Trump’s last-minute executions, portraits of injustice, and what the jurors saw (op-ed)

 

After President Donald Trump lost re-election, he broke the 130-year-old norm of pausing federal executions during the presidential-transition-period and carried out five executions.  These executions were controversial because President-elect Joe Biden stated he would end the death penalty during his administration.  If the time-honored tradition was maintained it’s possible these five lives would have been spared.  Opponents of capital punishment claimed Trump went on a killing spree, but, as spiteful as Trump’s actions appeared, ignoring a time-honored tradition isn’t unprecedented or against the law.

The executions consisted of four black men and one white woman.

In death penalty cases, portraits of injustice are painted to generate rage against the criminal justice system.  These portraits of injustice back up activist assertions that capital punishment is unconstitutional, arbitrary, capricious, not a deterrent, and disproportionately used against minorities.  This has been an effective method of public persuasion.  According to the latest Gallop poll, 60 percent of Americans support life in prison over the death penalty, 60 percent is the highest amount to oppose capital punishment since the survey began 30 years ago.  However, a majority preference for life in prison over death doesn’t give credence to the portraits of injustice painted in the following executions.

1).  On December 10, 2020 Brandon Bernard was executed.  CNN stated, Bernard was the youngest person in the United States to receive a death sentence in 70 years for a crime committed when he was an adolescent.  Bernard was 18 years old – legally an adult – but CNN chose to use the term adolescent to paint the portrait of injustice.

2).  On December 11, 2020 Alfred Bourgeois was executed.  CNN stated his last words were, “I ask God to forgive all those who plotted and schemed against me, and planted false evidence.  I did not commit this crime.”  Obviously, this paints the portrait of innocence.

3).  On January 13, 2021 Lisa Montgomery was executed.  One magazine portrayed the injustice in a headline.  It said: Lisa Montgomery suffered years of abuse and trauma.  The United States killed her anyway.

4). On January 14, 2021 Cory Johnson was executed.  Johnson’s legal team painted a portrait of injustice by arguing that Johnson suffered from intellectual disability, related to physical and emotional abuse he experienced as a child.  

5).  On January 15, 2021 Dustin John Higgs was executed.  Higgs actually didn’t kill anyone.  He merely instructed his partner to do his bidding.  Here the portrait of injustice shows that a death sentence was too extreme for a person who didn’t commit a capital crime.

Attorney General William Barr said, “The justice department upholds the rule of law – and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”  Barr continued, “The way to stop the death penalty is to repeal the death penalty, but if you ask juries to impose it, then it should be carried out.”

However, decades after death-row-inmates are sentenced to death, portraits of injustice generate sympathy for the inmates because time permitted them to become older, wiser, and remorseful.  Unfortunately, their victims are forgotten.  That’s why it’s important to remember what the jurors saw in each case.

Brandon Bernard and four others robbed and killed a couple – who were youth ministers – then placed their bodies in the truck of their car and torched the vehicle.  Alfred Bourgeois tortured, sexually molested, and beat to death, his two-year-old daughter.  Lisa Montgomery strangled a pregnant woman to death, cut the unborn child from the deceased, and fled the scene.  Cory Johnson murdered seven people behind the drug trade.  Dustin John Higgs kidnapped three young women and instructed his partner to shoot them, after one of the young women rejected sexual advances from Higgs.

Now, here’s the question.

Should portraits of injustice supersede what the jurors saw?

First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 2/4/21