Comment: Covid pause on death-row executions gives time for fresh thinking on capital punishment

When Joe Biden is inaugurated in January there will be 52 prisoners left on federal death row in the US. It would not take him long to spare their lives, writes Ian O’Donnell

The federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indiana, where Lisa Montgomery, convicted of fatally strangling a pregnant woman, cutting her body open and kidnapping her baby is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on December 8. File Picture: AP Photo/Michael Conroy

Several times this year, I began to write about how a named individual was to be slowly and deliberately killed in front of a group of spectators in Huntsville, Texas.

The identity of the intended victim kept changing but the killing – plans for which were announced in advance each time – never took place.