Merrick Garland, the Attorney General, has elected to go against the wishes of President Joe Biden in his efforts to seek the death penalty for an alleged Islamist terrorist that stands accused of murdering eight and causing injury to well over a dozen during a 2017 truck attack in New York City.
Biden promised to put an end to all federal executions, but his top legal mouthpiece is looking into utilizing the ultimate penalty for this case involving an Uzbekistan national who allegedly plowed through a group of cyclists and pedestrians standing on a bike path next to Manhattan’s West Side Highway on Halloween five years ago. Monday kicked off the federal trial for this case.
“Clearly, he is following laws Congress passed by recognizing at least that the death penalty should be sought in some cases, regardless of President Biden’s contrary views,” explained Michael Mukasey, who is known for serving as the attorney general under President George W. Bush, to The New York Times. “I think this is a principled decision and very much the right thing to do.”
It was stated by federal prosecutors that the defendant, who allegedly drove a rented truck through a crowded bike path before slamming into a school bus, the entire time screaming “Allahu Akbar,” planned out the attack and has offered up no remorse in the wake of his arrest. They have made the claim that he ended up being radicalized by watching videos of ISIS.
The dead from the event included six tourists, a Wall Street worker from New Jersey, and a computer scientist hailing from New York.
This alleged murderer will be the very first, under the Biden administration, federal defendant to be threatened with the death penalty. If he does end up being convicted, it will be left to the jury to determine whether the prisoner will be executed or just given a lifetime prison sentence. In order for the death penalty to be imposed on the suspect, the jury needs to agree to it unanimously.
In the months following the egregious attack, the lawyer for the suspect offered up a guilty plea for a guarantee of just life in prison, but such a deal was shot down by the Trump administration. While under Trump, officials of the Justice Department brought back the death penalty in 2019, a total of 16 years in the wake of the last federal convict having been executed. The penalty was still legally available on the books but had not been brought up because of the ongoing lawsuits about the drugs utilized in the standard lethal injections. Then-Attorney General William Barr sent out an order to the Bureau of Prisons to start utilizing pentobarbital, and 13 federal convicts were officially executed prior to Trump leaving office.
