Democratic Senators praise AG Garland's capital moratorium and urge additional steps

As reported in this Hill article, a group of 17 Democratic Senators sent a notable letter to AG Garland this week in which they "voiced their approval of Garland's decision to issue a moratorium on federal executions while the Department of Justice reviews policies and procedures."  This letter is available at this link, and it begins this way:

We commend you for your recent decisions to impose a moratorium on federal executions pending a review of death penalty policies and procedures and to withdraw several notices of intent to seek the death penalty that the Justice Department filed during the Trump Administration.  These are important steps toward ending the injustice of the death penalty.  We urge you to take the additional steps of withdrawing all pending death notices, and authorizing no new death notices, while your review proceeds.

As your memorandum announcing the moratorium recognizes, there are serious concerns about arbitrariness in the application of the death penalty, its disparate impact on people of color, and the alarming number of exonerations in capital cases.  These concerns justify not only a review of the procedures for carrying out the death penalty, but also support halting its use — including prohibiting federal prosecutors from seeking the death penalty — during the review process.