Trump says he will direct Justice Department to ‘vigorously pursue the death penalty’

“As soon as I am sworn in as President, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect law-abiding American families and children against violent rapists, murderers, and monsters and restore Law and Order to our Nation!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, reiterating his long-standing support for the death penalty, which has been part of his “law and order” message during the 2024 campaign. Trump’s call to reinstate the death penalty has received little, if any, media coverage during the campaign.

After the pardons and commutations, there will be just three people left on federal death row, and all were convicted of either a mass shooting or a terrorist attack.

Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, is on federal death row, as is Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine people at a historically Black church in South Carolina in 2015.

The most recent federal death sentence is that of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one-half of the duo who bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013.

Biden’s commutations and pardons cannot be undone when Trump is sworn-in, but the President-elect’s Justice Department can resume seeking the death penalty in future cases.

Throughout his 2024 campaign, Trump’s use of the death penalty has been part of his law and order platform, which he has focused on reducing violent crime, as well as drug and human trafficking. At the outset of his campaign, Trump promised to seek the death penalty for those trafficking illegal drugs. Last year, he said he would ask Congress to pass a law making the death penalty the punishment for anyone caught human trafficking of children across the US border.

During the final weeks of the contest, Trump repeatedly promised he would seek the death penalty for any migrants who kills a US citizen or an officer.

There was a mixed reaction to Biden’s mass commutation of death row inmates on Monday. Some family member of convicted criminal whose sentences were commuted were relieved, while the families of the victims were enraged that the criminals will be spared the death penalty. The widow of Bryan Hurst, an Ohio police officer killed in 2005 by Daryl Lawrence, whose sentence was commuted on Monday, has told CNN that she is disappointed by President Biden's action. (Hurst’s family later clarified that they believe Lawrence is innocent of the charges and that he has maintained his innocence while serving 25 years in prison.)

"In 2005 Daryl Lawrence made a choice to pursue a violent, criminal lifestyle," Marissa Gibson, Hurst's widow, said in a statement provided to CNN affiliate WBNS. "He knew the possible consequences but he still murdered an innocent police officer because of a drug deal gone bad. All I can hope is that his nearly 20 years in prison has made him a changed man."

Executions by the federal government were rare before Trump was inaugurated for his first term. Prior to 2019, only three federal death penalty executions had taken place since 1988, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But in July 2019, US Attorney General William Barr announced that the federal government would resume executions.

The following year, in 2020, the federal government executed 10 men, the most executions by the federal government since 1896 and more than all 50 states combined that year.

Outside the federal system, there are more than 2,000 people in the United States who were sentenced to death in state court, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Biden has no authority to halt state executions.