Trump Executed Their Loved Ones. They Fear He’ll Have The Chance To Kill Others.

President Joe Biden has made no visible progress toward his campaign promise of working to end the federal death penalty.

Christopher Vialva’s dying request before the federal government executed him in 2020 was that his mother help other family members of the condemned navigate the process. Before he died, Vialva gave his mom’s contact information to another man on death row, who helped put her in touch with the loved ones of people who received execution dates.

“I wanted to brief them on how the process went down and what to expect, down to the details as far as the physical signs of their loved ones dying. When they’re showing signs of asphyxiation,” said Vialva’s mother, Lisa Brown, noting evidence that the lethal injection drugs can cause the lungs to fill with fluid, creating the sensation of suffocating or drowning to death. “It’s like being waterboarded,” Brown said.

Vialva was one of 13 people Donald Trump’s administration executed during the final six months of his presidency. The killing spree ended a 17-year de facto moratorium on federal executions and left behind dozens of grieving family members, struggling to make sense of the government’s seemingly arbitrary decision to select their loved ones for execution among the dozens of people on death row.

Days after the Trump administration’s final execution, Joe Biden became the first president to openly oppose the death penalty. After campaigning to work with Congress to abolish the federal death penalty, his administration reinstated the moratorium and launched a review into death penalty policies and procedures.

But now, as he nears the end of his presidency, Biden has made no visible progress toward ending the federal death penalty. Abolition bills in the House and Senate have languished, with little push from the White House. The policy review is ongoing, and the Justice Department has continued to seek and enforce death sentences. For the first time since 2012, the Democratic Party platform does not call for abolishing the death penalty. Unless Biden uses his clemency power to commute the sentences of the people on federal death row, those who have exhausted their appeals will be vulnerable to execution if Trump is reelected.