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Joe Biden campaigned against capital punishment, vowing to end it, but his administration is seeking the death penalty for Sayfullo Saipov, whose sentencing trial kicked off in the Southern District of New York this week. He was convicted last month in a 2017 terrorist attack in Manhattan that left eight dead.
Prosecutors' push for the death penalty in this case brings Biden's inconsistency on the issue to a new level, and raises a series of questions I wonder if he or Attorney General Merrick Garland have thought through.
Perhaps, as it appears, the Biden administration isn’t really against the death penalty so much as it just isn’t always for it.
To recap, the Department of Justice has defended existing federal death sentences and, in Saipov's trial, is seeking the first new one of Biden’s presidency. That’s despite the administration choosing not to pursue such sentences in a host of other cases and imposing a moratorium on carrying out executions, citing concerns over how and to whom it's administered.
Obviously, defending and seeking death sentences sets the stage for a future president to continue Donald Trump’s infamous execution spree. The former president reportedly floated the idea of bringing back firing squads and public executions should he win in 2024.
So what are Biden and Garland doing, exactly? If they secure the verdict they’re seeking in the Saipov case, for example, are they going to let it sit there with the other death sentences they’re defending and then let a future Republican administration do their dirty work? Or are they going to lift the moratorium and then execute some people but not others, based on a yet-unannounced standard?
Here’s another question that comes into sharper relief this week with Saipov’s trial: If the administration doesn’t plan on executing anyone, and especially if Biden plans on commuting any death row sentences to life in prison before he leaves office, then what respect would that show to the jury purportedly deciding Saipov’s fate in lower Manhattan? That would needlessly put jurors through a potentially excruciating moral exercise in deciding whether a person lives or dies. And the point doesn’t turn on what one thinks justice means for Saipov. Indeed, you can favor capital punishment and still take issue with an administration seeking what could amount to an illusory sentence.
But perhaps, as it appears, the Biden administration isn’t really against the death penalty so much as it just isn’t always for it. It would be helpful for the administration to clear that up, instead of making us read the tea leaves on such a grave matter.
So the government owes it to everyone involved, including the citizens hauled into court to do their duty — as well as the victims’ families, who can also hold differing death penalty views among themselves — to be honest about what it thinks justice means in the Saipov case and all capital cases, and to act consistently in pursuing it one way or the other.
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