In a bold statement on December 24, President-elect Donald Trump announced his intention to reinstate the death penalty as part of his plan to “protect American families” in the wake of President Joe Biden’s recent decision to commute 37 death sentences to life imprisonment. In a post on Truth Social, Trump declared, “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.” He further criticized Biden’s clemency actions, labeling them as nonsensical.
Biden’s commutations have drastically reduced the federal death row population to just three individuals, all of whom were convicted for their roles in horrific mass shootings and terrorist attacks. This includes Robert Bowers, who infamously killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, Dylann Roof, responsible for the 2015 massacre of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, involved in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. While there are currently over 2,000 inmates on state death rows across the country, Trump’s jurisdiction does not extend to state-level sentences.
Throughout his campaign, Trump has consistently positioned the death penalty as a necessary deterrent against violent crime and drug trafficking. During his 2024 campaign launch, he proposed capital punishment for drug dealers, stating, “I will ask Congress for legislation ensuring that drug dealers and human traffickers — these are terrible, terrible, horrible people — who are responsible for death, carnage, and crime all over our country; every drug dealer during his or her life, on average, will kill 500 people with the drugs they sell.” He emphasized that drug dealers should face the death penalty for their actions, arguing that it is the only effective solution to curtail the violence associated with drug trafficking.
Under Trump’s first term, federal executions saw a significant increase, a stark contrast to the previous decades when such executions were exceedingly rare. While only three federal executions took place between 1988 and 2019, the Trump administration, under then-Attorney General William Barr, resumed federal executions, carrying out 10 in 2020 alone—the highest number since 1896 and more than all state executions combined that year.
As Trump prepares to take office again, his stance on the death penalty continues to fuel debate on crime and punishment in America, raising questions about the future of capital punishment and its role in the justice system.
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