‘The Trump administration has chosen to join North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Russia’s Putin in executing their citizens…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The return of federal executions was awkwardly condemned by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other members of the progressive left—who found themselves bemoaning the loss of white supremacists and child molesters, despite their adamant support for state-sanctioned infanticide.
The announcement from Attorney General William Barr that the death sentences on about 60 federal inmates would again be carried out was predictably hailed by law-and-order Republicans.
Among the first five death-row convicts in line for execution is Daniel Lewis Lee of Arkansas, a member of the Aryan People’s Republic, who murdered a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl.
Lee and an accomplice reportedly robbed the victims for money to fund the white supremacist group. He then shot his victims with a stun gun, covered their heads with plastic bags and duct tape, weighed them down with rocks and threw them in a bayou, according to the New York Daily News.
He later trivialized the murders by boasting he had put the Muellers “on a liquid diet.”
Lee, who is scheduled to be put to death on Dec. 9, has been enjoying a reprieve for the past two decades after his 1999 conviction.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., applauded the Justice Department for living up to its name by enacting justice for the families of Bill Mueller, 53; his wife, Nancy Mueller, 28; and her daughter, Sarah Powell, 8.
“Most Americans have always believed that the death penalty is a just response to the most heinous crimes,” Cotton said in a press statement.
“I commend the president and Attorney General Barr for reinstating the federal death penalty in order to carry out sentences imposed on five brutal murderers by juries of their peers,” he said. “After many years of unnecessary delay, justice will soon be done for these criminals’ many victims, including the Mueller family of Tilly, Arkansas.”
Of the four other murders scheduled to die—all of whom had victims who were children—two brutally raped their young victims. One of these was the killer’s daughter. Most of the cases also involved some sort of torture, desecration or dismemberment of the victims.
Among the other death-row convicts biding their time are white supremacist Dylann Roof, who shot elderly members of a black church in Charleston; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber whose reign of terror took at least four lives—including that of an 8-year-old boy.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was elected last year after serving previously as mayor of San Francisco, lamented the death penalty’s return in a statement released by his office.
“The intentional killing of another person is wrong, and our death penalty system has been, by all measures, a failure,” Newsom said.
“It has discriminated against defendants who are mentally ill, black and brown, or can’t afford expensive legal representation,” he continued. “It has provided no public safety benefit or value as a deterrent. It has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars. Most of all, the death penalty is absolute. It’s irreversible and irreparable in the event of human error.”
In March, Newsom placed a moratorium on California’s death penalty and closed the execution chamber at San Quentin State Prison.
Ironically, he has gone out of his way to be a vocal proponent of abortion.
As some in the film industry considered boycotting states like Georgia following the passage of pro-life heartbeat laws, Newsom released a video on Twitter in which he encouraged abortion-seekers to take refuge in his state.
Not content to let his arguments against the death penalty stand on their own, however, he wasted not the opportunity to repeat a political talking point previously uttered by fellow San Francisco Democrat, Sen. Kamala Harris bashing President Donald Trump.
Attacking the president’s efforts to pursue global diplomacy with traditional U.S. adversaries, Newsom attempted to link the U.S. death penalty to the brutality of regimes in North Korea, Russia and Saudia Arabia.
“The Trump administration has chosen to join North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Russia’s Putin in executing their citizens,” Newsom said.
Unlike the barbaric execution methods preferred by those world leaders, Barr’s newly revised federal execution protocol will rely on a single drug, pentobarbital.
The method “closely mirrors” that of several current states, which have used the drug more than 200 times in 14 states since 2010.
It also has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, which determined it to be in line with the Eighth Amendment banning “cruel and unusual punishment.”
“Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding,” Barr said in a statement.
Harris, one of the leading Democratic primary contenders for the 2020 election, also issued a statement opposing the move.
“Let me be clear: capital punishment is immoral and deeply flawed,” she wrote. “Too many innocent people have been put to death. We need a national moratorium on the death penalty, not a resurrection.”
Another presidential contender, Sen. Bernie Sanders, weighed in, vowing to abolish the death penalty if elected.
“There’s enough violence in the world. The government shouldn’t add to it,” he said.
Additional reporting from the New York Daily News contributed to this article.