Trump Vows To Aggressively Enforce Death Penalty
President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he plans to instruct the Department of Justice to aggressively seek the death penalty, following President Joe Biden’s decision on Monday to commute the death sentences of 37 federal inmates to life in prison.
“Once I take office, I will direct the Justice Department to relentlessly pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.
We will restore our Nation as one of Law and Order!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. This statement aligns with his longstanding stance on capital punishment, a cornerstone of his tough-on-crime platform during the 2024 campaign.
After President Biden commuted the sentences of most federal death row inmates—a move Trump criticized on Truth Social as “making no sense”—only three individuals will remain on federal death row by the time the president-elect takes office in January.
These three cases involve perpetrators of 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 worshippers at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the brothers behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
While Biden’s clemency decisions are irreversible, the incoming administration could shift its approach, with the Justice Department under Trump resuming pursuit of the death penalty in new cases.
Trump made reinstating and expanding the death penalty a cornerstone of his campaign platform, framing it as part of his tough-on-crime stance.
During his 2024 campaign launch, he vowed to push for the death penalty for drug dealers and proposed legislation mandating capital punishment for anyone caught trafficking children across the U.S. border.
During the closing weeks of the 2024 campaign, Trump made a bold promise: to push for the death penalty for any migrant who kills a U.S. citizen or law enforcement officer. His stance sparked sharp debate, reflecting the divisive tone of the election season.
Reactions to President Biden’s decision to commute several sentences on Monday were equally polarized. While some families of the commuted individuals felt relief, others, particularly families of the victims, expressed outrage.
Among them was Marissa Gibson, the widow of Bryan Hurst, an Ohio police officer killed in 2005 by Daryl Lawrence, one of those whose sentences Biden commuted. In a statement to CNN affiliate WBNS, Gibson voiced her family’s disappointment.
“Lawrence made a decision to choose violence. He knew the potential consequences and chose to murder regardless,” Gibson stated. “All I can hope is that his nearly 20 years in prison have changed him.”
Federal executions were rare before Trump’s first term. Between 1988 and 2019, only three federal executions took place. But in 2019, then-Attorney General William Barr announced a return to federal executions under Trump’s administration.
By 2020, Trump’s final year in office, the federal government executed 10 individuals—the highest number of federal executions in a single year since 1896 and exceeding the combined executions of all 50 states that year.
Outside the federal system, over 2,000 individuals remain on death row across the United States after being convicted in state courts, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. President Biden, however, has no authority to halt those state-imposed death sentences.