Donald Trump has a poor record on criminal justice

The argument

The case that Joe Biden would be better for criminal justice rests on what the alternative record actually contains, and it begins well before Trump entered politics. In 1989, following the rape and assault of a jogger in New York City, Trump called for the death penalty for five black teenagers known as the Central Park Five. They were later released from prison after being found innocent — and Trump has not apologised. Critics treat the second fact as more significant than the first. Anyone can be wrong about a case; the absence of any revision after the exonerations indicates that the position was not held on the evidence, and so would not be adjusted by evidence in the next case either. The pattern continued in the positions he took afterwards. He is a vocal supporter of the death penalty, and has praised authorities in China, Singapore and the Philippines for executing drug dealers — approving of capital punishment as applied elsewhere to drug dealers rather than to those who have killed. In office, the practice followed the rhetoric. Trump has carried out more federal executions in 2020 than in the last 57 years combined, a reversal of decades of federal restraint compressed into a single year. The two halves of the record connect through a single point. The case of the Central Park Five demonstrates that expanding the death penalty would lead to the wrongful killing of innocent individuals, which is exactly what criminal justice systems should prevent from happening — and it is an irreversible error, which is what distinguishes this policy from others that can be corrected later. Joe Biden wants to end the death penalty, and would manage the US criminal justice system responsibly.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The death penalty is an effective deterrent against committing the most abhorrent crimes. It is important to trust that the criminal justice system will arrive at the correct verdict.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Statements and endorsements evidence stated positions rather than a record in office, and the argument moves between the two. The Central Park Five advertisement was a private citizen's intervention decades before he held any office. [Rejecting P2] The increase in federal executions is documented, but federal cases are a small fraction of capital sentences, the great majority of which are handled by states. The premise also treats the wrongful-conviction risk as demonstrated by a case in which no execution took place. [Rejecting P3] Opposition to the death penalty is one criminal-justice position among many, and the premise generalises from it to overall competence. It also passes over the parts of both records that cut the other way — the First Step Act on one side, a long legislative history on crime bills on the other. [Rejecting C] A comparative conclusion requires both records assessed on the same terms. The argument examines one candidate in detail and asserts the other, which cannot establish which of them would be better.