Washington SC Denies Blocking Execution of Four

The Washington Supreme Court has June 29, 2020 denied blocking the execution of four prisoners who are scheduled to be put to death in July and August. As per the order the executions would mark the first use of the death penalty on the federal level since 2003.

The judicial authorities comprising Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor noted that they would have blocked the executions from going forward. And hence, the court's action has left no obstacles standing in the way of the executions, the first of which is scheduled for July 13. The inmates are separately asking a federal judge in Washington to impose a new delay on their executions over other legal issues that have yet to be resolved.

The activity at the high court came after Attorney General William Barr directed the federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions. Three of the men had been scheduled to be put to death when Barr first announced the federal government would resume executions last year, ending an informal moratorium on federal capital punishment as the issue receded from the public domain. The Attorney General, in a statement said, “The American people, acting through Congress and Presidents of both political parties, have long instructed that defendants convicted of the most heinous crimes should be subject to a sentence of death”.

The four murderers whose executions are scheduled today have received full and fair proceedings under our Constitution and laws. We owe it to the victims of these horrific crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system. The federal government’s initial effort was put on hold by a trial judge after the inmates challenged the new execution procedures, and the federal appeals court in Washington and the Supreme Court both declined to step in late last year. But in April, the appeals court threw out the judge’s order.