The death penalty will be back on center stage in 2020 after the Justice Department said it will begin executing death row inmates. While Democrats are mostly unified against it, the public is not.
FILE - In this March 17, 2003 file photo, guard towers and razor wire ring the compound at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., the site of the last federal execution. Democratic presidential candidates may have a delicate balancing act when dealing with the Justice Department's announcement that it will begin executing federal death row inmates for the first time since 2003.
Four years later, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton projected the opposite message, defending the death penalty on a New Hampshire debate stage, then leaving the campaign trail to return to his home state and preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally impaired black inmate who killed a police officer and another man.
Democratic strategist Mike Lavigne said that, despite the planned federal executions, he doesn’t see the issue as a winner for Democrats because “there’s not a lot of single-issue voters on the death penalty.” Even California, the nation’s largest blue state, rejected a capital punishment ban in 2016. Now-Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom used anto declare a moratorium, but prosecutors in the state still sometimes seek the death penalty.
“Our weighing in on the topic is not for the purpose of helping or hurting any politician, but it’s to provide a moral context for our leaders in both parties,” Galen Carey, the association’s vice president of government relations, said by phone.
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