In a historic decision, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life without parole, including two men sentenced to death for murders committed in Georgia.

Anthony George Battle was sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of a prison guard at the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta. Meier Jason Brown was sentenced to death in 2003 for the fatal stabbing of a postal worker in Liberty County.

The sentences of Battle, Brown, and the other federal inmates were commuted from the death penalty to life in prison without parole.

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative — an organization dedicated to ending mass incarceration and racial injustice — joined GPB’s Pamela Kirkland to discuss the decision’s significance and its implications for the future of capital punishment in the United States.

 

TRANSCRIPT

Pamela Kirkland: It's Morning Edition. I'm Pamela Kirkland. On Monday, President Joe Biden announced he was commuting the death sentences of nearly all 40 people facing execution by the federal government, a step seen as a potential turning point in the country's history with the death penalty. Joining us to discuss this decision and its broader implications is Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, an organization that works to end mass incarceration and racial injustice. Bryan, thank you for speaking with me on Morning Edition.

Bryan Stevenson: My pleasure.

Pamela Kirkland: The sentences of 37 federal inmates were commuted from the death penalty to life in prison without the possibility of parole. What was your immediate reaction to the announcement? And how significant is this moment in the history of capital punishment in the U.S.?

Bryan Stevenson: Well, I'm really heartened by what President Biden has done. Many people will remember that 30 years ago he was championing the death penalty. It was his efforts as a senator that resulted in an expansion of the death penalty. But over the last three decades, we've seen that capital punishment in this country is ill-fated, unreliable, error-prone and often torturous. And I think the president's evolution mirrors what we've seen broadly in society. And so I see this as a real turning point. I think the president taking this action is a signal to other governors and executives that they also should now be looking to lead and to move us away from this longstanding troubled relationship with killing people to show that killing is wrong. I'm encouraged and I'm hopeful that we can turn this into a real step away from what has been an abusive, bigoted, discriminatory practice for too long.

Pamela Kirkland: You've met with President Biden on several occasions to discuss criminal justice reforms and other things. When it comes to the power of the presidency, historically, presidents offer pardons and commutations toward the end of their term. How does today's commutation compare to what you had advocated for when it comes to the death penalty?

Bryan Stevenson: I'm encouraged by it. It's historic. We've never had a president do something this expansive. There will only be three people left on the federal death row. There will also be a handful of people on the military death row. And I think that's substantial because we spend tens of millions of dollars trying to execute a handful of people. Those resources can now go into improving public safety, providing services to victims. You know, I continue to believe that the death penalty isn't an issue that we should think about by asking whether people deserve to die for the crimes they have committed. I think the threshold question is: Do we deserve to kill when we have a system that too often treats you better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent — system that makes the mistakes that our system makes? And what we were stressing with the White House is what we've been stressing with everybody. It's just that this is not an area where we can impose the kind of punishment that requires perfection. And that's what the death penalty requires.

This year, we saw the 200th person exonerated and released after being sentenced to death. That means that for every eight people we've executed in the United States over the last 50 years, one innocent person has been identified. It's a shameful rate of error. Nobody would allow stores to sell apples if we knew that there was a toxin on each apple and if 1 out of 8 apples had that toxin, it would kill you instantly. We would stop selling apples. We wouldn't allow planes to fly with this kind of error rate. But we've tolerated this erroneous death penalty. And I think this is an important signal that we can perhaps do better.

I also think that we've just made a mistake in suggesting that killing people is something we can do casually, easily. You know, most people don't think you you should rape someone who commits rape. Most people don't think you should torture someone who commits torture. But somehow we've allowed ourselves to believe that we can kill people who have killed because that doesn't have an impact. And one of the really significant interventions for President Biden was the submission from correctional officers and wardens who talked about the trauma, the abuse and the hardship that carrying out these executions has created in our federal prisons and in state prisons as well.

Pamela Kirkland: You've highlighted also systemic issues like racial bias. You mentioned wrongful convictions just a moment ago. How does this action address those concerns or does it leave those unresolved?

Bryan Stevenson: Well, I think it is a — it creates an incentive to not overlook, to not look away when we have evidence of bias and discrimination. As you know, at the end of President Trump's term in 2020, he ordered the execution of 13 people in the run-up to the 2020 election. And it's worth noting that in 2020, the Democrats had, as part of their platform ending the death penalty. President Biden said he would do this and he won that election. President Trump tried to use executions as a way, and sadly, several people were executed despite very significant evidence of racial bias. Black defendants tried by all-white juries. The majority of people on the federal death row are people of color, many of whom were tried by all-white juries. And I think there is this resistance to acknowledging the role of racial bias in the implementation of these sentences. And I think this order today, these commutations suggest that we should not do that. We have a long history of racial injustice in America, and it's created a presumption of dangerousness and guilt that sometimes gets assigned to Black and brown people. And in our criminal legal system, that can be lethal when the death penalty is on the table. And I'm hoping that today's commutations can be an opportunity to talk more about these problems that we continue to have in our legal system, from racial bias to errors to prosecutorial misconduct to legal discrimination and jury selection — to all the things that undermine the integrity of our system.

Pamela Kirkland: The decision impacts federal death row, but states continue to execute people. We're in Georgia. Georgia has long been at the center of debates over the death penalty. How do you hope this federal action influences state-level policy?

Bryan Stevenson: Well, I hope that governors in several states that have talked about this will now find the courage to do what must be done. The largest death row in the country is in California. Gov. Newsom has talked about the challenges of the death penalty in that state. I was in North Carolina earlier last year in litigation that exposed racial bias in the death penalty in that state. And Gov. Roy Cooper and the incoming governor will have an opportunity to think about following President Biden's leads. There are governors in Oregon and other states — Pennsylvania — where I think there will be an opening now to seriously consider replicating this. And that would be substantial. It would potentially reduce the number of people on death row in this country by half. Yesterday's order by President Biden impacts 37 people. But if these other governors follow suit, we could be talking about reducing the number of people facing execution by, by over a thousand, which would really be substantial as we continue to wrestle with this issue.

Pamela Kirkland: Bryan Stevenson is founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Thank you so much for joining me on Morning Edition.

Bryan Stevenson: My pleasure.

Tags: Death Penalty  presidential pardon  president biden  president joe Biden  Equal Justice Initiative