WE OPPOSE THE DEATH PENALTY...  EVEN IN THE CASE OF ICE.

When a government official, acting in an official capacity, takes a life when neither themselves or others are directly threatened, whether planned or spontaneous, such action is an extra-judicial execution. Senior government officials lying to excuse such actions is unacceptable.

Such recent killings in Minneapolis expose what appears to be deliberate policy. When officers present are seen applauding, when the masked officer(s) who fired are immediately removed from the scene and hailed as champions, and when the immediate response of senior officials is to demonize the victim, the rule of law is broken.

No Government Official is Empowered to Serve as Judge, Jury and Executioner.

Congress must take immediate steps to make it painfully clear to the current Administration that the use of deadly force against any person who is not an immediate threat is illegal and will be prosecuted as homicide.

Death Penalty Action opposes extra-judicial executions as a form of the death penalty, and it must stop. In addition to recent killings by officers engaged in immigration enforcement activities, extra-judicial executions, carried out in the hands of those sworn to protect society are nothing new.

Normally such killings by law enforcement officers overwhelmingly target the black community and other people of color. Racism is systemic in the United States and pervasive throughout the criminal legal system. Racism is unmistakable in the capital punishment system, rooted in and inextricably linked to the United States’ history of slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow segregation.

The undersigned are asking Congress today to enact national legislation that:

• Affirms that the use of deadly force against any person who is not an immediate threat is illegal and will be prosecuted as homicide.
• Bans “chokeholds”
• Ends no-knock warrants
• Tracks and analyzes data involving immigration enforcement and all law enforcement officer-involved shootings, including data on the race of law enforcement officers and those killed or injured in such shootings
• Investigates law enforcement officers with a track record of abusive use of power, including those in corrections
• Removes impediments to prosecuting government agents and law enforcement officers when there was no legitimate need for the use of lethal violence

No one should have to die for exercising their constitutional rights, because of the color of their skin or where they happen to travel, live, work and/or raise their families. We demand that Congress take action to ensure that these common sense measures are enacted on a national level so that our nation can move toward healing, and closer to the ideal of “Equal Justice Under Law.”