In 2016, the Democratic Party became the country’s first major political party to formally call for abolishing the death penalty. The party’s platform that year, released in the aftermath of a high-profile botched execution, called the punishment “cruel and unusual,” “arbitrary and unjust,” expensive to taxpayers and ineffective in deterring crime. The document also nodded to the people exonerated from death row as evidence of the risk that the government will kill innocent people.
During the 2020 campaign, the Democratic platform reiterated support for abolishing the death penalty. When Joe Biden entered office the following year, he became the first president to publicly oppose capital punishment — a dramatic shift from his time in the Senate, when he once bragged that the sweeping crime bill he was pushing did “everything but hang people for jaywalking.”
However, as his term winds down, Biden has little to show for the party’s promise to abolish capital punishment. On Monday, the Democrats approved their 2024 platform, which includes no mention of the death penalty. This year’s platform marks the first time since 2004 the platform has not mentioned the death penalty (the 2008 and 2012 platforms called for making the punishment less arbitrary).
Public support for the death penalty has been gradually declining. A Gallup poll last year found that 65% of Democrats oppose the punishment.
The Democratic National Committee did not respond to an email asking if the party still supports abolishing the death penalty.
The outcome of this year’s presidential election has life-or-death stakes for the people on federal death row. During the last six months of Donald Trump’s presidency, his administration executed 13 people, ending a 17-year de facto moratorium on federal executions.
At the time, Biden’s campaign website pledged to work with Congress to abolish the federal death penalty and incentivize states to put an end to the practice. Once he entered office, the Justice Department reinstated the execution moratorium and launched a review into death penalty policies and procedures.
But little has come from that review, and the DOJ has continued to fight to maintain existing death sentences. In January, the DOJ announced it would pursue the death penalty against Payton Gendron, who has admitted in state court to killing 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket because they were Black.
For years, death penalty abolition bills in the House and Senate have languished. “I wouldn’t say that the White House has been actively engaging people to support the bill,” Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), the sponsor of one of the death penalty bills, told HuffPost earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Republicans are gearing up for another execution spree if Trump wins reelection. Project 2025, an 887-page document outlining plans for a second Trump presidency released by a coalition of conservative groups, suggests that Trump execute every remaining prisoner on death row. The document also envisions pursuing the death penalty in cases involving violence and sexual abuse of children. In a footnote, the document notes that this would require convincing the Supreme Court to overrule its previous findings on when the death penalty is appropriate, but that “the [Justice] department should place a priority on doing so.”
Trump reportedly plans to announce his support for expanding the death penalty to non-homicide crimes.
The campaign for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris did not respond to an email asking if she would specify her own position on the death penalty.
When Harris became San Francisco’s district attorney in 2004, she promised to “never charge the death penalty.” She upheld that promise, even under pressure to pursue capital punishment for a man accused of killing a police officer. When she ran for California attorney general, she said she would “enforce the death penalty as the law dictates.” After narrowly defeating her Republican opponent, her office defended use of the death penalty in court.
In addition to dropping any mention of the death penalty, this year’s Democratic platform noticeably backs away from several criminal justice reforms the party embraced in 2020, when the police killing of George Floyd prompted nationwide protests against police brutality. The criminal justice section of the 2020 platform opens by declaring that the system is “failing” to keep people safe and deliver justice. It contrasts the promise of America as the “land of the free” with the reality that the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world and calls for “dramatically” reducing the number of people held in prisons and jails.
The 2020 platform includes support for several specific policies that are either absent from the 2024 platform or have been considerably toned down, including: ending life-without-parole sentences for people under 21, banning police from using chokeholds, decriminalizing cannabis, eliminating cash bail and repealing mandatory minimum sentences.
This year’s platform makes no mention of mass incarceration. Instead, it describes the need to “fund the police” and touts DOJ funding for more police officers. The platform claims Biden “took action to enhance public trust” by signing a “historic” executive order directing federal law enforcement agencies to ban chokeholds “unless deadly force is authorized” — a move described by civil rights groups as only a first step on police reform.
Much of the criminal justice section focuses on the Biden administration’s modest reforms on cannabis. In 2022, Biden pardoned every person convicted of simple marijuana possession under federal law — which did not result in anyone being released from prison. The pardons did not apply to people convicted of selling or distributing marijuana, which accounts for the majority of people with federal cannabis-related convictions. And although the Justice Department has moved to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous category of drug, it has stopped short of legalization.