LDF Condemns President Trump’s Executive Order Expanding the Federal Death Penalty

Read a PDF of our statement here.

This week, President Trump issued an Executive Order titled "Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety," which contains multiple provisions on the use of the federal death penalty. The order urges the U.S. Attorney General to pursue the death penalty for individuals who murder a law enforcement officer or for people who are unlawfully present in the United States and commit a capital offense. Further, it directs the U.S. Attorney General to seek action to overturn Supreme Court precedent, which limits the authority of state and federal governments to impose capital punishment, and it orders the U.S. Attorney General to evaluate and ensure the conditions of all 37 men who received capital commutations from President Biden are consistent "with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose." President Trump's executive order goes on to call on the U.S. Attorney General to take action to ensure that states have enough lethal injection drugs to carry out executions.

The order encourages the administration of the death penalty following a moratorium on federal executions under the Biden administration.

In response, Legal Defense Fund (LDF) President and Director-Counsel Janai Nelson issued the following statement:

"Following then-President Biden's historic commutation of nearly the entirety of federal death row, President Trump has recommitted his administration to violent retribution in his resuscitation of the death penalty. This executive order is a deeply disturbing exercise in cruel and unusual punishment as it calls on government officials to make every effort to procure lethal injection drugs and to ensure monstrous confinement conditions for the 37 men whose death sentences were commuted by former President Biden. In many ways, this order is a presentiment of the inhumanity ahead. Rather than rehabilitation or legitimate means of preventing crime, President Trump is fixated on the power of violence.

"In the same week that he selectively pardoned and commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 people connected to the overthrowing of our democratic process and whose actions contributed to the injury and death of law enforcement officers, President Trump is also now ordering the death penalty to be more fervently pursued for individuals who murder law enforcement officers - conveniently excluding the people whose sentences he commuted and pardoned that were willing to exercise violence against law enforcement to undermine democracy in his name."

"The selective enforcement of the death penalty will never provide justice and neither will its expansion. The death penalty is a horrifying experiment rife with racial discrimination and misconduct that has led to an untold number of unjust deaths. There is no evidence it prevents crime or improves public safety. We will condemn capital punishment in every circumstance, as we have done since our inception."

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Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation's first civil rights law organization. LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF. Please note that LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957-although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights.