punishment crimes.” Paine agreed, later saying, “You’re absolutely right when you said that these are capital crimes. We’re talking about treason.”

When Paine asked Ticktin “what are we doing” in terms of “exposing this fraud,” Ticktin said, “I've got one thing I’m working on now that you're going to hear about in about a month.” And at the end of the interview, after they discussed Trump’s lawsuit, Paine asked Ticktin to “tell Donald Trump I said hello” and to “help me get an invite to Mar-A-Lago,” adding after the interview, “Hopefully one of these days, I am going to be able to get down to Mar-A-Lago and if I could interview President Trump, you all know it would be a dream come true.”

A couple of months earlier, on April 11, Ticktin appeared on Vandersteel's online show, Steel Truth. During the interview, the two discussed Trump’s lawsuit and Ticktin’s book about Trump (Vandersteel suggested Ticktin signed a copy for her), and she told Ticktin, “It was a pleasure to make your acquaintance the other evening at another event in Mar-A-Lago.”

The following day, Ticktin appeared on the QAnon-supportingMatrixxxGrooove Show (or MG Show), co-hosted by Pedersen. During the interview, Ticktin promoted Trump’s lawsuit and pushed false voter fraud claims alongside the hosts, suggesting the 2020 presidential election was “the real insurrection.” While promoting Ticktin’s book, Pedersen also noted that he had a signed copy, and he asked Ticktin to tell Trump that “we’d love to have him on the show.” (Pedersen had also claimed to be at Ticktin’s office the day before, weeks after claiming that he “might be meeting with” Ticktin “for some other things too.”)

Days later, Pedersen claimed on his show that he had met Trump at Mar-A-Lago that past weekend, saying that “Peter Ticktin also let him [Trump] know that we were there” and that Trump “knew we were there. He knew who we were.”

Ticktin’s association with the far-right internet extends beyond QAnon as well: In April, Ticktin apparently teamed up with far-right blog The Gateway Pundit to “crowdsource videos” from the January 6 insurrection, “requesting footage of ‘Trump protestors being peaceful’ and of ‘police or anyone else waving/encouraging people to go into the Capitol building,’” as reported by Mediaite.

This is not the first time a person in Trump's orbit has associated with QAnon-connected figures. Trump himself amplified and praised the QAnon community when he was president. And Pedersen and his co-host Shannon Townsend obtained press credentials for a Trump rally last July, after which “Trump associates … told POLITICO that they had attempted to weed out any QAnon influences — both adherents and postings — getting close to him.” But Trump has continued to amplify QAnon-promoting accounts since he began actively using his social media platform Truth Social.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Death Row Inmate Melissa Lucio's Jury Believed Lethal Lies, Sentenced Her To Die

Death Row Inmate Melissa Lucio's Jury Believed Lethal Lies, Sentenced Her To Die

This is the fifth column in a nine-part series about Melissa Lucio and the State of Texas’ capital case against her. Read the first column here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, the sixth here, the seventh here, the eighth here, and the final column here.

It’s impossible that the twelve jurors who decided death row inmate Melissa Lucio’s guilt and punishment weren’t affected by the prosecutor’s evidentiary sleight of hand: knowingly admitting a false disciplinary record for Lucio into the trial record.

Attorneys for Lucio have interviewed former jurors and report that none of them mentioned the discipline record as influencing their decision. Then again, no one asked them, either.

But the jurors might not prove the most reliable sources on what guided their votes. For one, those days of deliberation hang more than thirteen years behind the frenzy to save Lucio’s life; it’s hard to remember. Secondly, the jury charge — the court’s instructions to jurors on how they should arrive at a decision — directed them to settle the issue of whether there is “a probability that Lucio would commit criminal acts of violence in the future.” Unanimously, the twelve of them voted that there was a probability — but they’re taking that back now.

Juror Johnny Galvan, Jr., opined in the Houston Chronicle on April 3 that he wouldn’t have convicted and sentenced Lucio to death. He made a similar statement at a hearing before the Texas legislature on April 12, 2022 when he said other jurors pressured him into the vote.

Identifiable jurors refused to reply to interview requests, except for one juror, Erminio Cruz, who answered my text with “don’t bother me.” Cruz’s post-trial declaration, dated March 5, 2022, includes statements like “I still agree with my decision to give death (sic) because we had enough evidence”, “Nothing the defense presented could have made me not give the death penalty”, “I don’t remember most of what we discussed” and “I think everytime someone is found guilty of murder they should be hung.

The statements seem contradictory. But the addendum to Cruz’s declaration might be the most trustworthy. It states. “I remember someone saying during deliberation on penalty that if we didn’t decide now we’d be there all day.” Neither justice nor retribution motivated the jurors on July 10, 2008; it was convenience. Theirs, not Lucio’s.

Race cannot go without mention in any discussion of capital punishment. The death penalty finds victims in minority populations. About 43 percent of total executions since 1976 and 55 percent of those currently awaiting execution are racial minorities.

Lucio’s race may or may have been a factor for her jury without their knowing it; most times when the race of a defendant influences a jury verdict on death it’s the result of implicit bias, a prejudiced worldview that’s much more pronounced in death-qualified jurors (those who state that they can and would impose death as a sanction if they thought the law and the facts supported it).

Women accused of capital crimes are understudied and bias in deliberations becomes a multi-factorial analysis; the role of gender complicates racial prejudice.

Juries impose the death penalty on women much less frequently than they do men. To wit, 18 women have been executed in the United States since 1976, compared to 1345 men. And the racial composition of that group of 18 women isn’t disproportionately minority. Thirteen women or 72 percent who perished at the hands of the government were white. Four were Black and one was Native American; there’s no record of a Latina woman undergoing capital punishment since it was deemed constitutional again in 1976 after a four-year hiatus brought on by the Supreme Court’s opinion in the case of Furman v. Georgia.

While a death sentence can hardly be described as unique in Texas – the state with the most executions since 1976 – Lucio’s case blazes a trail in that she was the first Latina sentenced in this way in the South. Other Hispanic women sentenced to death have come from the western region of the country. The South is known for sentencing women to capital punishment but not Latina women.

Lucio would be the only Latina on death row outside California, a singularity that made allegations of misconduct easier for a jury to accept.

Even if asked how Lucio’s jail file affected their decision making that day, juror input on the effect of the illegal jail file wouldn’t help much, although the record indicates that they held these pernicious papers in their hands.

Questioning Lucio’s jurors to review their decision is a waste of time, according to Robert Swafford, JD, founder and owner of the Austin, Texas-based Strike for Cause Jury Consultants. The human ego works hard to justify previously made decisions. “If they were to say… ‘Oh if I had known this, I would have made a different decision’ that would mean that they've done something bad. It would affect their idea of themselves as a human being.”

Capital punishment experts as well as jury experts agree that the file probably filtered into juror consciences. Robert P. Johnson, Professor of Justice, Law and Society at American University and author of Condemned to Die: Life Under Sentence of Death and Death Work: A Study of the Modern Execution Processand expert witness in capital cases [disclosure: Johnson is the editor at Bleakhouse Publishing which published my book of poetry] said of including the disciplinary file: “It would likely have an impact.” [Disclosure: Johnson is the editor at Bleakhouse Publishing, which published my book of poetry.]

Brian Bornstein, professor in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Arizona State University, hasn’t worked on the Lucio case. But he wrote in an email that, assuming that the records were introduced as alleged proof of dangerousness: “it seems quite likely that it would influence jurors’ decisions to sentence her to death, as dangerousness is a key factor in sentencing, especially under Texas’ capital sentencing guidelines.”

Bornstein’s research on juror decision making bears mention here. Lucio’s guilty verdict — rendered just two days before the death sentence and one day before the unexpected witness, Cameron County Jail Disciplinary Officer Carloz Borrego appeared with the file — provided the lens on what punishment she received.

“[J]urors tend to seek out and remember information that is consistent with their verdict preference and scrutinize and reject information that is inconsistent with that preference” Bornstein wrote in a 2011 article in a journal called Current Directions in Psychological Science. By the time they bickered over punishment, these jurors no longer had a predilection for guilt; they had perfected it just days earlier.

Even if the jurors would have landed the same way today as they did on the day of Lucio’s condemnation, that doesn’t mean that the judgment shouldn’t be cracked open like a hollow Easter egg.

The legal aphorism that one can’t “unring a bell” first appeared in American jurisprudence in a 1912 case in the Oregon Supreme Court, where the victim of an alleged arson testified about the defendant’s motive; namely, he was retaliating against the victim for reporting him for “tail-cutting” — slicing the tail off a cow. Without evidence of this specialized butchery, that testimony prejudiced the defendant with the jurors. “It is not an easy task to unring a bell, nor to remove from the mind an impression once firmly imprinted there,” the judges agreed.

The unrung bell appeared again in a case before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal circuit that includes Texas, in 1962. “It is better to follow the rules than to try to undo what has been done. Otherwise stated, one "cannot unring a bell"; "after the thrust of the saber it is difficult to say forget the wound"; and finally, "if you throw a skunk into the jury box, you can't instruct the jury not to smell it."

Lawyers and judges talk about unringing bells to emphasize that if the prejudicial effect of a piece of evidence outweighs its probative value, the evidence should be excluded or any result drawn from it should be reversed. It’s fancy language but it’s not clear it would even apply in Lucio’s case. Lucio’s file was false. It had zero probative value. It was all prejudice.

Reversing Lucio’s judgment of death should be easy for any court regardless of the jurors’ positions, even though, according to Texas case law, it can consider a defense attorney’s failure to object to inadmissible evidence like this perfidious file as a valid trial strategy. That’s an outrage in itself.

But neither of Lucio’s lawyers ever justified it that way. They didn’t have to. Up until now, no one ever realized the file that undoubtedly colored jurors’ perceptions was a lethal falsehood.

Chandra Bozelko did time in a maximum-security facility in Connecticut. While inside she became the first incarcerated person with a regular byline in a publication outside of the facility. Her “Prison Diaries" column ran in The New Haven Independent, and she later established a blog under the same name that earned several professional awards. Her columns now appear regularly in The National Memo.

Why More States Should (Finally) Ban the Death Penalty

Why More States Should (Finally) Ban the Death Penalty

Most of the civilized world has come to regard killing someone held in captivity as barbaric. The death penalty has been abolished in the European Union and 19 U.S. states. Governors in four states that do permit capital punishment — Colorado, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington — have imposed a moratorium on executions.

The rest of America is getting there. For the first time in almost 50 years, less than half the public supports the death penalty, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Even states that still put inmates to death seem to be losing the stomach for it. The United States is set to carry out fewer executions this year than it has since the early ’90s.

This November, voters in two very different places, Nebraska and California, will have an opportunity to remove state-sanctioned killing from their books. (Going the other way, a referendum in Oklahoma calls for amending the state constitution to protect the use of the death penalty.)

The most heated battle over the death penalty has taken place in Nebraska. It’s also the most significant one, for it shows how conflicted even conservative Americans have become over the practice. In fact, Nebraska hasn’t performed an execution in nearly 20 years. Conservatives in red states such as Missouri, Kentucky, Kansas, Wyoming and South Dakota, meanwhile, have sponsored bills to end the death penalty.

In Nebraska, lawmakers from both parties voted last year to eliminate the death penalty and replace it with mandatory life in prison for first-degree murder. Nebraska’s pro-capital punishment governor, Pete Ricketts, vetoed the bill. The legislature overturned the veto.

Ricketts then pushed a successful petition drive to put the matter on the ballot. Nebraskans will vote on whether to accept the legislature’s decision to strike the death penalty and instead require life without parole.

The outcome is hard to predict. “In certain issues, particularly with a populist strain, Nebraska is not nearly as doctrinaire conservative as people might think,” Paul Landow, professor of political science at the University of Nebraska Omaha, told me.

Ernie Chambers, a progressive from Omaha and the longest-serving state senator in Nebraska history, has introduced a measure to repeal the death penalty 37 times. “That kind of persistence has left an indelible mark on the issue,” Landow noted.

In California, a ballot measure to end the death penalty failed four years ago. This time, there are two referendums that seem at odds with each other. One would abolish the death penalty. The other would speed up the appeals process and thus hasten executions.

The case against the death penalty is well-known by now. Capital punishment exposes a state to the moral horror of killing an innocent person. Over the past 40 years, some 156 people on death row have been exonerated, many with the help of DNA evidence.

Citing church doctrine on the sanctity of life, the Nebraska Catholic Conference is urging voters to retain the repeal of the death penalty. One who opposes abortion on “pro-life” grounds, its argument goes, must also oppose the death penalty.

There’s little evidence that the death penalty deters murder. That leaves the questionable value of retribution — that erasing the monster who committed a heinous crime will bring comfort to the victims’ loved ones.

More and more survivors are countering this line of reasoning. Despite having suffered immeasurably, they hold that executing the criminal would just add to the toll. The state would somehow be justifying the crime of murder by committing it.

The movement away from capital punishment is clearly gathering force. This is one good direction in which our history is moving.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

FILE PHOTO: Protesters calling for an end to the death penalty unfurl a banner before police arrest them outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington January 17, 2007. REUTERS/Jason Reed/File Photo