On September 25, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general and the U.S. attorney general for D.C. to seek the death penalty in the nation’s capital whenever “appropriate.”
“The death penalty in Washington,” Trump said at the signing. “You kill somebody, or if you kill a police officer, law enforcement officer — death penalty.”
In 1981, the D.C. Council repealed the death penalty and in 1992 residents voted down a referendum to reinstate capital punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC.)
The order states that the attorney general and the United States attorney for the District of Columbia shall seek “the death penalty in all appropriate cases,” and “pursue Federal jurisdiction” for crimes committed in D.C. “for which the death penalty is available under Federal law.”
During the signing, Trump went on a rambling rant about crime in the nation’s capital. In August, despite record low rates of violent crime, the president declared a crime emergency in the city and flooded its streets with federal agents and National Guard troops.
“It’s very interesting. Capital punishment, capital city,” Trump said at the signing. “It’s capital, capital, capital.”
“People come in from Iowa to look at the Lincoln Memorial and they end up getting killed,” he continued, apparently referring to a crime that there is no record of occurring. “Doesn’t happen anymore, it’s not gonna happen, and if it does happen, it’s the death penalty.”
The group Free DC said Trump’s order is “designed to spread fear.”
“That’s something we know authoritarians always do,” the group continued. “His actions are not about safety, they are only about him consolidating power.”
Amnesty International also condemned the president’s order.
“Similar to President Trump’s deployment of the national guard to D.C., this directive is a continuation of Trump’s pattern of pushing a political agenda rooted in fear, not facts,” Amnesty International USA’s deputy director for research, Justin Mazzola, said in a statement. “Let’s be clear: the death penalty does not make us safer. It does not deter crime and we oppose it unconditionally.”
At the signing, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the administration had begun transferring federal death row prisoners whose sentences had been commuted to life in prison by President Joe Biden to “supermax” prisons “where they will be treated like they are on death row for the rest of their lives.” Before leaving office, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life without parole – falling short of his 2020 campaign promise to end the federal death penalty.
Bondi also vowed to seek the death penalty “all over the country, again.”
In a statement to Truthout, Brian Stull, the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Capital Punishment Project, said the death penalty is a “failed government program,” noting that more than 200 people have been sentenced to death and later exonerated.
“More capital cases means more injustice,” he said.
More than half of the states in the country no longer carry out executions, according to DPIC. Twenty-three states have abolished the death penalty, and in an additional four states, governors have instituted moratoriums on executions.
However, the Department of Justice (DOJ) can bring federal capital charges in certain circumstances, even for crimes committed in states that have abolished capital punishment. For instance, DOJ filed federal capital charges against Luigi Mangione even though he is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York, which abolished the death penalty in 2007.
Abraham J. Bonowitz, the director and co-founder of Death Penalty Action, told Truthout in an email that, “[u]ntil the trial-level judiciary becomes as compromised as the U.S. Supreme Court, federal death sentences can only be sought under certain circumstances, and they still must be imposed by local juries.”
“For now, that’s the guard rail that still exists,” he said.
Trump championed the death penalty long before he became president. In the 1980s, he took out full page ads in several New York City newspapers calling for the children accused in the high-profile Central Park jogger case to be executed. They were later exonerated.
In the waning months of his first presidential term, he went on an unprecedented killing spree, executing 13 people — more than the previous number of executions carried out by the federal government in the past 56 years combined.
On the first day of his second presidential term, Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use,” and to “encourage State attorneys general and district attorneys to bring State capital charges for all capital crimes,” particularly in cases involving the death of a law enforcement officer or when the accused is “an alien illegally present in this country.”
“Donald Trump has always been a huge supporter of the death penalty,” said Bonowitz. “Calls for more death penalty is another way of invoking the Trump Administration’s authoritarian agenda. It’s part of their scare tactics.”
Media that fights fascism
Truthout is funded almost entirely by readers — that’s why we can speak truth to power and cut against the mainstream narrative. But independent journalists at Truthout face mounting political repression under Trump.
We rely on your support to survive McCarthyist censorship. Please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation.