By Christopher Anders, ACLU Senior Legislative Counsel
This afternoon, the Senate passed Senator Jeff Sessions' (R-Ala.) amendment to the hate crimes provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (S. 1390). His dangerous, misguided, and unconstitutional amendment seeks to expand the scope of the federal death penalty, as well as extend it to include non-homicide crimes.
The ACLU has several concerns with Sen. Sessions' amendment. First, capital punishment is an unreliable form of punishment that has the disturbingly frequent result of being imposed on the innocent. Second, expansion of the death penalty under the Sessions amendment would directly defy the precedent of the Supreme Court that has held repeatedly that the death penalty cannot be used in anything less than homicide cases. Third, the amendment seriously obstructs Americans' civil rights. The death penalty is always wrong.
d African American transgender woman, continues in Syracuse, N.Y. Ms. Green was shot and killed on November 14, 2008, and the shooter, Dwight R. DeLee, was allegedly motivated by anti-LGBT bias and his belief that Lateisha was gay. The Onondaga County District Attorney has charged DeLee with second degree murder as a hate crime.