Why are the Trump Administration’s shocking new death penalty proposals getting so little reaction in the United States? The decryption of Jean-Marie Bockel, former Senator, former Minister of Commerce, and former Secretary of State to the Minister of Justice, for Global Disorder.
Donald Trump has just set a new historical record, and it is gruesome. He now officially holds the title of the U.S. President, who has executed the most federal prisoners in U.S. history.
A moratorium on the death penalty had been in place for years, with former President George W. Bush, who stepped down in January 2009, being responsible for the last three deaths before Trump came to power.
But Trump’s administration is expected to carry out ten of them by the end of December. He is also prepared to add firing squads and poison gas to execution methods when the lethal injection has long been the norm.
Death squads and the death penalty itself are generally associated with the kind of country that Americans consider barbaric and undemocratic. Why is there such a lack of outrage when these same methods are used in the United States?
Jean-Marie Bockel, former Senator, former Secretary of Commerce and former Secretary of State to the Minister of Justice, puts Donald Trump’s statements into context: “The American system is still a democratic system where you can go to the end of your rights, your recourses, which can lead you to stay on so-called death row, that is to say in the cells dedicated to people who have been sentenced to death and who are awaiting the execution of their sentence.”
“This can take a very long time. Not just months, but years, and sometimes up to more than 10 years, and in some cases almost 20 years”.
The former Secretary of State to the Attorney General comments on the perception of the death penalty in the United States: “A significant portion of American public opinion, the media, and people who are professionally concerned with the legal world know that the rate of judicial errors is staggering”.
“It is much larger than the average for democratic countries. For that reason alone, we tell ourselves that there could be a miscarriage of justice, it has happened so often.”
