Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden flip-flopped on the death penalty last week, calling for its end despite being among the Senate’s most vocal supporters, bragging that in one of his proposals “we do everything but hang people for jaywalking.”
Biden’s reversal came as Attorney General William Barr ordered on Thursday the death sentences of five child convicted murderers to move forward. These will be the first federal executions since 2003.
In response, Biden tweeted, “Because we can’t ensure that we get these cases right every time, we must eliminate the death penalty.” Many Democratic presidential candidates echoed the same message.
Biden officially reversed his decades-long position earlier last week, under pressure from his progressive base and his rivals, he released a criminal justice reform plan repudiating his signature 1994 crime bill and calling for the “elimination” of the death penalty nationally. With 2020 looming, Biden telegraphed this flip-flop for a while, telling a New Hampshire crowd in June “congratulations on ending the death penalty” at the state level.
The Democrats running for president told the New York Times in June that they were almost unanimously opposed to the death penalty. Biden, however, declined to be interviewed and only Montana Gov. Steve Bullock expressed support, saying he favored it in extreme cases “like terrorism.”
But for decades, Biden advocated for the expansion of the death penalty.
As recently as 2000, Biden claimed credit for passing “the first federal death penalty” following the Supreme Court’s 1972 ruling which voided capital punishment laws, with Biden saying executions were nationalized through “a bill written by me" in 1988 and that his 1994 crime bill “had the death penalty at the federal level” too.
Biden introduced a crime bill in March 1991, proposing 44 crimes punishable by death. The Republicans introduced their own version a day later, increasing that number to 46. Biden one-upped President George H.W. Bush’s supporters that June by raising it to 51.
Biden said in 1991 that he should get credit for the fact that drug dealers would “go to death" if their crimes resulted in killings.
And Biden pushed back against the idea that Democrats weren’t as tough on crime as Republicans.
“A wag in the newspaper recently wrote something to the effect that Biden has made it a death penalty offense for everything but jaywalking,” Biden said approvingly.
“I am a supporter of the death penalty without the racial justice provision in it,” Biden said. “I think it’s better with it, but I’m supportive without it in it as well.”
Biden said that his bill should pass because it “provides for more penalties for death for offenses than the president’s bill.”
As the crime bill debate continued in 1992, Biden responded to criticisms of his proposal. “Let me tell you what is in the bill, and I’ll let you all decide whether or not this is weak,” Biden said, highlighting the number of death penalty offenses. The 53 death penalty offenses included in a later version of his bill, he said, were “the single largest expansion of the federal death penalty in the history of the Congress.”
The number of death-penalty-eligible crimes in Biden’s bill kept rising. “The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death penalties," Biden said in 1994.
Biden’s crime bill finally passed that year, creating 60 new death penalty offenses.
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in 2000, Biden said “I support the death penalty” but hedged his support.
“Let me put it this way: I don’t oppose the death penalty on moral grounds, but I have been fastidious at arguing … that if you are going to have a death penalty, you had better go out of your way to make sure you don’t execute an innocent person,” Biden claimed.
Biden at the time framed his position as a middle ground.
“You’ve got those who want to hang ‘em high and those who suggest no one should be hung," Biden said.
