In Boston, the Justice Department is pressing judges to uphold Marathon bomber\u00a0Dzhokhar Tsarnaev\u2019s death sentence. In New York, it\u2019s\u00a0asking jurors to impose the death penalty\u00a0on a man who killed eight people in an attack on a bicycle path.
\nPresident Joe Biden campaigned on a pledge to work toward abolishing federal capital punishment but has taken no major steps to that end, though the Justice Department has imposed a moratorium that means no federal executions are likely to happen anytime soon.
\nThe department continues to press for the death penalty in certain cases but not in others. In a Tuesday filing,\u00a0federal prosecutors said they won\u2019t seek it for Patrick Crusius, a 24-year-old accused of fatally shooting nearly two dozen people in a racist attack at a West Texas Walmart in 2019.
\nAdvocates for abolishing capital punishment say mixed signals from the administration and silence from Biden \u2014 the first president to have openly opposed the death penalty — drives home that the Democrat\u00a0has not made good on his campaign promises\u00a0that so raised their hopes.
\n\u201cThe Biden administration appears to have no understanding that inaction, if it continues, will result in executions,\u201d said Robert Dunham, who heads the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. \u201cThe Biden administration executions will be carried out by a future administration. But they will be Biden executions.\u201d
\nHere\u2019s a look at the federal death penalty under Biden\u2019s administration:
\nWHAT ABOUT ONGOING DEATH PENALTY CASES?
\nUnder Merrick Garland\u00a0,\u00a0the Justice Department hasn\u2019t sought the death penalty in any new cases. It also has withdrawn bids for capital punishment sought by prior administrations against more than two dozen defendants.
\nBut U.S. prosecutors this month opened a capital trial in New York against Sayfullo Saipov, who is accused of using a truck in 2017 to mow down pedestrians and cyclists on a bike path by the Hudson River. The decision to seek death came under Trump but Garland allowed his prosecutors to continued to seek it.
\nIn Boston, the Justice Department is pressing judges to uphold Marathon bomber\u00a0Dzhokhar Tsarnaev\u2019s death sentence. In New York, it\u2019s\u00a0asking jurors to impose the death penalty\u00a0on a man who killed eight people in an attack on a bicycle path.<\/p>\n