In 2016, the Democrats became the first major political party to call for abolishing the death penalty. The party’s platform, released after a high-profile botched execution, called the punishment “cruel and unusual,” “arbitrary and unjust,” expensive to taxpayers and ineffective in deterring crime.
The document also nodded to the people exonerated from death row as evidence of the risk that the government will kill innocent people. During the 2020 campaign, the Democratic platform reiterated support for abolishing the death penalty.
Joe Biden became the first president to oppose capital punishment, a dramatic shift from his time in the Senate, when bragged this 1994 crime law did “everything but hang people for jaywalking.”
As his term winds down, Biden has little to show for the party's promise to abolish capital punishment. This week, the Democrats approved their2024 platform, which includes no mention of the death penalty, HuffPost reports.
It marks the first time since 2004 that platform has not mentioned the death penalty. The 2008 and 2012 platforms called for making the punishment less arbitrary.
Public support for the death penalty has been declining. A Gallup poll last year found that 65% of Democrats oppose the punishment.
The outcome of this year’s presidential election has life-or-death stakes for the people on federal death row. During the last six months of Donald Trump’s presidency, his administration executed 13 people, ending a 17-year de facto moratorium on federal executions.
The Biden Justice Department has continued to fight in favor of maintaining existing death sentences. In January, the DOJ announced that it would pursue the death penalty against Payton Gendron, who has admitted to killing 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket because they were Black.
Republicans are gearing up for another execution spree if Trump wins reelection. Project 2025, released by a coalition of conservative groups, suggests that Trump execute every remaining prisoner on death row.
When Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris became San Francisco’s district attorney in 2004, she promised to “never charge the death penalty.” She upheld that promise, even under pressure to pursue capital punishment for a man accused of killing a police officer.
In addition to dropping any mention of the death penalty, this year’s Democratic platform backs away from several criminal justice reforms the party embraced in 2020, when the police killing of George Floyd prompted nationwide protests against police brutality.
The criminal justice section of the 2020 platform opens by declaring that the system is “failing” to keep people safe and deliver justice. It contrasts the promise of America as the “land of the free” with the reality that the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world and calls for “dramatically” reducing the number of people held in prisons and jails.
The 2020 platform supports several specific policies that are either absent from the 2024 platform or have been considerably toned down, including: ending life-without-parole sentences for people under 21, banning police from using chokeholds, decriminalizing cannabis, eliminating cash bail and repealing mandatory minimum sentences.
This year’s platform makes no mention of mass incarceration. Instead, it describes the need to “fund the police” and touts DOJ funding for more police officers. The platform claims Biden “took action to enhance public trust” by signing a “historic” executive order directing federal law enforcement agencies to ban chokeholds “unless deadly force is authorized” — a move civil rights groups called only a first step on police reform.
The final night of the Democratic National Convention Thursday included a lineup of lawmakers and others who have long advocated for gun safety and have dealt with the aftermath of gun violence in their communities.
Georgia U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, a longtime gun safety advocate, became an advocate for gun safety after her 17-year-old son, Jordan Davis, was murdered at a Florida gas station in 2012. Her son was shot and killed by a white man who was angry about the loud music being played by the Black teenager and his friends.
Harris last year was tasked with overseeing the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention.
Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is an avid hunter but believes in banning assault weapons, reports the Iowa Capital Dispatch.
Harris is also able to campaign on a major accomplishment of the Biden administration in passing and signing into law the most comprehensive gun safety legislation in decades.
That measure, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, provided millions for states to enact so-called red flag laws and allocated billions for mental health services for youth.
McBath on the DNC stage was joined by Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose 10-year-old daughter was killed in the Uvalde mass shooting, and a former teacher from Sandy Hook Elementary School, Abbey Clements.
Former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt when she was shot while meeting with constituents, received a standing ovation. She now runs a gun safety advocacy group — the Giffords Law Center.