WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump signed a sweeping execution order Monday on the death penalty that directs the attorney general to “take all necessary and lawful action” to ensure that states have enough lethal injection drugs to carry out executions.
Trump's order, coming just hours after he returned to the White House, compels the Justice Department to not only seek the death penalty in appropriate federal cases but also to help preserve capital punishment in states that have struggled to maintain adequate supplies of lethal injection drugs.
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Trump had been expected to restart federal executions, which have been on hold since a moratorium was imposed by former Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2021. Only three defendants remain on federal death row after Democratic President Joe Biden recently converted 37 of their sentences to life in prison.
Trump directed the attorney general to pursue federal jurisdiction and seek the death penalty "regardless of other factors” when the case involves the killing of a law enforcement officer or capital crimes “committed by an alien illegally present in this country." He's also instructing the attorney general to seek to overrule Supreme Court precedents that “limit the authority of limit the authority of State and Federal governments to impose capital punishment.”
“The Government’s most solemn responsibility is to protect its citizens from abhorrent acts, and my Administration will not tolerate efforts to stymie and eviscerate the laws that authorize capital punishment against those who commit horrible acts of violence against American citizens,” Trump's order said.
Trump's administration carried out 13 federal executions during his first term, more than under any president in modern history, and the president has spoken frequently of expanding executions. In a speech announcing his 2024 campaign, Trump called for those “caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.” He later promised to execute drug and human smugglers and even praised China’s harsher treatment of drug peddlers.
Trump's order comes days after Garland withdrew the Justice Department's protocol for federal executions that allowed for single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital, after a government review raised concerns about the potential for “unnecessary pain and suffering.” The protocol could be imposed by Trump's new acting Attorney General James McHenry III, or his his pick to lead the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, once she's confirmed by the Senate.
The pentobarbital protocol was adopted by Bill Barr, attorney general during Trump’s first term, to replace a three-drug mix used in the 2000s, the last time federal executions were carried out before Trump was in office.
Biden's decision last month left just three inmates on federal death row. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.