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Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, tomorrow, the State of Tennessee is planning to end the life of Tony Carruthers, a man with severe mental health conditions who was forced to represent himself in a murder trial 30 years ago.
Forensic evidence never connected him to the crime. Key witness testimony has been discredited. Fingerprints and DNA found at the crime scene were never fully investigated even though they could exonerate Mr. Carruthers. Despite all of this, his execution is scheduled to continue tomorrow as planned. By 12 midnight tomorrow, Mr. Carruthers will depart this Earth for a crime he may not have committed.
When I was first elected to Congress many years ago, I was part of the majority of Americans who supported the death penalty for the most heinous crimes. Over the years, my views began to change for a number of reasons.
First, there have been numerous cases of potentially innocent people who have been executed, including as recently as 2024, and over 200 people who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death have been exonerated since 1973. One study found that more than 4 percent of the individuals on death row were likely innocent, and this figure does not include those who pled guilty to crimes they didn't commit to avoid execution.
For many on death row, their punishment stems from their inability to afford counsel and their struggles with mental illness. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, approximately 90 percent of people facing capital charges cannot afford an attorney. Researchers at the University of North Carolina have found that 43 percent of individuals executed between 2000 and 2015 had been diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their lives--43 percent. The death penalty is not a punishment reserved for the worst of the worst; it is one reserved for the poorest of the poor.
In addition, it is a penalty disproportionately faced by Black Americans. Despite being 13 percent of the U.S. population, Black people make up 41 percent of all the prisoners on death row. A coincidence? Numerous studies have found that Black defendants are more likely than their White counterparts to face the death penalty.
On top of all this, it is far from clear that the death penalty even serves its primary purpose. There is yet to be conclusive evidence to demonstrate that the death penalty deters people from committing heinous crimes compared to the threat of spending life in prison.
Faced with all of this, 15 years ago, I announced that I could no longer support the death penalty. Luckily, I was in good company. I was not the first public official whose thinking about this issue changed. Supreme Court Justices Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens had a similar journey to my own. While both initially ruled in favor of the death penalty, they eventually came to the same conclusion: that after decades of trying to make it fair, we had largely failed as a nation.
In the year 2000, in my home State of Illinois, George Ryan, a Republican Governor, instituted the first statewide moratorium on executions in the Nation. In 2003, Governor Ryan cleared death row by commuting the sentences of 167 inmates to life in prison.
In 2021, in his first year in office, President Biden instituted a moratorium on the Federal death penalty. Then, in December 2024, in response to a request from me and 11 other Senators, President Biden commuted the sentences of most individuals on Federal death row to life in prison.
Today, I am reintroducing the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act. This legislation would prohibit the imposition of the death penalty as punishment for any violation of Federal law and require the resentencing of those previously sentenced to death row.
This bill is particularly important today. Last month, President Trump's Department of Justice announced that it was bringing back firing squads and seeking to return to the use of electrocution and lethal gas for executions. Meanwhile, the State of Alabama became the first government in the world to carry out executions by nitrogen suffocation, an untested and inhumane death penalty method.
The Supreme Court has declined to intervene, over the dissent of Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justices Kagan and Jackson.
Listen to what Justice Sotomayor wrote:
Allowing the nitrogen hypoxia experiment to continue despite mounting and unbroken evidence that it violates the Constitution by inflicting unnecessary suffering fails to protect the dignity of the Nation we have been, the Nation we are, and the Nation we aspire to be.
These barbaric tactics will be remembered as a stain on our Nation's history. We must not engage in the very conduct we seek to punish. My bill would ensure we do not.
I understand this subject brings up people's strongest emotions. When faced with the horrific acts of some of the people on death row, the hatred they hold, and the pain they caused, it is understandable to want them to face a punishment commensurate with their crimes. But how many innocent people must be put to death to feed a feeling of vengeance? How many Americans must be denied justice in the name of grief?
State-sanctioned killing is not an effective way to make our country safe. It is not guaranteed to only punish the guilty. It is not who we are.
I hope my colleagues will join me and together end this cruel and unusual punishment in America once and for all.
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Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act''. SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON IMPOSITION OF DEATH SENTENCE.
(a) In General.--Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no person may be sentenced to death or put to death on or after the date of enactment of this Act for any violation of Federal law.
(b) Persons Sentenced Before Date of Enactment.-- Notwithstanding any other provision of law, any person sentenced to death before the date of enactment of this Act for any violation of Federal law shall be resentenced. ______
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