Two different shootings happened 2,000 miles (3,218 km) apart. At a Pittsburgh synagogue, one suspect killed eleven people. In El Paso, Texas, a Walmart, the other one lost 23 lives. They were both driven by hatred. Both featured shooters who subsequently asserted mental illness.
However, the Justice Department only authorized the death penalty decision earlier this year for the Pittsburgh case, where jurors will soon decide the most important of questions: Should Robert Bowers be executed? Following his conviction for the 2018 anti-Semitic attack in June, Bowers’ trial is now in the sentencing phase. Patrick Crusius was given life in prison by a federal judge last Friday for the Walmart attack on Hispanics in 2019. He pleaded guilty when the agency opted against imposing the death penalty.
Comparison of rulings in instances that are so similar highlights the department’s ambiguous, frequently perplexing, and seemingly contradictory death penalty policy. The factors that the department favors and its decision-making process are also kept under wraps.
So, who makes those decisions and how?
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during a meeting with all of the U.S. Attorneys to discuss violent crime reduction strategies at the Department of Justice in Washington, Wednesday, June 14, 2023. Contrasting decisions on whether gunmen should face a federal death sentence in massacres with so much in common illustrate the Justice Department’s murky, often baffling death penalty policies. (Source: AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Death Penalty in the US to Eradicate by Pres. Joe Biden
The death penalty will be abolished in the US, as President Joe Biden promised during his campaign. He hasn’t done anything to make that happen, but his Justice Department has undergone some significant adjustments, according to the reports of AP News.
Garland declared a halt to federal executions in 2021 while a study of the execution process was carried out. It does not, however, prevent prosecutors from asking for the death penalty decisions. Additionally, in 24 of the 29 cases where the death penalty had been granted by previous administrations, the government revoked its approval.
Additionally, none of the 400 additional capital-sentence indictments brought while Biden’s administration has received approval from the DOJ for the death penalty. Payton Gendron, a white supremacist who murdered 10 Black people in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022, is being considered for the death penalty decision.
The mysterious Capital Case Section is the target of the department’s detractors. With only nine career attorneys and one administrator, it aids U.S. attorney’s offices with capital cases and is crucial in advising department review panels, which decide whether to recommend the death penalty. Attorney General Merrick Garland, though, has the last say.
All current employees worked in the division under President Donald Trump, who supervised a historic binge of 13 federal executions over six months, even though many of them were hired under earlier administrations. The team’s leader, Richard Burns, was promoted to section chief during Trump’s presidency. Carryover, according to detractors, contributes to an undesirable continuity.
Under Biden and Trump, the department fought tenaciously to thwart any attempts by the about 40 federal death row inmates in Terre Haute, Indiana, to have their death sentences set aside due to racial bias and other reasons.
Robert Dunham, an adjunct professor at Temple Law School and a former director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said, “I don’t think it’s surprising that you don’t have whole-scale changes in the absence of any declared policy in the White House and having the same staff at the Capital Case Section.
According to Monica Foster, top federal attorney of the Indiana Federal Community Defenders office, the division has a personal stake in promoting the execution of some death cases. Foster, who has argued with section attorneys in court, claimed that without death penalty cases, they would cease to exist.
Death Penalty Decision Reflecting Mental Health and Other Factors
The Justice Department’s choices can be inferred from an examination by the Associated Press of court documents and staff manuals from the Biden administration. They assert that when the relatives of the victims accept it, the agency is most likely to approve executions for racial and terrorist attacks.
A difference from the department’s previous guidance issued under President Trump is the addition that mental illness can be taken into account when determining whether to approve the death penalty. Under Trump, at least two prisoners were executed; both had severe mental disorders.
Crusius’ conclusion was heavily influenced by the guidelines, with department attorneys agreeing that he had schizoaffective illness. They disproved the claim that Bowers’ psychotic episodes indicated schizophrenia.
The government indicated that most victims’ families wanted Bowers to be executed if found guilty in court documents it filed in April to explain its Bowers decision. Before making a final decision regarding the authorization, the agency also requested its psychological assessment of Bowers. The defense declined, claiming that the prosecution wouldn’t guarantee that Bowers’ exam statements wouldn’t be used against him in court. Just before the trial, Bowers was granted access to government mental health professionals.
In response to criticism, the department also refuted claims that their choice differed from that made in regards to Crusius and other cases, arguing that Bowers’ shooting was unusual since older victims were more susceptible and the incident took place in a place of worship. In the Bowers case, the judge finally concurred.
A former section employee’s 2016 complaint alleging gender discrimination against the Justice Department shed more light on the opaque Capital Case Section. Ex-staffers said the section was unorganized during the lawsuit’s litigation, which was subsequently dismissed. One claimed a section attorney had withheld interview notes in the instance of Andrew Rogers.
In 2013, Rogers murdered a fellow prisoner while incarcerated in a federal facility to be executed and escape the boredom of life behind bars. Obama’s Justice Department approved the death sentence for him, and he told homicide investigators: “If I get the death penalty, I’ll take it with a smile.”
Foster, who was Rogers’ attorney in a 2018 attempt to get the authorization revoked, reiterated the claims made in the lawsuit alleging gender discrimination. She said Rogers’ mental condition would have been proven by the records concealed from conversations with a prison psychologist and others. The agency revoked the death sentence authority just days before a 2019 hearing in Rogers’ case to look into allegations of section misconduct resulting from the discrimination lawsuit.
Foster claimed that this was done to prevent a hearing that would have allowed the claims to be proven and that the defense was compelled to bring the case to a conclusion by letting Rogers enter a guilty plea and accept a life sentence.
An Office of Professional Responsibility examination into the Rogers matter, according to a department document from 2020, found no wrongdoing by the section attorney. The lawyer is still employed with the division.
