FIRST ON FOX: A professional-Trump former Florida jail warden who oversaw executions is urging President Biden to commute all federal and navy loss of life sentences earlier than leaving workplace.
“I voted for President Trump in all of his campaigns, and I agree with him on most of his positions, however not the loss of life penalty,” Ron McAndrew, former warden of the Florida State Penitentiary, wrote in a letter to the outgoing president. “I’ve written to President Trump personally to ask him to cease calling for extra executions.”
McAndrew, a self-described “law-and-order man,” Air Drive veteran and pro-life Catholic, mentioned that after overseeing three electrical chair executions and witnessing 5 deadly injections, he grew to oppose the loss of life penalty.Â
Whereas he had reservations from the beginning, he informed Fox Information Digital that he noticed a burst of flames from the pinnacle of Pedro Medina throughout his execution in 1997 on the electrical chair. That incident grew to become a watershed second in Florida and different elements of the nation that marked the start of the top of electrocution.Â
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Ron McAndrew, a former Florida jail warden, testifies throughout a 2019 listening to concerning a loss of life row inmate. (Doug Engle/Ocala Star-Banner)
“A plume of smoke after which a flame that got here down beneath the helmet and out proper in entrance of my face, had it come a number of inches additional, it might have truly burned me,” he mentioned.Â
Later, he mentioned the stench was so overpowering that, “it was like we had gone to a human barbecue.”
State investigators discovered that Medina, a convicted assassin and Cuban refugee, had died immediately – however the incident traumatized McAndrew and at the very least two dozen different witnesses, he mentioned.
The incident led Florida to undertake deadly injections as a substitute, however he mentioned that type of execution was no much less disturbing for the jail employees who carried it out.
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Pedro Medina, a convicted killer, was sentenced to loss of life and went to the electrical chair on March 25, 1997. He was one of many final inmates electrocuted on this method after his head burst into flames, filling the chamber with smoke and horrifying onlookers. (Archive PL / Alamy Inventory Picture)
“The heaving of the chest is an instance,” he informed Fox Information Digital. “You’ll be able to see it when you’re up shut, and you are the executioner or a member of the group. You’ll be able to see that they are making an attempt to interrupt out of their very own physique, so to talk. However the witnesses do not see this. They see it as, like, a clear, a sanitary type of killing somebody.”
At one level, he mentioned, he started seeing executed inmates in his sleep and ingesting closely – half a bottle of Johnnie Walker an evening – because of this. Ultimately, he was identified with extreme stress. Now he’s a staunch supporter of abolishing the loss of life penalty.
Learn the letter right here:
“I really feel compelled to say there’s one factor particularly that I agree about with President Biden,” McAndrew wrote in his letter. “We share a robust opposition to the loss of life penalty. President Biden has the ability to point out mercy by means of the method of govt clemency, and I urge that he achieve this expeditiously for everybody on the federal and navy loss of life rows.”
When requested why the worst of the worst killers on loss of life row, together with Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof and Pittsburgh synagogue gunman Robert Bowers, ought to have their lives spared, he questioned the place we must always draw the road and advised incarcerating all of them with no risk of parole as a substitute.
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“If this identical inmate was doing life with out risk of parole, he’d be working between 40 and 60 hours per week whether or not he appreciated it or not,” he mentioned. “He could be making a contribution…quite than being a burden on the taxpayers, sitting in a cell getting room service for 25 years.”
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Abraham Bonowitz, who co-founded the group Loss of life Penalty Motion with McAndrew, informed Fox Information Digital that capital punishment shouldn’t be a partisan challenge.
“Capital punishment is authorities overreach at its worst,” he mentioned. “Anybody who doesn’t belief the federal government to tax us pretty or give you a secure vaccine ought to have a tough time trusting authorities with the ability to execute its residents.”
He additionally prolonged the attraction to Elon Musk, the longer term co-head of a brand new Division of Authorities Effectivity, if Biden rejects the letter.
President Biden, not pictured, meets with President-elect Donald Trump within the Oval Workplace of the White Home on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (AP Picture/Evan Vucci)
“We’re excited to have a cupboard degree official targeted on authorities effectivity, as a result of that is the primary time anybody within the federal authorities is positioned to get rid of the loss of life penalty by govt order,” Bonowitz mentioned. “There isn’t any present authorities program extra wasteful, ineffective and inefficient than capital punishment.”
The letter comes as Trump has vowed to not solely finish Biden’s moratorium on capital punishment, but in addition to develop the record of crimes that may be punishable with execution to incorporate little one rape, human trafficking and the homicide of U.S. residents by unlawful immigrants.
There are at the moment 40 inmates on federal loss of life row, and so they embody home terrorists, drug kingpins and criminals who had witnesses in opposition to them killed.
Tsarnaev, who killed 4 and wounded tons of; Roof, who killed 9 at a Bible examine; Bowers, who killed 11 on the Tree of Life Synagogue; and Kaboni Savage, a Philadelphia drug lord who killed 12 individuals – together with 4 youngsters linked to an informant – would all see clemency beneath the proposal.
President Biden listens as Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani speaks within the Oval Workplace of the White Home on April 15, 2024 in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Pictures)
The U.S. authorities has executed 50 inmates since 1927, based on the Bureau of Prisons, together with Oklahoma Metropolis bomber Timothy McVeigh and Chilly Warfare spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. That’s far fewer than the person states, which have executed greater than 1,500 condemned inmates within the final 50 years.
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McAndrew additionally took challenge with the particular remedy loss of life row inmates obtain. Not like different prisoners, they don’t have to work a job behind bars and contribute, in a roundabout way, to their very own “repairs.” They’ve a TV, a non-public cell and are saved separate from the overall inhabitants.
In locations like California, the place loss of life row inmates are secure from execution because of a moratorium in opposition to capital punishment, in addition they have entry to elite attorneys and on a regular basis on the planet to attempt to combat their circumstances.
The feds carried out loss of life sentences for 13 federal prisoners throughout Trump’s first time period, essentially the most beneath any president in a century. Biden declared a moratorium on federal executions after taking workplace in 2021.
The White Home didn’t reply to a request for remark.
