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USA - Trump Calls for Death Penalty in All D.C. Murder Cases
August 26, 2025: August 26, 2025 - USA. Trump Calls for Death Penalty in All D.C. Murder Cases
It is unclear how Mr. Trump would carry out his directive. The Supreme Court ruled that mandatory death sentences were unconstitutional nearly half a century ago. President Trump said on Tuesday that his administration would seek the death penalty for all murder cases in Washington, D.C., the latest escalation of his show of force in the nation’s capital that he has described as an effort to combat crime.
Declaring in a cabinet meeting that the threat of execution is “a very strong preventative,” Mr. Trump echoed his long-held belief that criminals commit crimes because they do not fear the consequences.
“I don’t know if we’re ready for it in this country,” Mr. Trump said, referring to capital punishment. But, he added, “We have no choice.”
It is unclear how Mr. Trump would carry out his directive.
In federal murder cases, he has already restored the ability of federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty. In cases involving Washington’s local murder statute, there is currently no death penalty. The Supreme Court decision nullified the death penalty in Washington, D.C., in 1972.
But Mr. Trump may have meant to signal that he would ask Congress — which has considerable leverage over local laws — to restore the death penalty in Washington’s local laws and make it mandatory.
In any case, however, the Supreme Court ruled mandatory death sentences unconstitutional nearly half a century ago.
The last inmate to be put to death in Washington was executed by electric chair in 1957; residents overwhelmingly rejected the use of the death penalty in a 1992 referendum.
Robin M. Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which studies the use of capital punishment, said that either move would dramatically change how murder cases are prosecuted in Washington.
“It would be a tremendous investment of taxpayer dollars,” Ms. Maher said. “Because death penalty cases are many times more expensive than other criminal cases that do not seek a death sentence. Capital cases are much longer, take much longer to complete.”
She noted that there were many additional rules and restrictions mandated in death penalty cases, as well as, potentially, years of appeals after a death sentence is imposed. Last year, for example, Texas executed a man for rape and murder 18 years after he was first sentenced to death. Not long after, a Texas judge declared a mother on death row innocent in the death of her 2-year-old daughter — 17 years after she was sentenced to death.
Ms. Maher said that the added legal bureaucracy had the potential to jam the criminal justice system in the city.
“If he were to seek a death sentence in every possible case,” she said of Mr. Trump, “even though violent crime is down in D.C., there would still be enough of those crimes, enough prosecutions, to completely overwhelm the legal system.”
For much of his life, Mr. Trump has advocated for executing violent criminals, most famously during the 1989 case of the Central Park Five — where five Black and Latino boys were wrongfully convicted of the rape of a jogger in New York City.
As president, Mr. Trump has sought to turn his personal support of the death penalty into national policy. After resuming use of the death penalty in 2020, the Trump administration rushed to execute several death row inmates in the final days before President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who opposed the death penalty, took office. The Trump administration executed more death row inmates than all 50 states combined that year.
After taking office, Mr. Biden spared many of the inmates whom Mr. Trump had sought to execute and commuted the sentences of most inmates on federal death row to life in prison.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/us/politics/trump-death-penalty-murder-dc.html (Source: New York Times, 26/08/2025)
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