Trump is expected to stop the death penalty under Biden and expand it to more prisoners

President-elect Donald Trump drew attention to federal death row inmates this campaign season, warning that he would reverse the moratorium on executions imposed during the outgoing Biden-Harris administration.

“President-elect Trump did not shy away from using the death penalty,” said Matt Mangino, former district attorney of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, and death penalty expert. “He presided over more than 13 executions in the last year of his first term.”

But the new president has also said he wants to expand the death penalty for other crimes, putting execution on the table for child rapists, human traffickers and illegal immigrants. Kill Americans or police officers.

This requires support from Congress and the Supreme Court.

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Former President Donald Trump speaks to a rally crowd at the Dodge County Airport in Juneau, Wisconsin, on Sunday, October 6, 2024. (Jovanny Hernandez/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Imagn Images via USA TODAY NETWORK)

Some of these ideas face obstacles. In 2008, the Supreme Court declared that the death penalty for child rapists was unconstitutional if the child survived. American Bar Association Journal It was reported Monday.

But with Trump in the White House, a Republican majority in the Senate, and conservatives holding a 6-3 advantage on the current Supreme Court, supporters are hopeful for a reversal.

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“The Supreme Court has said that the death penalty should only be imposed when the death of the victim is involved, but that may change depending on the makeup of the current Supreme Court,” Mangino told Fox News Digital. he said.

Three of the four dissenting justices in the 2008 Kennedy v. Louisiana decision are still on the court: Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

Mangino said it would also be a groundbreaking step in imposing the death penalty on people convicted of drug or human trafficking.

“The death penalty for drug and human trafficking would be unprecedented in the western world,” he said.

Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, said the aftermath of a violent war on drugs in the Southeast Asian country sparked an international outcry.

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A view of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on July 1, 2024 (DREW ANGERER/AFP via Getty Images)

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has vowed to fight efforts to expand the death penalty.

In July, the organization said that Trump “in the 1980s”Central Park Five” – those convicted of rape and assault for an attack in the park. New York state did not have a law allowing the death penalty for rape cases at the time, and in 2004 it banned the death penalty altogether.

More than a decade after their wrongful convictions, all five were exonerated by DNA evidence. one of them, Yusuf Hiis currently a New York City councilman.

There are currently 40 federal inmates on death row, according to the report. Death Penalty Information CenterThe list also includes surviving Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Dylann Roof, who massacred nine parishioners at a church in South Carolina.

Justice Department records show the federal government has executed 16 people since 2001, including the killing of the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and eight days later, American drug trafficker Juan Raul Garza, who had two men killed and a third executed.

A police mugshot of Timothy McVeigh was displayed at the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum in Oklahoma City on June 12, 2001, one day after his execution. (Getty Images)

13 of these executions occurred during Trump’s first term in office.

Between 1977 and 2022, 1,542 prisoners were executed in the states, according to federal data. Texas led with 587 executions; that’s more than the next two states combined; Oklahoma with 119 executions. and Virginia with 113.

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According to the ACLU, 192 death row inmates were exonerated and released during nearly the same period (between 1973 and 2023).

Each state has its own system of capital punishment (or lack thereof) and will not be as affected by the Trump administration’s policy.

“Trump will have a GOP Senate and likely a GOP House,” Mangino said. “He can do so much with the death penalty and only the Supreme Court can put the brakes on it, so how likely is that?”