President-elect Donald Trump speaks at AmericaFest, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024, in Phoenix.
CNN | Published December 25, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump said on Tuesday he will direct the Department of Justice to “vigorously pursue the death penalty” after President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the death sentences of 37 federal inmates to life in prison.
“As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters. We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, echoing his long-standing advocacy for use of the death penalty, which was part of his tough-on-crime rhetoric during the 2024 campaign.
After Biden’s commutation of most federal death row inmates – which Trump on Truth Social said “makes no sense” – there will be just three individuals in federal prison facing the death penalty when the president-elect takes office in January.
Those three remaining cases are all individuals who committed mass shootings or terrorist attacks: Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018; Dylann Roof, a White nationalist who murdered nine people at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
Biden’s clemency decisions cannot be reversed when Trump takes office, but the president-elect’s Justice Department could resume seeking the death penalty in future cases.
Throughout his campaign, Trump’s advocacy for greater use of the death penalty was part of his hardline commitment to reducing violent crime and drug and human trafficking. In his speech launching his 2024 presidential campaign, he pledged to seek the death penalty for drug dealers. He said last year he would ask Congress to pass a law that “anyone caught trafficking children across our border” should receive the death penalty.
During the final weeks of the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly vowed to push for the death penalty for any migrant who kills a US citizen or a law enforcement officer.
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SOURCE: www.cnn.com
RELATED: Trump vows to pursue executions after Biden commutes most of federal death row
President-elect Donald Trump speaks at AmericaFest, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)
AP NEWS | Published December 25, 2024
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump promised on Tuesday to “vigorously pursue” capital punishment after President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of most people on federal death row partly to stop Trump from pushing forward their executions.
Trump criticized Biden’s decision on Monday to change the sentences of 37 of the 40 condemned people to life in prison without parole, arguing that it was senseless and insulted the families of their victims. Biden said converting their punishments to life imprisonment was consistent with the moratorium imposed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.
“Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” he wrote on his social media site. “When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”
Presidents historically have no involvement in dictating or recommending the punishments that federal prosecutors seek for defendants in criminal cases, though Trump has long sought more direct control over the Justice Department’s operations. The president-elect wrote that he would direct the department to pursue the death penalty “as soon as I am inaugurated,” but was vague on what specific actions he may take and said they would be in cases of “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.”
He highlighted the cases of two men who were on federal death row for slaying a woman and a girl, had admitted to killing more and had their sentences commuted by Biden.
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