Obama: Death penalty 'deeply troubling' The president tells the Marshall Project that he intends to increase the pace of commutations and pardons in his last year in office.

There may be good reasons to impose the death penalty for some crimes, but in practice the way the punishment is meted out in America is "deeply troubling," President Barack Obama said in an interview.

"You know, my historic position, and it's heartfelt, [is] that there are certain crimes that are so beyond the pale that I understand society's need to express its outrage,'' the president told journalist Bill Keller in an interview with The Marshall Project published Friday. ``So I have not traditionally been opposed to the death penalty in theory, but in practice, it's deeply troubling.''


Obama also cited a "racial bias ... built into the death penalty," calling it "hugely inefficient,'' and noted that his administration plans to increase the rate of commutations and pardons in his final year in office. The interview was taped Thursday, the same day Keller moderated a discussion on criminal justice reform at the White House.

"We know that there are people who have been on death row who have been freed because later on it's been proven that they were innocent,'' Obama said. ``We know that in the application of the death penalty, we've had recent cases in which by any standard, it has not been swift and painless but rather gruesome and clumsy. And all of this, I think, has led me to express some very significant reservations."

The president added that he had told the Department of Justice and the White House counsel to take "a hard look" at the facts of individual cases, urging them to include an examination of the death penalty in the discussion about creating a "more fair" and "more just" criminal justice system.

Obama asked then-Attorney General Eric Holder to initiate a review of the state of capital punishment in the United States in May 2014, following the botched execution of an inmate in Oklahoma, but administration movement on the issue has stalled.

"I've got, it turns out, Bill, a whole lot of other things to do as well," Obama said, including advancing criminal justice legislation through Congress.

Asked by Keller if he would follow a recommendation from the Justice Department White House counsel to take action to curb executions, Obama remarked, "If a decision is going to be made about this, it's going to be something that I say and then the attorney general and the White House counsel's office will follow up."