Trump wants to expand the federal death penalty, setting up legal challenges in second term
Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump signaled he would resume federal executions if he won and make more people eligible for capital punishment, including child rapists, migrants who kill U.S. citizens and law enforcement officers, and those convicted of drug and human trafficking.
Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump signaled he would resume federal executions if he won and make more people eligible for capital punishment, including child rapists, migrants who kill U.S. citizens and law enforcement officers, and those convicted of drug and human trafficking.
“These are terrible, terrible, horrible people who are responsible for death, carnage and crime all over the country,” Trump said of traffickers when he announced his 2024 candidacy. “We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” he added.
While it remains unclear how Trump would act to expand the death penalty, anti-death penalty groups and criminal justice reform advocates say they are taking his claims seriously, noting the spree of federal executions that occurred during his first term.
“We’re going to fight this tooth and nail, and we’re going to seek to uphold the constitutional principals that do not call for this expansion,” said Yasmin Cader, an ACLU deputy legal director and the director of its Trone Center for Justice and Equality.
At the tail end of Trump’s first term, 13 federal inmates were put to death — even as the pandemic led states to halt executions because of Covid concerns in prisons. The cases included the first woman executed by the federal government in nearly 70 years; the youngest person based on the age when the crime occurred (18 at the time of his arrest); and the only Native American on federal death row.
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