Trump promised the death penalty for “rapists, murderers” after Biden’s pardon | Death penalty news

During his first term in office, Trump oversaw a number of federal executions unprecedented in modern history.

US President-elect Donald Trump has promised to strengthen the use of the death penalty during his second term, saying he will go after “rapists, murderers and monsters”.

Trump’s announcement on Tuesday came after the outgoing president Joe Biden used presidential pardon powers to commute the sentences of nearly all federal inmates on death row to life in prison without parole.

“As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Department of Justice to resolutely enforce the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent predators, murderers and monsters,” Trump wrote on social media. “We will become a nation of law and order again!”

During his first term in office, Trump reinstated federal executions after a nearly 20-year hiatus, overseeing executions. 13 people. This number was higher than any president in modern history.

While people in the US continue to support the death penalty That support for crimes like murder is at its lowest point in decades, falling from 80 percent in favor in 1994 to 53 percent in 2024, according to a Gallup poll. In the same period, the opposition increased from 16 percent to 43 percent.

Proponents of the death penalty say that the death penalty can provide family members of victims of violent crimes a sense of closure, and that it acts as a deterrent to crime, although research has found little evidence for the latter.

Heather Turner, whose mother was killed in a 2017 bank robbery in Conway, South Carolina, said in a social media post blasting Biden’s decision, “The pain and trauma we’ve endured over the last 7 years is indescribable.”

Opponents say innocent people are wrongfully executed before they are exonerated, that the process of executing someone is long and expensive, and that the death penalty is disproportionately used against people of color.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump leaned heavily on domestic attacks against immigrants, painting them as dangerous criminals, and he demand the death penalty For undocumented immigrants who commit crimes against US citizens, such as murder and rape.

Immigrants commit less violent crime than those born in the U.S., immigrant rights groups note. dark undertones In Trump’s focus on acts of violence committed by immigrants.

All three federal inmates on death row, whose sentences Biden chose not to commute, were found guilty of hate crimes.

They are Dylan Damwho killed nine black congregants of Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina in 2015; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who carried out the bloodiest anti-Semitic attack in US history, shot 17 people. Tree of Life Synagogue In 2018, it killed 11 people in Pittsburgh.