Joe Biden breaks promise to eliminate the federal death penalty

In 2020, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden promised to end the death penalty in federal cases.

"Over 160 individuals who've been sentenced to death in this country since 1973 have later been exonerated," Biden's campaign website read. "Because we cannot ensure we get death penalty cases right every time, Biden will work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government's example."

This hasn't happened; House and the Senate bills that would have ended the death penalty failed to reach votes.

In 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a moratorium on federal executions to review policies from Donald Trump's first term. In Trump's first term, the U.S. Justice Department expedited federal executions, expanded execution methods and authorized the use of state facilities in executions. 

The moratorium meant there have been no executions for federal death penalty cases under Biden. There were 13 under Trump.

The moratorium remains as the policy review continues, the Justice Department has said. The department reviewed its manual about capital cases, removing some provisions designed to expedite executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit.

PolitiFact contacted the Justice Department but did not hear back by publication.

The department under Garland has still argued for the death penalty in a few cases, including for a white supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022 and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, who killed 11 people in 2018. The department also fought to uphold death sentences for current death row inmates.

Biden could try to limit Trump's ability to restart executions by commuting the sentences of inmates on federal death row to life in prison. However, legislation has not passed under his watch to end the death penalty. 

The new Trump administration could easily reverse the Biden-era moratorium in 2025. Trump promised to seek the death penalty for drug dealers, child rapists and child traffickers.

We rate this Promise Broken.