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Attorney General Garland halts federal executions, orders review of procedures

01 July 2021
 Dan Ackermann

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday ordered a moratorium on federal executions while the Department of Justice reviews its death penalty policies and procedures.

Driving the news: Garland said in a memo that "serious concerns" have been raised about the use of the death penalty, "including arbitrariness in its application, disparate impact on people of color, and the troubling number of exonerations in capital and other serious cases."

  • No federal executions will be scheduled while the review takes place.

The big picture: Garland also raised concerns about the lethal injection protocol adopted during the Trump administration.

  • During the previous administration the Justice Department changed its capital case policies and procedures, leading to the "first federal executions in nearly two decades between July 2020 and January 2021," notes a DOJ press release.
  • The Trump administration carried out 13 executions in six months, per AP.
  • Garland had previously indicated that he wished to review the federal government's death penalty policies, per Reuters.

The bottom line: “The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” Garland wrote.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.