New details of the 13 federal executions at the end of Donald Trump's presidency revealed Trump seemingly doubted Brandon Bernard's execution, but that it was "too late" to call the execution off.
In 2020, a day before the federal government executed Bernard for the murder of an Iowa couple when he was 18, celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz pleaded with then-President Trump to call the execution off. According to the Associated Press, who recently spoke with Dershowitz, new details surrounding Bernard's case revealed that Trump said he wished he could spare Bernard's life.
During a 20-minute phone call on December 9, 2020, to the White House, Dershowitz told Trump he believed Bernard was not the same man he was when he committed the murders and that he deserved to have his sentence reduced from execution to life in prison.
Trump responded to Dershowitz's plea by saying he wished he could spare Bernard's life, but that he'd already promised the victims' relatives that Bernard would be put to death.
"'They're on their way. They're on their way,'" Trump kept saying, Dershowitz recalled to the Associated Press. "The relatives, Trump explained, were on the road to the prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where federal executions are carried out and it was too late to pull them back.'"
Bernard was then executed the next day.
This comes after Trump touted his prison reform approach in early 2020 and met with several women, whose prison sentences he commuted, along with Kim Kardashian to the White House to advocate for criminal justice reform.
Despite the former president signing the First Step Act into law in 2018, enacting historic reforms to make the justice system fairer, more recently in an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier, Trump has defended his support of the death penalty, specifically for drug dealers.
"That's the only way you're going to stop it. If you want to get rid of it—now, I don't know that this country is ready for it. I just don't know. You know, every time I say it, I sort of like—it's not easy to say the death penalty," Trump told Fox News.
However, according to Dershowitz, he believes Trump might have intervened if he hadn't already made his promise to the victim's relatives.
"This is a terrible thing to say, but I believe if I had spoken to the president a month earlier, I might have been able to persuade him," Dershowitz told AP.
In addition, some warn Trump's views on the death penalty could lead to more executions if Trump wins the 2024 election.
"So, unless Biden clears death row, history will repeat itself if a pro-death penalty candidate, like Trump, wins in 2024," Robert Dunham, a Temple Law School adjunct professor on capital punishment, told AP.
Newsweek has reached out to the Trump campaign and to experts on capital punishment for additional comment.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Natalie Venegas is a Weekend Reporter at Newsweek based in New York. Her focus is reporting on education, social justice ... Read more
To read how Newsweek uses AI as a newsroom tool, Click here.
