The Attorney General’s Sweeping Memo on the Death Penalty

Dear Friends,

Signed just hours after he returned to office, President Trump’s Executive Order to “restore” the death penalty demanded that the United States Attorney General try to overturn long-standing U.S. Supreme Court precedents that protect the constitutional rights of people facing a capital sentence. Then, just yesterday, the U.S. Attorney General issued a sweeping memo announcing their intentions to expand use of the death penalty.

Many of these Supreme Court precedents are based on the U.S. Constitution’s restriction on cruel and unusual punishment, which is enshrined in the Eighth Amendment and has been a foundational part of our constitutional order, and how we conceive of ourselves as a nation and a people, for over two hundred years. 

These precedents restrict states from executing vulnerable people who are less able to protect themselves from the vast array of State resources that are marshaled against them. For example, children or people who are intellectually disabled. One of the reasons the Supreme Court prohibited the execution of the intellectually disabled is because, due to their impairments, they are more susceptible to wrongful conviction. The Order could even result in the government being allowed to execute people for crimes where no loss of life occurred.

We fully condemn President Trump’s Order and the AG’s memo and their aggressive attempts to push a penalty that we know is fundamentally flawed, fails to further public safety, and is rife with racism. Our work is more important than ever before as we oppose efforts to expand the government’s power to impose capital punishment and eliminate long-standing constitutional protections. 

We’ll provide more updates soon.

With gratitude,