New Death Penalty Information Center report presents critical account of federal death penalty history

The Death Penalty Information Center has today released this new report titled “Fool’s Gold: How the Federal Death Penalty Has Perpetuated Racially Discriminatory Practices Throughout History.”  The title leaves little doubt about the tone and leanings of the report, and here is its executive summary to the same effect (which only appears online and not in the full report):

In 2020, President Joe Biden promised to end the federal death penalty during his administration and his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, acknowledged its many longstanding concerns as reasons to pause federal executions pending an internal review of Department of Justice policies and practices. Project 2025, the product of a political conservative movement, calls for President Trump to “obtain finality” for all federal death row prisoners. Before any decision about future use of the federal death penalty is made, it is critically important to understand its history and the serious flaws in the way it is used today. Although sometimes referred to as the “gold standard” of capital punishment, an analysis of the federal death penalty reveals that it is plagued by the same serious problems as state level capital punishment systems.

The federal death penalty has been used disproportionately against people of color: to subjugate Native Americans Resisting Colonization, and to intimidate and terrorize newly freed Black Americans.

Before the start of the Civil War, the federal death penalty was used primarily against white men. After slavery was abolished and the U.S. continued its westward expansion, however, the demographics of those executed shifted. At least 58 Native Americans were executed by the federal government between 1862 and 1899, with the majority killed in mass executions (defined as at least three people executed at the same time).

Black Americans were also overrepresented among those executed. Before the Civil War, 8 Black people were executed by the federal government; between 1862 and 1899, 47 Black people were federally executed — a 488% increase. Most of these executions occurred during the Reconstruction era, which also saw a dramatic rise in the extralegal lynchings of Black people….

Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, multiple studies have demonstrated that racial disparities continue to define federal capital prosecutions. The Death Penalty Information Center’s 1994 review of federal prosecutions found that “no other jurisdiction comes close to th[e] nearly 90% minority prosecution rate” seen at the federal level. A 2001 supplementary study found similarly jarring disparities, with nearly 80% of cases involving non-white defendants. A review of all federal death penalty authorizations from 1989 to June 2024 reveals that these disparities persist: 73% of all cases authorized for prosecution involved defendants of color.

Similar to use of the death penalty at the state levels, statistics suggest that there is a correlation between the race and gender of a victim and a federal death sentence. Defendants who killed white female victims receive the death penalty at a substantially higher rate than defendants whose victims were not white women.

The Death Penalty Information Center website all has this accounting of “Five Facts To Know About the Federal Death Penalty.”