Most executions in the USA are conducted at a state level. Very few folk are executed for Federal Crimes. But apparently, according to Asawin Auebsaeng and Patrick Reis in Rolling Stone, in allowing the execution of 13 murderers in 6 months, the narrative is “Trump’s Killing Spree: The Inside Story of His Race to Execute Every Prisoner He Could.” Let me put this in context with regard to Bill Clinton.
13 folks in 6 months in a population of 330 million works out at an annualised “killing spree” of 0.078 folks per million. Some spree! Rolling Stone makes great play of the fact that prior to Trump there were only 3 Federal executions in 60 years. The Death Penalty only came back in 1975 and so the three executions were, in fact, all post 2000.
Meanwhile let’s go to Arkansas where the death penalty was brought back into play in 1975. But there were no executions allowed for fifteen years, nine of which were with Bill Clinton as Governor.
But in 1990, with two years left as Governor, Clinton decided to run for President and thus ordered four executions in the following two years, indeed ostentatiously leaving the campaign trail, in 1992 to return back to Little Rock to order the execution of Ricky Ray Rector a man of colour who had as well as shooting two cops in 1981, shot himself in the head so effectively having a lobotomy. When presented with his last meal he asked the officers if he could save the pudding for “after”. Clinton made much of the execution of Ricky Ray. It showed he was tough on crime.
The population of Arkansas is 3 million. So, 4 folks killed by Clinton in two years works out at an annualised rate of 0.67 per million. Basic maths suggest that if anyone went on a killing spree it was Clinton not Trump. And whereas there were post 1975 Federal executions pre Trump ( all under Bush), in sending his four chaps to the electric chair, Clinton set an unhappy precedent and clearly did so for personal electoral gain.
But the liberal media never care about facts or putting matters in context. They still have #TrumpDerangementSyndrome