President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday seeking to reinstate the death penalty in Washington, D.C.
He specifically instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi and U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro “to fully implement the death penalty here in Washington, D.C., where the evidence and facts of the case indicate that the death penalty should be used.”
“This is our capital city,” Trump said after signing the order. “People come in from Iowa to look at the Lincoln Memorial and they end up getting killed. It’s not going to happen, and if it does happen, it’s the death penalty for the person that did it.”
Trump campaigned on encouraging states to restore the death penalty. Since his inauguration in January, he has argued it’s necessary to fight crime in Washington.
Bondi said that, as part of the executive order, former death row inmates across the country whose sentences were commuted to life in prison by former President Joe Biden would be moved to “supermax facilities.”
“They will be treated like they’re on death row for the rest of their lives,” Bondi said in the Oval Office, adding that the administration was working to reinstate capital punishment in every state.
“Not only are we seeking it in Washington, D.C., but all over the country, again,” she said.
The Supreme Court in 1972 ruled that death penalty sentences were unconstitutional in many cases, forcing states, including the District of Columbia, to revisit their statutes. Capital punishment was repealed by the D.C. Council in 1981 and upheld by residents in a 1992 referendum.
Trump issued an executive order on Day 1, attempting to undo the limits created by the Supreme Court by directing federal courts to pursue the death penalty “for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.”
“Death penalty in Washington. You kill somebody or if you kill a police officer, law enforcement officer — death penalty,” Trump said Thursday. “And hopefully there won’t be that.”