What a difference four years make. In 2020 the Democratic Party took an aggressively anti-death penalty position.
Not so this year.
In 2020 Joe Biden pledged that if he was elected president he would stop federal executions, propose legislation to abolish the death penalty at the federal level, and provide incentives for states to follow suit. “Because we can’t ensure that we get these cases right every time,” candidate Biden tweeted, “we must eliminate the death penalty.”
That year the party also voiced its opposition to the death penalty in its platform.
This year marks a striking contrast. So far Democrats have been silent about capital punishment. To date, Kamala Harris, its 2024 nominee, has said nothing about capital punishment. Moreover, as an article in The Huffington Post points out, “This year’s platform marks the first time since 2004 the platform has not mentioned the death penalty.” In fact, the only mention of it in this year’s Democratic National Convention was made by four members of the so-called ExoneratedFive. They were convicted of a crime they did not commit in 1989, and they reminded the delegates that Donald Trump had called for their execution.
The Democrats’ silence about capital punishment does not represent a principled retreat, but rather an understandable strategic calculation. Nonetheless, it is a missed opportunity to advance the abolitionist cause.
For a long time, Democrats were afraid to talk about the death penalty or embrace that cause. They lived with the traumatic memory of the way that issue was used against Michael Dukakis, their 1988 presidential candidate.
That trauma was still evident sixteen years later when the 2004 Democratic platform didn’t mention the death penalty. Instead, it sounded law and order themes and promised, “To keep our streets safe for our families” and to “support tough punishment of violent crime.”
Four years later, the platform changed its tone and criticized the way the death penalty was administered. As part of being “smart on crime,” it pledged to fight “inequalities in our criminal justice system,” including in the use of capital punishment.
“We believe,” it said, “that the death penalty must not be arbitrary.” It went on to argue that DNA testing “should be used in all appropriate circumstances, defendants should have effective assistance of counsel. In all death row cases, thorough post-conviction reviews should be available.”
In 2012, the platform continued that theme. It noted that “in the last four years, rates of serious crimes, like murder, rape, and robbery, have reached 50-year lows” and again focused on problems in the death penalty system. Still, it said nothing about whether the punishment itself should be ended.
That changed in 2016, when as the Huffington Post points out, “the Democratic Party became the country’s first major political party to formally call for abolishing the death penalty.”The 2016 platform put the death penalty position out front as part of a commitment to reforming the “criminal justice system and ending mass incarceration.” It committed the party to abolishing the death penalty which it said “has proven to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment. It has no place in the United States of America.” The Democratic platform explained that “The application of the death penalty is arbitrary and unjust. The cost to taxpayers far exceeds those of life imprisonment. It does not deter crime, and exonerations show a dangerous lack of reliability for what is an irreversible punishment.”
2020 again committed the party to a broad criminal justice reform agenda including “root(ing) out structural and systemic racism in our criminal justice system and our society.”That is one of the reasons why the Democrats reiterated that year that the party “continue(ed) to support abolishing the death penalty.” In addition, every Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 openly opposed capital punishment —including Kamala Harris.
“I’ve long been opposed to the death penalty. It is deeply immoral, irreversible, and ineffective. And if we are going to transform our country’s broken criminal justice system, we must be fearless — unafraid to speak hard truths” Harris said at the time. She called the death penalty “deeply immoral, irreversible, and ineffective. And if we are going to transform our country’s broken criminal justice system, we must be fearless — unafraid to speak hard truths.” Then the freshman senator from California, Harriscalled on her party “to speak some hard truths about this immoral practice.” Those truths included the fact that “as many 1 in 10 people prosecuted with a death penalty conviction has been exonerated.”
Harris also pointed out that “the death penalty is far more likely to be carried out against people of color, people with mental illness, and people who could not afford to pay for legal counsel at trial.” She claimed that “abolishing (capital punishment) just makes financial sense.”
She concluded that “This failed system is immoral,” and promised that “as President I would lead the fight to end it. It’s simply the right thing to do.”
Harris went on to join President Biden in leading the first administration in American history to openly and publicly oppose the death penalty and advocate its abolition.
As the Democratic Party position evolved, so did the national conversation about capital punishment. From 2004 to 2021, that conversation changed considerably.
Death sentences and executions declined significantly as did public support for the death penalty. The decline in support has been particularly significant among Democrats.
The country has come a long way from what happened when Dukakis came out against the death penalty and when Donald Trump wanted the young men formerly known as the Central Park Five executed. Of course, it is impossible to say for sure exactly how much the opposition of the Democratic Party and Democratic leaders mattered in bringing about those changes. But both were, no doubt, important in helping to make opposition to capital punishment a respectable, mainstream position in this country. Just as what the Democratic Party said about the death penalty mattered in the past, it matters what it says now and throughout the 2024 campaign. But it will matter even more if Kamala Harris becomes president next year and has the chance to fulfill the promise she made in 2019 and 2020 to “lead the fight to end it.
