Another unfortunate reality is that the federal death penalty is marred by the same problems of racial bias and geographical disparity found in the state death penalty systems. Just three Southern states — Texas, Virginia, and Missouri — are responsible for nearly half of the federal death row population. People of color, particularly African-American men, also account for more than half of all current federal death sentences.

And the overlap between these two areas of disparity is significant: Every person on the federal death row from Virginia and all from the Eastern District of Missouri are people of color. And people of color have received 75 percent of federal death sentences imposed in Texas in the modern era.

There is another deep-seated problem in the federal death-penalty system that often escapes public notice: Federal prisoners typically get less judicial scrutiny of their convictions and death sentences than do state death-row prisoners. People sentenced to death in state courts can mount appeals in their state jurisdictions and then turn to a habeas proceeding in the federal courts. Those sentenced federally have only a single chance in post-conviction to seek redress and then have no automatic right to appeal.

Whether they get an appeal within the single federal system varies widely by region. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas (the state with the most federal death sentences), has never granted a federal death row prisoner permission to appeal based on a post-conviction issue. The Supreme Court has granted review in only one federal death penalty case in the modern era, and that was two decades ago. The number of federal death sentences returned since then has tripled.

Indeed, although the governing law could be read to entitle all condemned federal prisoners to an evidentiary hearing on their post-conviction claims, many federal death-row prisoners have completed all available appeals without ever having a court consider evidence in support of unsettling allegations such as judicial bias or improper jury conduct.

This is certainly true of the men scheduled for execution. In each case, they received either no evidentiary hearing in post-conviction proceedings or only a limited opportunity to develop their claims, and were then barred from appealing most or all of their post-conviction claims. As a former attorney general, I have no interest in seeing unnecessary delays or frivolous claims raised in any litigation, including in capital cases. But the problems in these cases, particularly where the people scheduled to be executed have been denied meaningful review, should trouble all of us.

Much has been written in recent years about the decline of the death penalty in America, a decline that has occurred for good reason. Capital punishment is costly, offers no proven deterrent benefit and delays healing for victims’ family members, while also traumatizing correctional officers and risking the execution of innocent people. These flaws are inherent in the system, just as much in the case of the federal death penalty as in the states.

The federal government has not executed anyone since 2003. In light of all the problems with the federal death penalty, as reflected in the cases set for execution, the Trump administration should keep it that way.

Jim Petro was the attorney general of Ohio from 2003 to 2007.

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