Elections have consequences, so the slogan goes. One of those consequences was on full display Feb. 5, in the minutes after Pam Bondi was sworn in as attorney general in the Oval Office. Bondi is moving quickly to reverse Biden administration policies, and right at the top of her list is the federal death penalty, which Biden opposed.

The Biden Justice Department imposed a moratorium on executions and pursued few death sentences. In the waning days of his presidency, former President Joe Biden himself commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row in Terre Haute, Ind. Bondi has now made clear that she regards each commutation as “shameful” and that she is determined to revive the federal death penalty.

None of this is surprising. But the attorney general’s display of unbridled enthusiasm for capital punishment on day one of her tenure — and her inattention to the death penalty’s serious problems — should give all Americans reason to ask whether the death penalty that we have makes us a safer, saner and more just nation.

Nothing in Bondi’s orders suggests that she has a plan to address those problems. That’s too bad — people on all sides of the capital punishment debate can agree that, if it is to be used at all, the death penalty should be applied fairly and evenhandedly and in a way that comports with our commitments to due process and equal protection of the law.

Reading her Feb. 5 directives, one might get the impression that the attorney general was more interested in attacking the Biden administration than in fixing the federal death penalty.

As Florida’s AG, Bondi had already shown her staunch support for capital punishment. She was an early supporter of the state’s Timely Justice Act, for........

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