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Attorney General Merrick Garland has ruled that a death penalty case can proceed to trial, in a move that directly challenges President Joe Biden’s promise to end capital punishment.
Garland denied requests by Sayfullo Saipov’s lawyers to eliminate the death penalty in his upcoming federal trial for an alleged attack on bicyclists and pedestrians in New York City on Halloween night in 2017.
Saipov’s lawyers expected Garland to be lenient, given that Biden campaigned against the death penalty, and Garland ordered a halt to all federal executions in 2021, according to the New York Times.
But Saipov, a native of Uzbekistan, is now slated to become the first suspect to face the death penalty under the Biden administration when his trial begins on Monday.
If a 12-member jury finds him guilty of the 2017 attack, which killed eight people and injured more than a dozen, it will meet again to decide whether to sentence Saipov to life in prison or execute him for his crimes.
Sayfullo Saipov will become the first person to face the death penalty under the Biden administration when his trial begins on Monday.
Attorney General Merrick Garland denied his lawyers’ requests to take the death penalty off the table, in a move that directly challenges President Joe Biden’s promise to end the death penalty.
Saipov is accused of running over a rental truck along the bike path on the west side of Manhattan on October 31, 2017.
Federal prosecutors have argued in court documents that Saipov deserves the death penalty because the attack was planned and premeditated, and he has shown a lack of remorse for his alleged actions.
They said the attack was intended to “advance the ideological goals” of Islamic State and argued that Saipov targeted the bike path on Halloween “to maximize the devastation of civilians.”
Jury selection in the case is expected to last nearly three months and, under federal law, a jury must reach a unanimous decision to impose the death penalty.
Prosecutors expect the trial to last until March, during which time graphic evidence and testimony about the attack are likely to be presented to the jury, in which he said he was inspired by ISIS videos he saw on his phone.
The assault only ended after he drove his truck into a school bus and waved a pellet and paintball gun while yelling ‘Allahu akbar,’ authorities said at the time.
Saipov was eventually arrested after being shot in the abdomen by a police officer.
It was the deadliest attack in New York City since September 11, 2001, which killed six tourists, a 24-year-old computer scientist from Manhattan and a 32-year-old financial worker from New Jersey.
Shortly after he was impeached, then-President Donald Trump tweeted that “I SHOULD GET [THE] DEATH PENALTY’, and his attorney general ordered prosecutors to seek execution if convicted.
In January 2018, one of Saipov’s lawyers wrote in court documents that Saipov would plead guilty and accept life in prison if prosecutors dropped the death penalty, but the proposal was not accepted by the Trump administration.
Once Biden took office, his lawyers tried again, making it clear that the offer still stood.
But on September 16, 2022, the Times reports, prosecutors wrote to Judge Vernon S. Broderick: “the attorney general has decided to continue seeking the death penalty.”
Saipov is accused of crashing his rental truck into a bike lane in Manhattan on October 31, 2017, killing eight people and injuring dozens more.
Authorities said at the time that the carnage only stopped when Saipov drove his pickup into a school bus and waved a pellet and paintball gun while shouting “Allahu akbar.” Then a policeman shot him in the abdomen and he was arrested.
The decision appeared to be a departure from Garland’s stance on capital punishment for the past two years.
Since taking office, Garland has not sought the death penalty in any new cases and has declared a national moratorium on federal executions.
The Justice Department also withdrew directives issued by previous administrations seeking the death penalty against 25 federal defendants.
And the Department of Justice has defended the appeal of the death sentence imposed during the Obama administration on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber, and Dylan S. Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine members of a black church in Carolina. from the south.
“It is very difficult to understand the way the Biden administration is thinking and proceeding with the federal death penalty,” said Austin Sanat, a professor of law and political science at Amherst College.
“Biden’s stance against the death penalty on the campaign trail was, I think, an important signal to many about what this administration could do,” he explained.
The moratorium on federal executions, that’s welcome. But no sign of anything beyond that.
Michael B Mukasey, attorney general for former President George W. Bush, said he also wasn’t sure what standard Garland used to determine cases.
“Clearly, he is following laws passed by Congress by reorganizing at least that the death penalty should be sought in some cases, regardless of President Biden’s contrary views,” he said.
“I think this is a principled decision and very much the right thing to do.”
President Joe Biden spoke out against the death penalty when he campaigned for president in 2020
Garland appeared to be at odds with President Joe Biden, who campaigned to end the death penalty, when he allowed Saipov’s trial to go ahead.
At his confirmation hearing, Garland said his view on capital punishment had changed.
As a Justice Department attorney, Garland led the investigation of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.
Timothy McVeigh, one of the attackers, was executed by lethal injection in 2001.
‘I supported the death penalty at the time for Mr. McVeigh in that individual case. I have no regrets,’ Garland testified in 2021.
But he added that he has since “developed concerns about the death penalty in the 20 years since.”
Among those concerns, he said, are the “kind of arbitrariness and randomness of its application because of how infrequently it is applied and because of its disparate impact on black Americans and members of other communities of color.” He also cited the large number of DNA exonerations.
Garland also acknowledged Biden’s opposition to the death penalty, as well as the presidential power to create a “general moratorium.”
“The Supreme Court has held that the death penalty is constitutional, but not mandatory,” Garland said at the time. “And that is at the discretion of the president.”
Under Biden’s direction, Garland imposed a moratorium on federal executions in July 2021, pending a review of department policies and procedures.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said at the time that Biden approved the decision.
“As the President has made clear, he has significant concerns about the death penalty and how it is implemented, and believes that the Department of Justice should return to its previous practice of not carrying out executions.”
Garland previously issued a stay on all federal executions and raised concerns about the death penalty.
But, experts point out, the president never ordered the attorney general to rule out capital punishment in all cases.
They say the fact that Garland is still seeking the death penalty for Saipov shows that the Biden administration will continue to execute those accused of terrorism.
They point to the fact that none of the 25 defendants whose death sentences were withdrawn by the Justice Department have been charged with a terrorism-related crime.
“It was clear early on that despite statements made by both the president and the attorney general, there was going to be this kind of separation around terrorism,” said Anthony L Ricco, a veteran death penalty defense attorney. .
“The only question on our minds was whether that was going to include what some people call domestic terrorism.”