Donald Trump signed an executive order pledging to continue federal death sentences and ensure states have enough lethal injection drugs for executions.
The order promises that Trump’s attorney general will seek the death penalty for “all crimes of seriousness requiring its use,” specifying that the United States will seek the death penalty in all cases involving the killing of US agents. law enforcement and a capital crime committed by an undocumented person. “independently of other factors”. Trump also pledged to pursue overturning long-standing U.S. Supreme Court precedents that limit the scope of capital punishment.
Experts say the order is filled with vague campaign rhetoric and that some of the actions it promises could be unconstitutional, infringe on the rights of defendants and encroach on state laws and procedures. Many of the sweeping statements, if implemented by his attorney general, could face major legal challenges.
Despite the ambiguity of the president’s directive, it marks a stunning reversal of Biden administration policy and comes at a time of significant bipartisan opposition to capital punishment in the United States, fueled by multiple recent executions and cases of capital punishment of persons whose innocence is credible. complaints.
The order will be significantly delayed by one of Joe Biden’s latest clemency measures – re-sentencing 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Trump’s first term was marked by 13 successive federal executions – more people executed in the federal system than under the previous 10 presidents combined – and Biden’s grants saved dozens of people from an expected resurgence of killings in the State under Trump.
Trump’s order directs the attorney general to evaluate the prison placements of the 37 people convicted by Biden “to ensure that these offenders are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes.” It also says the attorney general “will evaluate whether these offenders can be charged with capital crimes and recommend appropriate action to state and local authorities.”
These promises are dubious, experts say.
“The idea of going back to states where crimes were committed to see if states can pursue capital charges is probably unconstitutional in terms of double jeopardy,” said Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of Death Penalty Action , a group that fights for the abolition of capital punishment. “Much of this seems vengeful, not only against individual prisoners, but also simply in retaliation for President Biden’s commutations.”
The order is largely “bluster and grandstanding, because there’s really nothing new he can do,” Bonowitz said. “The real question is: Does the rule of law continue to matter to the courts?
Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said it seemed unlikely that state prosecutors would choose to retry Biden’s commuted defendants, given that they are already in prison for life for decades-old cases. Regarding the president’s commitment to placing the 37 commuters in prison environments that match the “monstrosity” of their beliefs, “there is a constitutional limitation on his ability to place people in conditions that would be tortuous and inhumane,” she declared.
Ruth Friedman, director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, which represents defendants on death row, said the U.S. Bureau of Prisons has long decided prison placements based on a series of criteria, including the needs of defendants and their Safety Concerns: “I have to assume they will continue to do their job. I don’t see why the president or the attorney general would be part of this system.
Supreme Court precedent has long limited the scope of the death penalty, establishing that people cannot be executed for offenses other than homicide, such as rape, and that young people and people with certain intellectual disabilities are not eligible. Trump’s order does not specify which decisions he would seek to overturn, but the message aligns with conservative legal groups’ push to expand the death penalty, said Natasha Minsker, policy counsel at Smart Justice California, a criminal justice reform group.
Despite the Supreme Court’s ultra-conservative, pro-Trump bent, some justices have aligned themselves with former Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote several key rulings in favor of defendants facing the death penalty, Minsker noted.
“Even if the practical impact of the executive order is close to zero, it remains deeply worrying to see an executive support the death penalty given the many flaws in the system – and particularly an executive that has shown no respect for respect for the death penalty. law or constitution and has made very clear his desire to go after his political rivals,” Minsker said. “This is a recipe for the worst kind of dictatorship.”
The idea of requiring the death penalty to be automatically applied in certain categories of cases would violate a well-established constitutional law on the rights of defendants, said Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s capital punishment project.
The order’s promises about influencing state cases were also unclear, Stubbs said, emphasizing that the federal government cannot control state-level prosecutions, which account for the majority of criminal cases in the United States. : “It’s too early to know whether this is just bluster or whether these are planning efforts that would likely be challenged as an illegal entanglement in state law and would go further beyond this that the executive branch is authorized to do.
Stubbs said she was also alarmed by the wording of the order, noting that executions had been used since “before” the founding of the United States: “Capital punishment was an important part of the laws for people helping slaves escape to slavery. The fact that this practice is old is not the best defense.”
The order does not specify how the attorney general would ensure that states have “an adequate supply of drugs necessary to carry out lethal injections.” Nine states put people to death last year, including South Carolina, which resumed executions after a 13-year hiatus caused by pharmaceutical companies no longer supplying lethal injectable drugs due to public pressure. South Carolina and other states with capital punishment leaders have continued executions, in part by passing laws protecting the identities of providers.
“The process of obtaining execution drugs is so secretive that it’s really difficult to know what the federal government would do to address this problem,” Maher said. Big pharmaceutical companies have already stopped selling their products to execution prisons and the European Union has banned the export of these drugs to the United States under penalty of death. She said: “Unless the federal government is planning to get into the pharmaceutical manufacturing business, I’m not sure how that’s going to be accomplished.
The White House did not immediately respond to requests for information Tuesday.
Trump’s efforts could prove costly, Maher added: “For a president who says he wants to reduce government waste…the death penalty is one of the most expensive public policies.” »
Bonowitz said he wished Biden had commuted everyone on death row, including those convicted of mass killings and hate crimes, whose death sentences were upheld.
“When it is acceptable for the government to kill a terrorist, then it soon becomes acceptable for the government to label other crimes as equally horrific and start executing people,” he said. “Will Donald Trump decide that someone who opposes the goals of this administration is a traitor or seditionist punishable by death? It seems far-fetched now, but it’s the path we’re on. And this is one of the reasons why we believe that the government cannot be trusted with the power to kill.”
