Charities criticise Trump’s ‘compulsion’ to kill as administration on track to break execution records

Charities have hit out at the Trump administration’s record-breaking number of federal executions and called on Mr Biden to do more to halt upcoming scheduled capital punishments.

Although the president’s term is drawing to an end, his administration has ramped up the pace of federal executions, having announced plans for five sentences to be carried out before Inauguration Day on 20 January.

Robert Durham, director of the non-partisan Death Penalty Information Center, criticised the bold move, explaining it marks an unprecedented break from the tradition of deferring to the president-elect.

If the executions are followed through as planned, Mr Trump’s administration will become the first US government since the 1800s to execute federal inmates during a presidential transition, Mr Durham said.

"It's hard to understand why anybody at this stage of a presidency feels compelled to kill this many people ... especially when the American public voted for someone else to replace you and that person has said he opposes the death penalty," he said.

"This is a complete historical aberration."

Mr Trump will also cement his legacy as the most prolific execution president in more than 130 years, with the recent executions marking 13 such penalties since July, when Republicans resumed putting inmates to death.

The last presidency during which the number of civilians executed federally reached double digits in a year, was that of Grover Cleveland, whose administration oversaw the execution of 14 people in 1896.

Anti-death penalty groups are calling for president-elect Joe Biden to lobby harder for a halt to the slew of pre-inaugural executions.

However, as Mr Trump continues to refuse to concede the election and has promoted baseless claims of electoral fraud after delaying the official transition process, it remains unclear how the incoming president may influence the policy.

One group, the Ohio-based Death Penalty Action, has received around 3,000 signatures on a petition calling for Mr Biden to make "a clear and strong statement" demanding a halt to the executions.

While Mr Biden now rivals the penalty, he previously played a central role in crafting a 1994 crime bill that expanded the federal crimes for which someone could be put to death.

The ramping up of executions has reinforced criticism that the bill disproportionately impacted Black people, with four of the five people set to die over the next few weeks being Black.

"He is acknowledging the sins" of the past, said Abraham Bonowitz, Death Penalty Action's director. "Now he's got to fix it."

The president-elect has since acknowledged that the bill is flawed, and a spokesman told the AP that he planned to work to end the death penalty when he is in office.

"Mr Biden has said he intends to end the federal death penalty," Mr Durham said. "We'll have to wait and see if that happens."

Reporting by the Associated Press