One day after Attorney General William Barr announced that the federal government will once again pursue capital punishment, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) has stepped into the arena with plans to introduce a bill to ban the death penalty altogether.
According to CBS News, Pressley has firmly stated that capital punishment has “no place in a just society” and aims to “prohibit the imposition of the death penalty for any violation of federal law, and for other purposes.”
And Pressley is not pulling any punches, directly pointing to the current president and his past claims that the wrongly convicted Central Park Five (now the Exonerated 5) should face the death penalty as an example why capital punishment should not be on the books.
“The same racist rhetoric coming from the occupant of the White House, who called for the execution of the #Exonerated5, is what led to this racist, vile policy,” she tweeted. “The cruelty is the point – this is by design.”
And Pressley’s bill does not target future cases, should the bill become law it mandates that “notwithstanding any other provision of law,” any person sentenced to death before the enactment of the bill would be resentenced.
When Barr announced on Thursday that the DOJ will be bringing back the death penalty after reversing a 16-year moratorium, five individuals were in the same breath scheduled to executed using pentobarbital.