The U.S. government had not executed anyone for more than 15 years until Donald Trump revived the practice at the tail end of his first term in 2020, when 13 federal inmates were put to death — even as the pandemic led states to halt executions because of Covid concerns in prisons.
The cases included the first woman executed by the federal government in nearly 70 years; the youngest person based on the age when the crime occurred (18 at the time of his arrest); and the only Native American on federal death row.
Now, after winning a second term, it appears likely that president-elect Trump will again look to expand the use of the death penalty.
Amid the tough-on-crime rhetoric of his campaign Trump signaled that he would resume federal executions, and make more people eligible for capital punishment — including child rapists, migrants who kill U.S. citizens and law enforcement officers, and those convicted of drug and human trafficking.
“These are terrible, terrible, horrible people who are responsible for death, carnage and crime all over the country,” Trump said of traffickers when he announced his 2024 candidacy. “We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” he added.
While it remains unclear how Trump would act to expand the death penalty, anti-death penalty groups and criminal justice reform advocates say they are taking his claims seriously, noting the spree of federal executions that occurred during his first term, NBC News reports.
“We’re going to fight this tooth and nail, and we’re going to seek to uphold the constitutional principals that do not call for this expansion,” said Yasmin Cader, an ACLU deputy legal director and the director of its Trone Center for Justice and Equality.
Currently, there is a moratorium on federal executions. President Joe Biden initially campaigned on passing legislation that would have ended the death penalty at the federal level altogether, but pulled back on that promise in office. Instead, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the moratorium to review execution protocols.
There are currently 40 inmates, all men, on federal death row, according to the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center. They include gunmen responsible for mass shootings in South Carolina and Pittsburgh and the man convicted in the Boston Marathon bombing.
Ruth Friedman, the director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, which has represented some of the prisoners on death row, said the concern is real that the next Trump administration will move quickly on the death penalty, and even if it’s not executing someone immediately, it could begin with the reinstatement of the execution protocol.
“They will reverse the changes this [Biden’s] administration has made,” Friedman said.
She added that the current makeup of the Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has already shown it will generally back the death penalty — even in cases that have garnered attention over claims of innocence, misconduct and racial bias.