President-elect Donald Trump promised on Tuesday to “vigorously pursue” capital punishment after President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of the majority of federal death row inmates, in part to prevent Trump from hastening their executions.
Trump slammed Biden’s decision on Monday to commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 criminals sentenced to life in prison without parole, claiming it was foolish and insulted the victims’ families. Biden stated that converting their sentences to life imprisonment was consistent with the moratorium on federal executions in circumstances other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.
“Joe Biden just commuted the death sentence for 37 of our country’s worst killers,” he said on his social media page. “When you hear the actions of each, you won’t believe he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further upset. They can’t believe what is occurring!”
Presidents have traditionally had little role in determining or approving the sanctions that federal prosecutors seek for criminal defendants, but Trump has long sought greater direct control over the Justice Department’s operations. The president-elect stated that he would urge the department to pursue the death sentence “as soon as I am inaugurated,” but he was ambiguous about what specific steps he may take, saying they would be for “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.”
He cited the cases of two individuals on federal death row for killing a mother and a girl, who admitted to killing others and had their sentences commuted by Biden.
Is there a plan in motion or is this just rhetoric?
On the campaign trail, Trump frequently advocated for the expansion of the federal death penalty, especially for those who kill police officers, those convicted of drug and human trafficking, and migrants who kill American residents.
“Trump has been fairly consistent in wanting to sort of say that he thinks the death penalty is an important tool and he wants to use it,” said Doug Berman, a sentencing expert at Ohio State University’s law school. “But whether practically any of that can happen, either under existing law or other laws, is a heavy lift.”
According to Berman, Trump’s statement appears to be a retaliation to Biden’s commutation.
“I believe it is still in the rhetoric phase. Just say, ‘Don’t worry. The new sheriff is on his way. “I like the death penalty,” he stated.
According to Gallup’s decades of yearly polls, the majority of Americans have historically favored the death penalty for murderers, but support has dwindled in recent decades. In an October poll, roughly half of Americans supported capital punishment for murderers, compared to roughly seven in ten in 2007.
Death row convicts are primarily sentenced by states.
Prior to Biden’s commutation, there were 40 federal death row convicts, compared to almost 2,000 state-sentenced to death.
“The reality is all of these crimes are typically handled by the states,” Berman told reporters.
One concern is whether the Trump government will try to take over some state murder investigations, such as those involving drug trafficking or smuggling. He could potentially seek cases from jurisdictions that have abolished the death sentence.
Could rape now be punished with death?
Berman believes Trump’s statement, combined with previous state measures, may be an effort to persuade the Supreme Court to revisit a decision that considers the death sentence an excessive punishment for rape.
“That would take decades to unfold. “It won’t happen overnight,” Berman added.
Before one of Trump’s rallies on August 20, his prepared remarks to the media stated that he would call for the death penalty for child rapists and traffickers. However, Trump never delivered the line.
What were the cases that Trump highlighted?
One of the individuals Trump singled out on Tuesday was ex-Marine Jorge Avila Torrez, who was put to death for killing a sailor in Virginia and later pled guilty to the deadly stabbings of an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old child in a suburban Chicago park several years prior.
The other man, Thomas Steven Sanders, was sentenced to death for kidnapping and killing a 12-year-old child in Louisiana, just days after shooting the girl’s mother at an Arizona wildlife park. Court records suggest that he confessed to both murders.
Some victims’ relatives were outraged by Biden’s decision, but the president was under pressure from advocacy organizations to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of capital penalty for federal convicts. The ACLU and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops were among those who praised the ruling.
Biden left three federal convicts facing death. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist murders of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history. _
This report was contributed to by Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Michelle L. Price, and Eric Tucker.
