Trump's sinister home stretch

The president of the United States, in a file image.CARLOS BARRIA / Reuters

If Donald Trump's first weeks in the White House showed numerous signs of being chaotic, the latter are proving bleak and dangerous.

In a context of irresponsible erosion of democratic institutions with false accusations, controversial foreign policy decisions and political violence, the natural fruit of years of polarizing rhetoric, there is the decision, without precedent in recent history, to carry out executions during the period of transition after the electoral defeat and before Joe Biden takes office.

Trump thus breaks a long tradition, after ending in July the moratorium that was maintained for 17 years on the executions of prisoners sentenced to death in the federal circuit - which does not depend on the States.

Last week, in just two days, two men were executed.

On Thursday, Brandon Bernard, 40, the youngest inmate federally sentenced to death in the past seven decades, received a lethal injection.

The next day Alfred Bourgeois, 56, died by the same procedure.

A third prisoner was executed in November;

and three other death sentences issued by federal courts should be carried out before January 20.

If so, Trump will become the president who has allowed the most death sentences in more than a century and will have done so in 13 cases since July this year.

This is a true tragedy for many reasons.

The first, the inhumanity of punishment that is largely restricted, if not completely abolished, in most of the world's democracies.

But it also breaks a trend of decline in the application of capital punishment in the US that has lasted 18 years.

Currently, some 2,500 people wait on the so-called death row of US prisons.

Of these, fifty do so in federal prisons.

In state prisons, the governor can commute execution until the last second as a measure of grace, but in federal prisons this privilege belongs to the president.

Trump has not only failed to exercise it, but has allowed the death sentences to be carried out knowing that the electorate has already elected another president who - having long been a supporter of the death penalty - is now against the conviction. capital.

You can not miss this attitude of the president.

Consistent with his scorched earth policy, Trump is causing all possible damage to institutions and to coexistence in the United States, where episodes of political violence - such as the clashes on Saturday night in Washington - are taking place unheard of.

But while institutions and coexistence can be restored, the lives of those executed are irreplaceable.