Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Monday that the Trump administration's reinstatement of the federal death penalty in July "will reassure law-abiding citizens that our government has the will to protect them from violence."
"It will remind criminals that justice may be delayed, even for years, but it cannot be avoided," Cotton said in an opinion piece, co-authored with Arkansas Attorney General and Republican Leslie Rutledge in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
The Justice Department reinstated a two-decades-long dormant policy allowing the federal government's use of capital punishment and scheduled the executions for five death-row federal inmates.
According to Cotton and Rutledge, the administration's decision would "end this misguided moratorium and align the federal capital-crimes process more closely with the policy of our state and many others."
They acknowledged that "some Arkansans have principled objections to the death penalty," but argued that "the ultimate punishment is warranted for the most heinous murderers.
"Capital punishment can help bring closure for victims' families, deter other would-be murderers, and express the moral outrage of our society for the most atrocious crimes," the authors said.
Of the five capital cases scheduled for execution by U.S. Attorney General William Barr, two occurred in Arkansas: Daniel Lewis Lee, a white supremacist was convicted in 1999 of murdering a family of three; and Karl Roberts, who was found guilty the same year of killing his 12-year-old niece — who was also the daughter of a state legislator.
Lee is scheduled to be executed in December.
"A decent society must respond decisively to crime in order to preserve law and order," Cotton and Rutledge said. "For the most severe crimes, where innocent life has been stolen, even life in prison can be an inadequate punishment."
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