Open Petitions
Support HR 262 & SB 582
We vowed to do whatever we could to prevent the federal government from ever again
conducting mass executions. Please join us in asking Congress to pass the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act of 2021.
The Act has been introduced in the House as HR 262 by Rep. Ayanna Presley, and in the Senate by Sen. DIck Durbin as SB 582. Show your support for both bills. Sign our petition by asking your congressperson to support HR 262, and your senator to support SB 582.
One hundred and eight countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes; 144 have abolished it in law or practice. It’s time the US joined these countries and stopped executing its citizens.
Urge President Biden to Commute Federal Death Row
President Biden says he supports eliminating the federal death penalty but hasn’t taken any action yet. So we’re asking you to join us in urging him to commute the sentences of the 46 men currently on federal death row and eliminate the possibility that we will witness again the killing spree that the Trump Administration committed in the last half of 2020.
The federal death penalty system is deeply flawed. It reflects the misguided “tough on crime” policies of the 1990s and early 2000s and shows the same racial bias that we see in state death penalty systems. Of the 46 men currently on federal death row, 39 percent are Black, compared with about 13 percent of the U.S. population. Seven of the 13 executions carried out last year were people of color. In addition, several of the men on death row, including those among the 13 who were executed in the last half of 2020, were not the accused killers, and their culpable or equally culpable co-defendants were not sentenced to death.
The petition is in collaboration with the Innocence Project, Equal Justice USA, 8th Amendment Project, Witness to Innocence, ACLU, and the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
