Trump Plans to Resume Death Penalty in Reversal of Biden Policy
Tom Ramstack
The Legal Forum, offering legal representation, language translation, media services.
WASHINGTON -- President-elect Donald Trump is saying he will reverse his predecessor's policy that disfavors the death penalty as soon as he is inaugurated this month.
President Joe Biden last month commuted the death penalties of 37 murderers convicted in federal court. Instead, they will spend life in prison.?
Trump responded the next day with a post on his social media site Truth Social saying, “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 criticized Biden’s commutation of the death sentences by saying it was an insult to the families of the murder victims.
“Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” Trump wrote in his post. “When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense.
Historically, presidents were granted limited control over the Justice Department by the separation of powers described in the Constitution. Most death penalty decisions and policies were left to the state and federal supreme courts.
Trump said while he was running for president that he would expand use of the death penalty against killers of police officers, persons who engage in drug and human trafficking and migrants who murder American citizens.
A majority of Americans, or 53 percent, favored the death penalty for murder in a Gallup poll this month. In 1994, 80 percent of Americans favored the death penalty.
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The majority support stops at murder and does not include other crimes Trump mentioned.
In the last six months of Trump’s first presidency, he ordered that federal executions resume after a 20-year pause. Thirteen federal prisoners were then executed, the most for one presidency in a century.
The American Civil Liberties Union released a statement after Trump resumed his pledges to restart death penalties saying it was a “chilling” plan.
"He's already shown us that he will act on these promises," the ACLU said in reference to Trump’s first presidency.?
?The three federal prisoners whose sentences Biden refused to commute were each convicted of hate crimes and mass murder.
They were Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; Tree of Life Synagogue gunman Robert Bowers, who killed 11 in Pittsburgh; and Dylann Roof, who killed nine Black congregants at Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina.
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Regional Director | Research | Nielsen Alum
1 个月It occurs to me that just as states crafted laws to challenge the 1973 Roe & Doe abortion decisions, red states must craft laws to similarly dismantle the 1976 SCOTUS holdings that state mandatory capital punishment laws are unconstitutional. I feel confident SCOTUS is ready to restore the Founder's jurisprudence of originalism and find the 1976 rulings no longer tenable if given an opportunity.