Biden’s silence on executions adds to death penalty disarray
By MICHAEL TARM AP Legal Affairs Writer
CHICAGO (AP) — Activists widely expected Joe Biden to take swift action against the death penalty as the first sitting president to oppose capital punishment, but the White House has been mostly silent. Biden hasn’t said whether he’d back a bill to strike the death penalty from U.S. statutes. Biden also hasn’t rescinded Trump-era protocols enabling federal executions to resume and allowing prisons to use firing squads if necessary. And this week, Biden’s administration asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the Boston Marathon bomber’s original death sentence. The hands-off approach is adding to disarray around the death penalty nationwide as pressure increases in some conservative states to find ways to continue executions amid shortages of lethal-injection drugs.