Trump says he will direct Justice Department to ‘vigorously pursue the death penalty’

(CNN) — 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.

There were mixed reactions to Biden’s commutations on Monday. While some families of those whose sentences were commuted expressed relief, some families of the victims were angry. The widow of Bryan Hurst, an Ohio police officer killed in 2005 by Daryl Lawrence, whose sentence was commuted on Monday, said in a statement provided to CNN affiliate WBNS that her family is disappointed by Biden’s decision.

Lawrence “made a decision to choose violence. He knew the potential consequences and chose to murder regardless,” Marissa Gibson said in her statement. “All I can hope is that his nearly 20 years in prison has made him a changed man.”

Executions by the US government were uncommon prior to Trump’s first term. Only three federal executions had occurred since 1988 before Trump’s then-Attorney General William Barr announced in 2019 the federal government would resume executions.

In 2020, the final year of Trump’s first term, the federal government executed 10 individuals, the most executions by the federal government since 1896 and more than all 50 states combined that year.

Outside of the federal system, there are over 2,000 people in the United States who were convicted in state courts and put on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Biden has no power to stop those death sentences.

The-CNN-Wire
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