DOJ drafted legislation to speed up death penalty for mass shooters

Barr and DOJ drafted legislation to speed up death penalty for mass shooters

by Jerry Dunleavy
| September 02, 2019 03:43 PM


The Justice Department drafted legislation to speed up the death penalty for mass shooters, according to Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short, who said the vice president is coordinating with Attorney General William Barr.

Short, who made this revelation while talking to reporters on Air Force Two on a Labor Day flight to Europe, said the vice president’s office has been working with the attorney’s general’s team on the issue.

The proposal to expedite capital punishment for those found guilty of mass murder would be a part of the White House’s eventual legislative package proposal to Congress when lawmakers return from their August recess to debate gun laws in the wake of a number of recent mass shootings.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner's request for comment.

Seth Ator, 36, fired upon police after being pulled over and led them on a chase, which included stealing a mail truck, as he carried out a shooting spree on Saturday, killing at least seven people and wounding many more in Midland and Odessa, Texas, before he was killed by police.
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Connor Betts, 24, shot and killed nine people including his sister and wounded more than two dozen others before he was shot and killed by police in the early hours of the morning in a mass shooting in Dayton’s Oregon District, a popular bar and restaurant scene, earlier in August.

Patrick Crusius, 21, posted a racist and anti-Hispanic four-page manifesto drawing inspiration from the Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shootings on 8chan prior to his mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, which took the lives of 22 people the day before the Dayton shooting. Unlike Ator and Betts, Crusius was captured alive.

Jaime Esparza, El Paso County’s district attorney, said Crusius would be charged with murder and that they were pursuing the death penalty. John Bash, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, said he’d been in close consultation with Barr and that DOJ wanted to bring significant charges against the shooter which could carry a penalty of death. Bash also said DOJ was treating the attack as an act of domestic terrorism.

Following the shootings in El Paso and Dayton in early August, Trump gave a speech where he said he was “directing the Department of Justice to propose legislation ensuring that those who commit hate crimes and mass murders face the death penalty.” Trump said he wanted to ensure that “this capital punishment be delivered quickly, decisively, and without years of needless delay.”

And, in late July, Barr directed the federal government to resume federal executions, beginning with five men convicted of murdering or raping children and the elderly, marking the first federal executions since 2003.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...-mass-shooters

Governor Abbott advocates for expedited executions for mass shooters after Odessa shooting


by Mia Villanueva
Wednesday, September 4th 2019

Following the mass shooting in Odessa, Governor Greg Abbott tweeted on Monday night that Texas is working on legislation that would expedite executions for mass murderers.

In a report by the Texas Tribune, a spokesman for Governor Abbott said Tuesday he hadn't spoken to the governor since he posted the tweet - and that he had no immediate information available.

Abbott's tweet linked to an article in "The Blaze" which said the U.S Department of Justice was drafting legislation to speed up executions of people who commit mass murder.

The executive director of Texas Defender Service, Amanda Marzullo, tells the Texas Tribune speeding up the process for of death penalties for mass shooters would lead to an inconsistent and an uneven justice system.

Marzullo says accelerating the process would only further run the risk of an innocent person being executed, and that the death penalty hasn't shown to be a deterrent to murder in any case; let alone in mass attacks where shooters expect to die.

Of Texas's four-high profile mass-shootings in the past 2 years, two of the shooters were killed immediately after their attacks.

The shooter in Odessa killed seven people and wounded 22 others before he was shot by police .

According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the average time spent on death row is 11 years.

However, The Texas Tribune reports more than 200 people on death row as of now have been there an average of 16 years.

Because the legislature doesn't meet again until 2021, Abbott would need to call a special session to pass legislation for expedited executions; a move he already showed reluctance to make after the mass shooting in El Paso.

https://kfoxtv.com/news/local/greg-a...dessa-shooting