The death penalty, life sentences without parole, and juvenile life sentences without parole
Recommendations 51, 180, 194, 195–198, 199, 200, 234, 292
26. There is a robust debate in the United States about the morality of the death penalty and the fairness of the sentencing process. Currently, twenty-eight (28) states and the federal government authorize the death penalty; twenty-two (22) states and the District of Columbia do not authorize the death penalty; and the Governors of three (3) states that authorize the death penalty have placed a moratorium on executions.
27. The death penalty is legal under federal law for specified crimes involving, inter alia, murder; for various other violent crimes (such as terrorism, kidnapping, arson, or carjacking) that both result in death and were committed with the requisite mental state; for treason, which, under the Constitution, “consist[s] only in levying war against the [United States], or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort;” and espionage in time of war or that results in the death of an agent of the United States or the compromise of major weapons or defensive systems.34 In the states, the death penalty is reserved for murder or, in some situations, causing death while committing other serious crimes such as kidnapping. In all cases, the court or jury must find the circumstances of the crime to be particularly heinous, and convictions are subject to multiple levels of appellate court review. After judicial review is complete, both federal and state laws provide for review by the executive branch (President or Governor) prior to the execution of any death sentence.35
28. In July 2019, the Attorney General directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to schedule the executions of five federal death row inmates, each of whom was convicted of murdering children and each of whom had exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies. After last-minute legal proceedings were concluded, three were executed in July 2020: Daniel Lewis Lee, a white supremacist, who murdered a family of three, including an eight-year-old girl; Wesley Ira Purkey, who violently raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl, and then dismembered, burned, and dumped her body in a septic pond; and Dustin Lee Honken, who murdered five people – two men who planned to testify against him in a drug trafficking case, and a single, working mother and her ten-year-old and six-year-old daughters. Lezmond Mitchell is scheduled for execution on August 26, 2020, after being sentenced to death for stabbing to death a 63-year-old grandmother and forcing her nine-year-old granddaughter to sit beside her lifeless body for a 30 to 40-mile drive before slitting the girl’s throat, crushing her head with 20-pound rocks and severing and burying both victims’ heads and hands. The execution of Keith Dwayne Nelson, who kidnapped a 10-year-old girl rollerblading in front of her home, and in a forest behind a church, raped and strangled her to death with a wire, is scheduled for execution on August 28, 2020.
29. The federal government and the twenty-eight (28) states that permit the death penalty also permit, subject to significant limitations (such as a unanimous jury verdict), the imposition of a life sentence without parole. Of the twenty-two (22) states that do not permit the death penalty, twenty-one (21) and the District of Columbia permit the imposition of life sentences without parole. Alaska does not permit either the death penalty or life imprisonment without parole.
30. Mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles have been unconstitutional in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in Miller v. Alabama.
31. Because the United States is a federal republic, decisions regarding abolition of the death penalty and life sentences without parole are reserved, in the case of federal crimes, for Congress, and in the case of all other crimes, to the state legislatures or to the People themselves.36 The state and federal courts maintain an active role in assuring that all necessary procedural protections are available to those convicted of capital crimes or sentenced to a life term without parole.37
Investigations, sentencing, and detention
Recommendations 213, 218, 260, 235, 236, 274, 275, 279, 281
32. The United States seeks to ensure that all levels of the state and federal justice systems operate fairly and effectively for all. In December 2018, President Trump signed into law the First Step Act,38 the most significant federal criminal justice reform measure in several decades.39 The President noted in 2019: “This legislation reformed sentencing laws that have wrongly and disproportionately harmed the African-American community. The First Step Act gives non-violent offenders the chance to reenter society as productive, law-abiding citizens. Now states across the country are following our lead.”40
33. The Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) gives DOJ tools to investigate and correct prison conditions and conditions in other public institutions where there is reason to believe that a pattern or practice of deprivation of constitutional rights of individuals may exist. For example, in April 2019, DOJ announced it had found reasonable cause to believe that conditions in Alabama’s prisons for men violated the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution because they did not provide safe conditions and failed to protect prisoners from prisoner-on-prisoner violence and prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse. DOJ provided Alabama written notice of the supporting facts for these alleged conditions and the minimum remedial measures necessary to address them.41 In July 2020, DOJ made similar findings with regard to the use of excessive force in Alabama prisons.42
Gun violence
Recommendations 230–233
34. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States protects the individual right to keep and bear arms, subject to certain long-standing prohibitions such as those forbidding the possession of firearms by felons or restrictions on the carrying of particularly dangerous and unusual weapons.43 Federal, state, and local governments are all therefore limited in how they may regulate firearms. In addition, the right to keep and bear arms is embodied in forty-four (44) state constitutions, which may further limit official action on a state-by-state basis. At the same time that the United States supports the right of individuals to bear arms lawfully, it is engaged in a variety of efforts to ensure that criminals, especially those who use firearms in the commission of their crimes, are pursued and appropriately punished.
35. Since 2001, DOJ has implemented Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), bringing together law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and make neighborhoods safer.44 DOJ reinvigorated PSN in 2017 as part of its renewed focus on targeting violent criminals, including those committing gun violence, directing all U.S.
Attorneys’ Offices to work in partnership with federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement and the local community to develop effective, locally based strategies to reduce violent crime.
36. The Attorney General announced in November 2019 the launch of Project Guardian, a new initiative designed to reduce gun violence and enforce federal firearms laws across the country. Project Guardian’s implementation is based on five principles: (1) coordinated prosecution, (2) enforcing the background check system, (3) improved information sharing, (4) coordinated response to mental health denials, and (5) crime gun intelligence coordination.45
Violence against women
Recommendation: 255
37. The United States seeks to safeguard and protect women and girls and strongly supports eliminating violence against them. The United States introduced its Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security (WPS Strategy) in June of 2019.46 The WPS Strategy responds to the Women, Peace, and Security Act of 2017, which President Trump signed into law on October 6, 2017.47 The Act is the first legislation of its kind globally, which makes the United States the first country in the world with a comprehensive law to prevent, mitigate, and resolve violence against women internationally. The United States remains a strong defender of women, men, and their children, and is a major funder of programs, both at home and abroad, to improve the health, life, dignity, and well-being of women, their children, and their families.
38. DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) provides federal leadership in developing the national capacity to reduce violence against women and administer justice for and strengthen services to victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. In 1994, Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in recognition of the severity of crimes associated with domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. Created in 1995, OVW administers financial and technical assistance to communities across the country that are developing programs, policies, and practices aimed at ending domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. OVW administers both formula-based and discretionary grant programs, established under VAWA and subsequent legislation, that support efforts to provide services to victims and hold perpetrators accountable through promoting a coordinated community response.
Funding is awarded to local, state, and tribal governments, courts, non-profit organizations, community-based organizations, secondary schools, institutions of higher education, and state and tribal coalitions. Grants are used to develop effective responses to violence against women through activities that include direct services, crisis intervention, transitional housing, legal assistance to victims, court improvement, and training for law enforcement and courts. Since its inception, OVW has awarded over $8.1 billion in grants and
cooperative agreements and has launched a multifaceted approach to implementing VAWA. By forging state, local, and tribal partnerships among police, prosecutors, judges, victim advocates, health care providers, faith leaders, and others, OVW grant programs help provide victims with the protection and services they need to pursue safe and healthy lives, while simultaneously enabling communities to hold offenders accountable for their violence.
39. OVW administers the Grants to Reduce Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence, Dating Violence and Stalking on Campus Program, which supports institutions of higher education in implementing comprehensive, coordinated responses to violent crimes on campuses.48 This federal grant program supports the development and strengthening of effective security and investigation strategies to combat domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking on campuses, development and strengthening of victim services in cases involving such crimes on campuses, which include partnerships with local criminal justice authorities and community-based victim services agencies, and the development and strengthening of prevention education and awareness programs.
40. In 2013, DHS established an agency-wide Council on Combating Violence against Women to coordinate DHS’s efforts to stop crimes against women and ensure the effective administration of laws aimed at preventing violence against women. In 2016, the Department approved a grant of $9.2 million from DOJ and the Department of Housing and Urban (HUD) for stable housing to victims of domestic violence living with HIV/AIDS, and the 2016 launch of a research and evaluation initiative to develop a peer support group model.
41. In 2016, HUD issued guidance on local nuisance ordinances that may lead to discrimination under the Fair Housing Act against survivors of domestic violence and other persons in need of emergency services. HUD also published final rules under VAWA 2013, enhancing housing protections for victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.49
Human trafficking
Recommendations 262, 264–266, 268–273, 328
42. The U. S. Government is actively engaged in activities to combat human trafficking in all its forms, including sex and labor trafficking through the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. President Trump has signed nine pieces of anti-trafficking legislation into law, including the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2017, the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2018, the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act of 2017 and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act of 2017.
43. The President honored the 20th Anniversary of the landmark Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) at a White House Summit on Human Trafficking on January 31, 2020. During the Summit, the President signed the Executive Order on Combating Human Trafficking and Online Child Exploitation in the United States Strengthening Federal Responsiveness to Human Trafficking.50
44. In FY2019, DOJ brought 220 human trafficking prosecutions, charged 343 defendants, and secured federal convictions against 475 traffickers. In FY 2019, OJP’s Bureau of Justice Assistance made awards of more than $100 million for human trafficking programs, including programs that provide a comprehensive range of direct services for victims of human trafficking. In FY 2019, Office for Victims of Crime (OVC) programs served 8,375 victims and trained over 82,000 professionals to better identify and serve victims of trafficking. In FY 2019, OVC, in partnership with Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), funded a total of 15 Enhanced Collaborative Model Human Trafficking Task Forces. In FY 2019, DOJ continued investing in research to develop new knowledge and tools to combat human trafficking more effectively.51
45. DHS Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (ICE/HSI) identified and assisted 428 human trafficking victims and initiated 1,024 human trafficking criminal cases in FY 2019 and reported 2,197 criminal arrests, 1,113 criminal
counts charged in indictments, and 691 criminal counts in federal, state, and local convictions.52 HHS continued to fund an NGO to operate the national human trafficking hotline. In FY 2019, the hotline received 136,990 calls, texts, chats, online tips, and emails, identified 11, 852 potential human trafficking cases, and provided resources and referrals to 3,828 potential victims.53
46. DOT and DHS/CBP lead the Blue Lightning Initiative (BLI), an element of DHS’s Blue Campaign that trains airline personnel to identify potential traffickers and human trafficking victims, and to report their suspicions to federal law enforcement. To date, more than 100,000 personnel in the aviation industry have been trained through the BLI, and actionable tips continue to be reported to law enforcement.54
47. In FY 2019, DHS/U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) approved 500 applications for nonimmigrant status for victims of severe forms of trafficking in persons, and approved 491 applications for their eligible family members.
48. In FY 2018 and 2019, the DHS/Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC)55 trained over 5,500 federal law enforcement officers through its basic training programs on indicators of human trafficking. FLETC has developed a one-day Introductory Human Trafficking Awareness Training Program for federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies, designed to instill awareness of indicators of human trafficking for the broader law enforcement community.56
49. The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) provided victim services to 13 tribes for detection of and response to human trafficking in Indian Country.
The Department of Labor (DOL) funded several projects to combat forced labor, including a $2 million, four-year project to combat forced labor and human trafficking in the cocoa supply chain and other sectors in Ghana, and a new $5 million four-year project to combat forced labor and human trafficking on fishing vessels in Indonesia and the Philippines.
DOL also released the mobile and web application Comply Chain: Business Tools for Labor Compliance in Global Supply Chains, which provides companies and industry groups practical guidance on how to identify risks of forced labor in their supply chains and mitigate or mediate abuses.57 Companies that implement compliance systems are less likely to risk importing goods made by forced labor and run afoul of U.S. law.
50. The Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) issued its most recent Trafficking in Persons Report in June 2020, where the United States comprehensively assesses what governments around the world are doing to combat this crime.58 The TIP Report is an invaluable tool the United States uses to arm ourselves with the latest information and guides our actions both domestically and abroad.
Human rights education, training, and community engagement
Recommendations 73, 74
51. Respect for human rights is reflected in the Constitution, laws, regulations, and policies. Many schools feature human rights education, and some of them have centers focused on the study of human rights. Professional organizations and others have educational programs. Law enforcement and immigration screening personnel receive training on prohibitions against unlawful discrimination and racial and ethnic profiling. In 2019, DOJ/CRD and the U.S. Attorney’s Office hosted a roundtable on sexual harassment in housing, while the DOJ Community Relations Service works with communities to address conflict related to discrimination and similar matters.