{"id":7405,"date":"2025-01-10T00:45:29","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T00:45:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/?p=7405"},"modified":"2025-01-12T01:39:36","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T01:39:36","slug":"lachance-appraises-bidens-stance-on-ending-federal-executions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/2025\/01\/10\/lachance-appraises-bidens-stance-on-ending-federal-executions\/","title":{"rendered":"LaChance Appraises Biden&#8217;s Push to End Federal Executions"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" src=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/files\/2025\/01\/biden.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7411\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/files\/2025\/01\/biden.jpg 640w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/files\/2025\/01\/biden-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/files\/2025\/01\/biden-600x400.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/history.emory.edu\/people\/bios\/faculty-bios\/lachance-daniel.html\">Dr. Daniel LaChance<\/a>, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow in Law and the Humanities and Associate Professor of History, was quoted in a mid-December 2024 <em>U.S. News &amp; World Report <\/em>article about whether President Biden would seek to commute the sentences of remaining prisoners on federal death row. A week after that article, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/briefing-room\/statements-releases\/2024\/12\/23\/fact-sheet-president-biden-commutes-the-sentences-of-37-individuals-on-death-row\/\">Biden administration announced<\/a> that 37 of those 40 prisoners would have their sentences reclassified to life without parole. <\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/files\/2025\/01\/lachance-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7408\" style=\"width:525px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/files\/2025\/01\/lachance-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/files\/2025\/01\/lachance-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/files\/2025\/01\/lachance-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/files\/2025\/01\/lachance-600x400.jpg 600w, https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/files\/2025\/01\/lachance.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>LaChance is a legal scholar working at the intersection of American legal and cultural history, criminology, and literary studies. His books include <a href=\"https:\/\/press.uchicago.edu\/ucp\/books\/book\/chicago\/E\/bo16393214.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(University of Chicago Press, 2016) and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sup.org\/books\/title\/?id=30161\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>Crimesploitation<\/em><\/a> (Stanford University Press, 2022), co-authored with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/spa.sdsu.edu\/fac_staff\/spa_profiles\/paul-kaplan\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Paul Kaplan<\/a>. Read an excerpt from the <em>U.S. News &amp; World Report <\/em>article below along with the full piece here: &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.usnews.com\/news\/national-news\/articles\/2024-12-16\/biden-made-a-promise-to-end-the-federal-death-penalty-will-he-bend-to-pressure-to-empty-death-row\">Biden Made a Promise to End the Federal Death Penalty. Will He Bend to Pressure to Empty Death Row?<\/a>&#8220;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><em>\u201cHe&#8217;s very much made the death penalty a symbol of what he represents,\u201d Daniel LaChance, an associate professor at Emory University who wrote the book \u201c<\/em>Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States<em>,\u201d says of Trump.<br \/><br \/>\u201cIt&#8217;s pretty shrewd on his part because we know that support for the death penalty is concentrated amongst white Protestant Republicans \u2013 a key and core part of his base,\u201d LaChance says.<br \/><br \/>Overall, about 53% of Americans support the death penalty for someone convicted of murder, according to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/1606\/death-penalty.aspx\">polling<\/a>\u00a0from Gallup. Support for the death penalty for a convicted murderer has been trending down in recent decades after reaching a historic high of 80% in 1994, according to Gallup.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Daniel LaChance, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow in Law and the Humanities and Associate Professor of History, was quoted in a mid-December 2024 U.S. News &amp; World Report article about whether President Biden would seek to commute the sentences of remaining prisoners on federal death row. A week after that article, the Biden administration [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-faculty","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7405"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7424,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions\/7424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scholarblogs.emory.edu\/emoryhistorynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}