SHAFAQNA- A group of prominent civil rights groups called on US President Joe Biden to to reimpose a moratorium on federal executions.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP and other groups called the punishment “cruel, ineffective, and irreversible” in their letter. The punishment was revived by Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump, last summer after a 17-year hiatus caused in part by the increasing difficulty of obtaining drugs for lethal injections.
In their letter, the civil rights groups said Biden should dismantle the Department of Justice’s execution chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana; announce a moratorium on executions; commute the sentences of the 49 men remaining on federal death row; and to instruct the Justice Department’s prosecutors to no longer seek the death penalty, Reuters reported.