THE US TEMPORARILY PAUSES THE DEATH PENALTY

This decision was made by Attorney General Merrick Garland. He approved a moratorium on capital punishment at the federal level. The ban will remain in effect until the relevant procedures of the United States Department of Justice are verified.

The memorandum says that the department is obliged to provide everyone in the federal criminal justice system with the guarantees that their rights will not only be taken into account, as required by the US constitution and law, but also that they can count on humane and fair treatment.

‘This obligation is especially valid in cases of crimes for which the death penalty is provided’, says Merrick Garland in the signed document.

In 2019, when the former US President Donald Trump was in power, the Ministry of Justice headed by the Attorney General William Barr returned to the use of the death penalty for those criminals who had been convicted at the federal level.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 3 episodes were brought to execution this year, and 17 criminals were sentenced to capital punishment in the past.

This figure became a record in American history. In addition, in October 2020, over 2.5 thousand criminals were sentenced to death.

During his election campaign, the current president of America, Joe Biden, announced that he would support a bill to abolish the death penalty. As soon as he took over as head of state, the degree of pressure from human rights defenders increased. They demanded that this promise be fulfilled.

The fact is that during the last days of his rule, Donald Trump accelerated the pace of execution of federal executions. Thirteen criminals were sentenced to death.

We should recall that a moratorium on executions, which has been in effect for 17 years, lasted until July 2020.

But Trump canceled it. Now, according to a press release from the Ministry of Justice, Garland ordered the department employees to check the validity of these actions and to study the amendments to the federal protocol on the death penalty adopted in 2019. In addition, they will check a number of resolutions adopted last fall, due to which the list of permissible methods of execution was supplemented.