Throughout his first time period in workplace, Trump oversaw a sequence of federal executions unparalleled in fashionable historical past.
United States President-elect Donald Trump has promised to step up using the demise penalty throughout his second time period in workplace, saying he’ll go after “rapists, murderers, and monsters”.
Trump’s announcement on Tuesday got here after outgoing President Joe Biden used his presidential pardon powers to scale back the sentences of almost all federal prisoners on demise row to life imprisonment with out parole.
“As quickly as I’m inaugurated, I’ll direct the Justice Division to vigorously pursue the demise penalty to guard American households and youngsters from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters,” Trump stated in a social media put up. “We will probably be a Nation of Legislation and Order once more!”
Throughout his first time period in workplace, Trump resumed federal executions after a virtually 20-year pause, overseeing the executions of 13 folks. That determine was greater than any president in fashionable historical past.
Whereas folks within the US proceed to assist the demise penalty for crimes equivalent to homicide, that assist is at its lowest level in a long time, dropping from 80 % in favour in 1994 to 53 % in 2024, in accordance with Gallup polling. In the identical interval, opposition has risen from 16 % to 43 %.
Supporters of the demise penalty say capital punishment may give relations of victims of violent crimes a way of closure and acts as a deterrent in opposition to crime though research have discovered little proof for the latter.
“The ache and trauma we now have endured over the past 7 years has been indescribable,” Heather Turner, whose mom was killed throughout a 2017 financial institution theft in Conway, South Carolina, stated in a social media put up blasting Biden’s choice.
Opponents say harmless folks have been wrongly executed earlier than they had been exonerated, that the method for executing somebody is lengthy and expensive and the demise penalty has been wielded disproportionately in opposition to folks of color.
Throughout his 2024 presidential marketing campaign, Trump leaned closely into nativist assaults on immigrants that portrayed them as harmful criminals and stated he would search the demise penalty for undocumented immigrants who commit crimes equivalent to homicide and rape in opposition to US residents.
Immigrants commit violent crimes at a decrease charge than folks born within the US, and immigrant rights teams see darkish undertones in Trump’s fixation on violent acts dedicated by immigrants.
The three federal prisoners on demise row whose sentences Biden selected to not commute had been all discovered responsible of hate-motivated crimes.
They’re Dylann Roof, who killed 9 Black congregants of the Mom Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina in 2015; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who carried out the deadliest anti-Semitic assault in US historical past when he gunned down 17 congregants on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, killing 11.
