President-elect Trump The United States pledged Monday to seek the death penalty for some federal criminal defendants, days after President Biden controversially commuted the death sentences of 37 inmates.
Biden's move to reclassify death sentences to life without the possibility of parole has been severely criticized By Republicans And many Democrats.
President-elect Donald Trump gestures to AmericaFest, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024, in Phoenix. Trump pledged on Monday to have the Justice Department pursue the death penalty after President Biden moved to commute the death sentences of 37 inmates. (AP Photo/Rick Scottri)
“Once inaugurated, I will direct the Department of Justice to aggressively pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. We will be a nation of law and order again!”
In his message announcing this step, he said: The white house He said Biden's actions would prevent the incoming Trump administration from “carrying out death sentences that would not be issued under current policy and practice.”
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Only three men on federal death row failed to meet Biden's requirements to commute their sentences.
They are: Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter who killed 11 people in 2018; Dylann Roof, a white supremacist Nine black parishioners were killed and at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who worked with his deceased brother to carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds.
Trump spokesman Stephen Chewing said Monday that Biden's action was “a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones.”
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During Trump's first term, 13 federal prisoners were executed, the most of any president in a century. Upon taking office in 2021, Biden declared a moratorium on federal executions.
