President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he will direct the Department of Justice to “vigorously pursue the death penalty” after President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 federal inmates to life in prison on Monday.
“As soon as I take office, 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 law-abiding nation again!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, reinforcing his longstanding support for the death penalty, which was part of his tough-on-crime rhetoric during the 2024 campaign.
When the president-elect takes office in January, there will be only three federal death row inmates facing the death penalty, following Biden’s commutation of most federal death row inmates, which Trump said on Truth Social “makes no sense”.
The remaining three cases involve 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 will not be reversed when Trump takes office, but the president-elect’s Justice Department may resume seeking the death penalty in future cases.
Throughout his campaign, Trump’s support for increased use of the death penalty was part of his firm commitment to reducing violent crime, as well as drug and human trafficking. In his speech kicking off his 2024 presidential campaign, he promised to seek the death penalty for drug dealers.
Last year, he stated that he would ask Congress to pass legislation mandating the death penalty for “anyone caught trafficking children across our border.”
During the final weeks of the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged to seek the death penalty for any migrant who kills a US citizen or a law enforcement officer.
Biden’s commutations elicited mixed reactions on Monday. While some families were relieved that their loved ones’ sentences had been commuted, others were outraged.
The widow of Bryan Hurst, an Ohio police officer killed in 2005 by Daryl Lawrence, whose sentence was commuted on Monday, told CNN affiliate WBNS that her family is disappointed with Biden’s decision.
Lawrence “decided to choose violence.” “He knew the consequences and chose to murder anyway,” Marissa Gibson said in her statement. “All I can hope is that his nearly 20 years in prison has made him a changed man.”
Before Trump’s first term, the US government rarely executed people. Only three federal executions had occurred since 1988, until Trump’s then-Attorney General William Barr announced in 2019 that the federal government would resume executions.
In 2020, the final year of Trump’s first term, the federal government carried out ten executions, the most since 1896 and more than all 50 states combined.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, more than 2,000 people in the United States have been convicted in state courts and sentenced to death. Biden has no authority to overturn those death sentences.
