On Sept. 25, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general and the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia 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.”
The order states that prosecutors 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.”
The announcement comes despite the fact that the District of Columbia repealed its death penalty in 1981, and in 1992 residents voted down a referendum to reinstate capital punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
During the signing, Trump went on a lengthy monologue linking crime in the capital to his order. “It’s very interesting. Capital punishment, capital city,” he said. “It’s capital, capital, capital.” He added: “People come in from Iowa to look at the Lincoln Memorial and they end up getting killed. Doesn’t happen anymore, it’s not gonna happen, and if it does happen, it’s the death penalty.”
Civil rights and advocacy groups immediately condemned the move. The group Free DC said Trump’s order is “designed to spread fear.” The group added: “That’s something we know authoritarians always do. His actions are not about safety, they are only about him consolidating power.”
Amnesty International also criticized the 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,” said Justin Mazzola, Amnesty International USA’s deputy director for research. “Let’s be clear: the death penalty does not make us safer. It does not deter crime and we oppose it unconditionally.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi, standing alongside Trump at the signing, announced that the administration had begun transferring federal death row prisoners whose sentences had been commuted by President Joe Biden into “supermax” prisons “where they will be treated like they are on death row for the rest of their lives.” She also vowed: “Not only are we seeking it in Washington, D.C., but all over the country again.”
In a statement to Truthout, Brian Stull, deputy director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, called the death penalty a “failed government program,” noting that more than 200 people sentenced to death had later been exonerated. “More capital cases means more injustice,” he said.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 23 states have abolished the death penalty and four more have governor-imposed moratoriums. More than half of states no longer carry out executions. But federal prosecutors can bring capital charges in states—and in D.C.—even when local law prohibits executions.
The Justice Department has already demonstrated its ability to extend federal reach. For instance, DOJ filed capital charges against Luigi Mangione even though he is accused of committing murder in New York, which abolished the death penalty in 2007.
Abraham J. Bonowitz, director and co-founder of Death Penalty Action, told Truthout that there are still limits on what the administration can do. “[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,” he said. “For now, that’s the guard rail that still exists.”
Bonowitz added: “Donald Trump has always been a huge supporter of the death penalty. Calls for more death penalty is another way of invoking the Trump Administration’s authoritarian agenda. It’s part of their scare tactics.”
Trump has a long history of championing capital punishment. In the 1980s, he paid for full-page ads in New York newspapers calling for the death penalty for five Black and Latino teenagers accused in the Central Park jogger case. They were later exonerated.
In the final months of his first presidential term, Trump oversaw 13 federal executions, more than the previous 56 years combined. On the first day of his second term, he signed another executive order instructing 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 when law enforcement officers were killed or when the accused was “an alien illegally present in this country.”
The new D.C. order further cements his administration’s national push. Trump said in the Oval Office: “We can’t allow that to happen. People come in from Iowa to look at the Lincoln Memorial, and they end up getting killed. Doesn’t happen anymore. It’s not going to happen. And if it does happen, it’s the death penalty for the person.”
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