Trump's Death Penalty Executive Order Aims To Expand Execution

The order directs the attorney general to ensure that states have the drug cocktails to carry out lethal injections.

One of the executive orders issued by President Donald Trump amid the flurry of actions on his first day in office yesterday aims to reverse the long national decline in executions and provide federal support for states to carry out the death penalty.

In an executive order titled "Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety," Trump reversed a Biden-era moratorium on federal executions and instructed the attorney general to pursue capital sentences for every appropriate case—as well as in all cases of murder of law enforcement officers or murders committed by undocumented immigrants, regardless of circumstances.

Trump's executive order not only will revive capital punishment at the federal level, but attempt to expand the death penalty by directly supplying drugs to states and overturning Supreme Court precedents limiting the death penalty to crimes involving murder.

The executive order instructs the attorney general to "take all necessary and lawful action to ensure that each state that allows capital punishment has a sufficient supply of drugs needed to carry out lethal injection."

The death penalty has been in long-term decline nationally due to unrelenting legal challenges, governor-imposed moratoriums, and difficulties acquiring the drugs used in lethal injections.

Where the death penalty remains active, states have turned to extreme secrecy and novel methods to keep it going. They've passed new laws hiding their supply chains and methods, barred witnesses from execution chambers, imported drugs from shady overseas pharmacies, and paid cash to avoid paper trails. Despite all this, states haven't been able to hide numerous botched executions that resulted.

In 2023 Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs paused executions in the state and hired a former federal magistrate judge to investigate its death penalty practices. However, Hobbs fired the investigator before he could release his report after he concluded that the sloppy injection protocols were not a viable method of execution. Arizona's supply of lethal injection drugs is currently sitting in unmarked jars and are possibly expired.

Trump's executive order will also add to a right-wing campaign to overturn current Supreme Court precedent outlawing the death penalty for crimes that do not involve murder. The order instructs the attorney general to "take all appropriate action to seek the overruling of Supreme Court precedents that limit the authority of State and Federal governments to impose capital punishment."

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Kennedy v. Louisiana that the Eighth Amendment bars capital punishment for the crime of child rape, affirming a 1977 decision that held the same for cases with adult victims.

Florida and Tennessee recently passed unconstitutional laws making child rape a capital crime in attempts to tee up an opportunity for the conservative majority on the Supreme Court to overturn Kennedy.

The Day 1 executive order is not a surprise. The first Trump administration embarked on an execution spree in its final six months, rushing through 13 federal executions.

"President Trump's executive order demanding capital charges for the murder of law enforcement officers or capital crimes by illegal aliens is unnecessary bluster, because the death penalty already exists for such crimes," Abraham Bonowitz, executive director of the death penalty abolition group Death Penalty Action, said in a press release. "But Trump can't help himself. Donald Trump's Agenda2025 articulated his plan to drastically increase executions, and we all know this is one promise he can't wait to keep."

Comments

[Spiritus Mundi]

States should not kill their own citizens. Not by execution, by abortion, by pointless wars, by gain of function 'research', by MAIDS, or by incompetence.

[Don't look at me!]

Unless they break a window in the capitol building.

[Spiritus Mundi]

Of course that is (D)ifferent.

[SRG2]

(R)ioting is indeed different.

[mad.casual]

Would you feel any better little girl if they were killed by other citizens? Are you volunteering to house the illegal immigrants murderous psychopaths yourself?

[Spiritus Mundi]

Pushed out of windows is the orginial line. And defenestration is one of my favorite words. Government and juries are too fallable to be trusted to end people's lives justly.

[mad.casual]

Pushed out of windows is the orginial line. And defenestration is one of my favorite words.

No shit. And while you fart in the bathtub and laugh your ass off about it, the actual point is that crime is crime and dead is dead whether it's a police state or a lynch mob or a blood feud or vigilantism or a tribal honor killing, or cultural knife-fight bukkake therapy session. The State, via the judicial system, is by no means exceptional or exceptionally bad nor the only means by which groups of people get the wrong idea about whom to execute and then proceed to act.

Government and juries are too fallable to be trusted to end people's lives justly.

You weren't around for 2019-2020 when people were throwing drinks at people for not wearing masks in public and reporting exactly which Jews were hiding in which attics.

Again, if people like you actually cared, you'd recognize that the number of extrajudicial killings within prisons was a larger problem by an order of magnitude. But then your (false) virtue wouldn't be clearly signaled and you'd have to actually deal with reality.

To wit, the question you dodged; Are you going to adjudicate, execute, and/or otherwise house these people yourself?

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (Trump Ascendant!! )]

I’m all for the timely execution of death row inmates. The man who murdered my great uncle, Thomas Creech, has been on death row for over FORTY YEARS. He even murdered another inmate while incarcerated. And thanks to idiot democrats, he still hasn’t been executed yet. He isn’t a retard, and his guilt isn’t in question.

There is no reason to Creech, or anyone like him, alive. Long over the death penalty.

[mad.casual]

Ultimately, either the government or some construction of citizens within society establish and conduct some more or less fair means by which to eliminate or rehabilitate intolerable members of society post hoc, or the government or some construction of citizens within society establish and conduct some more or less fair means by which to eliminate or rehabilitate intolerable members of society a priori.

Of the options, a priori rehabilitation sounds the most catastrophically dysfunctional and post hoc elimination sounds the most objectively functional.

If you could just wish that the most blood-thirsty, cravenly-insane psychopath serial killer were a perfectly adjusted, mild-mannered citizen and it were so, wishing, e.g., for people to stop drinking or having sex or enjoying sports should be a piece of cake. Given my affinity for some of those things and my lack of desire to force conformity on others, I choose post facto elimination.

There are certainly arguments to be had about the degree to which and from which crimes people can be rehabilitated, but the idea that once and forever, no one could commit a crime so heinous as to necessitate their elimination (as distinct from actually performing the act) implies that the a priori rehabilitation is already taking place.

[Don’t get eliminated]

“Would you feel any better little girl if they were killed by other citizens?”

Yes.

[mad.casual]

You answered one question but dodged the issue.

Are you going to kill them or house them yourself?

Otherwise, this is just "Why can't the justice system run on unicorn farts?" wish casting.

[Don’t get eliminated]

If someone murders or rapes someone close to me then I would gladly dispense justice myself.

This is the way:

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/texas-man-who-killed-his-daughters-rapist-will-not-be-charged-charles-c-w-cooke/

[mad.casual]

If someone murders or rapes someone close to me then I would gladly dispense justice myself.

This is only the "Do unto others" half of the equation. If someone else decides to "dispense justice" on behalf of someone "sufficiently close" to them, are you going to sit back and let it happen for any arbitrary conception of "dispense justice" and/or "sufficiently close"? Because your stance on the death penalty is a rather emphatic, "No." along either clause.

[sarcasmic]

That is so leftist of you.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (Trump Ascendant!! )]

Fuck off Drunky. It’s Trumpin’ time!

[Don’t get eliminated]

Agreed.

Edit: but just like every Reason article critical of democrats doesn’t exist, neither does this comment.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Should attempted suicide be illegal?

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (Trump Ascendant!! )]

The practice of Marxism certainly should. Then you would be on death row.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

THe spirit of the world is NOT a good spirit. Someone mislead you.

In 2023, the Florida leg­is­la­ture passed a law that pro­vides for the death penal­ty for child sex­u­al abuse in defi­ance of Supreme Court prece­dent.
Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008)
First as Alito points out : in Coker was that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the death penalty for the rape of an “ ‘adult woman,’ ”...reported instances of child abuse have increased dramatically;[Footnote 2] and there are many indications of growing alarm about the sexual abuse of children.
, I believe that the “objective indicia” of our society’s “evolving standards of decency” can be fairly summarized as follows. Neither Congress nor juries have done anything that can plausibly be interpreted as evidencing the “national consensus” that the Court perceives.

THIS IS MY MAJOR AGREEMENT WITH ALITO
With respect to the question of moral depravity, is it really true that every person who is convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death is more morally depraved than every child rapist? Consider the following two cases. In the first, a defendant robs a convenience store and watches as his accomplice shoots the store owner. The defendant acts recklessly, but was not the triggerman and did not intend the killing. See, e.g., Tison v. Arizona, 481 U. S. 137 (1987). In the second case, a previously convicted child rapist kidnaps, repeatedly rapes, and tortures multiple child victims. Is it clear that the first defendant is more morally depraved than the second?

[Your Therapist]

Ah yes, and let’s fire up more electric chairs and gas chambers! They were fun!

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (Trump Ascendant!! )]

Sounds good!

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

YOu need help...you argue that there is no depravity, something many hardened criminals would laugh at

" With respect to the question of moral depravity, is it really true that every person who is convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death is more morally depraved than every child rapist? Consider the following two cases. In the first, a defendant robs a convenience store and watches as his accomplice shoots the store owner. The defendant acts recklessly, but was not the triggerman and did not intend the killing. See, e.g., Tison v. Arizona, 481 U. S. 137 (1987). In the second case, a previously convicted child rapist kidnaps, repeatedly rapes, and tortures multiple child victims. Is it clear that the first defendant is more morally depraved than the second?"

[Nobartium]

Trump's executive order not only will revive capital punishment at the federal level, but attempt to expand the death penalty by directly supplying drugs to states and overturning Supreme Court precedents limiting the death penalty to crimes involving murder.

Well thank God for that.

[Nobartium]

On the topic of the death penalty, I've asked before what the acceptable rate of failure is, that is, what percentage of those convicted are innocent, and Wikipedia (not a right-wing source) gave 2%.

I can accept a failure rate of less than 10, but I was expecting this to be as high as 8.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Why should we tolerate any failure rate when it comes to matters of life or death like this?

[Nobartium]

Because no system of justice will have a 0% failure rate, and the argument that the state cannot kill because that number is positive is also true of ALL punishments.

[Fire up the Woodchippers! (Trump Ascendant!! )]

I’ve never seen any hard facts that show anyone who has been executed on the last 50 years is innocent. I just see vague claims that it happens. So absent those facts, it appears that the error rate is currently zero.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

Bu thtat is not relevant to the reasoning that makes a hierarchy of chriminality

" With respect to the question of moral depravity, is it really true that every person who is convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death is more morally depraved than every child rapist? Consider the following two cases. In the first, a defendant robs a convenience store and watches as his accomplice shoots the store owner. The defendant acts recklessly, but was not the triggerman and did not intend the killing. See, e.g., Tison v. Arizona, 481 U. S. 137 (1987). In the second case, a previously convicted child rapist kidnaps, repeatedly rapes, and tortures multiple child victims. Is it clear that the first defendant is more morally depraved than the second?"

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

There were 1,026,700 abortions in 2023, There must have been thousands unacceptable to you had you known the circumstances yet not a peep from you.
And abortions in the 8th or 9th month by every standard were in the thousands. THat was all okay with you.

I am saying that you are not in one case looking at the little human being and the other you are.

[Rossami]

There are several good arguments against the death penalty. 'How you die' is not one of them. Any method of execution as or less horrible, slow and painful than what the condemned criminal did to his/her victim(s) is morally justifiable.

Get off these pointless rants about "botched executions" and focus on the one argument that really matters - can government be trusted to get justice right even in these egregious cases? (Hint: they can't.)

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Yes. The electric chair was sold as a kinder, gentler method of killing people. No more public hangings. A few decades later people noticed that frying a man with smoke pouring out of his ears might be something like cruel and unusual. The gas chamber was the modern answer. Just a blissful nap. But some of the candidates didn't cooperate. But AHA! Lethal injection! People kill themselves every day by sticking needles in their arms. The government can do that too. But it turns out that the anti capital punishment folks made the approved cocktail hard to get. For the record I oppose capital punishment because I will never trust prosecutors and judges and juries with the awesome power to kill people. And I strongly disagree with Trump on this subject. But on balance still the best president I could hope for at this point.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

IF you had any point to your 'obvious' argument you wouldn't have to make it ????

ALITO is right even by your standards

" With respect to the question of moral depravity, is it really true that every person who is convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death is more morally depraved than every child rapist? Consider the following two cases. In the first, a defendant robs a convenience store and watches as his accomplice shoots the store owner. The defendant acts recklessly, but was not the triggerman and did not intend the killing. See, e.g., Tison v. Arizona, 481 U. S. 137 (1987). In the second case, a previously convicted child rapist kidnaps, repeatedly rapes, and tortures multiple child victims. Is it clear that the first defendant is more morally depraved than the second?"

All I know is,you can say this because it is not your little daughter so you can get all detached and super-liberal about it.

[Azathoth!!]

The death penalty has been in long-term decline nationally due to unrelenting legal challenges from leftist activists.

[MasterThief]

That's about it. It's activists corrupting every step of the process for the worst humans alive that is causing a decline. I'd rather just quickly execute these irredeemable beasts the moment their heinous crimes become undeniable.

[Uncle Jay]

"Trump's Death Penalty Executive Order Aims To Expand Execution."

Sounds wonderful especially to those who kidnap, rape and murder children.

[Your Therapist]

There is really no doubt in my mind Trump will also be fine supplying billions of more dollars worth of munitions to the Zionists with which to eventually kill more Gazan and West Bank civilians as well as however many more Lebanese and Syrians they and scoop up along the way. Gotta first bait civilians back into the target areas though I suppose with more make believe cease fire proposals.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

You don't want mercy you want killing you approve of. All silence were you when their missiles came on morning into civilian homes.

[DRM]

The ludicrous idea that executions for crimes other than murder are somehow unconstitutional can only be seriously advanced by illiterate morons under the delusion that the Supreme Court has the lawful power to unilaterally amend the Constitution.

Anyone else making that claim is consciously, deliberately, and blatantly lying.

[DRM]

(This of course does not endorse such sentences as policy. But the amendment procedure in Article V does not include a provision for amendment by unilateral redefinition of any phrase by a Supreme Court that doesn't like what people vote for. The phrase "cruel and unusual punishment" was copied directly from the 1689 English Bill of Rights; any punishment that was in routine use for routine crimes in Britain, the colonies, and the newly-independent United States from 1689 to 1789 is not included. If a state wants to hang people for felony theft, nothing in the Constitution has ever prohibited it; any judge who rules the Constitution says otherwise should be impeached and removed as an oath-breaking usurper.)

[Your Therapist]

Maybe electric benches would be better. We could do several at once. The drug dealers, DRM, the drug dealers! We could take care of so many of them too!

[Dillinger]

I prefer outlawing to death penalty but will not retract my vote lol

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

This is laziness and folly , an abdication of your responsiblity to JUDGE

"Some say that because there is a risk of error in both directions, we should prefer to err on the side of mercy. I agree. We should indeed prefer to err on the side of mercy, in individual cases. But to err categorically is not simply to make a mistake. It is to abdicate our duty."

[Dillinger]

I'll go with the litany of judge not lest in response

[AT]

by directly supplying drugs to states

Reason's readers all unanimously cheer.

[Jeff Mason]

If child rape does not warrant the death penalty, what does? Seriously, is there a worse crime?
.

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

You are right and disagreement with you seems in some cases to indict depravity in the disagreer.

As Alito said in his dissent:

" With respect to the question of moral depravity, is it really true that every person who is convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death is more morally depraved than every child rapist? Consider the following two cases. In the first, a defendant robs a convenience store and watches as his accomplice shoots the store owner. The defendant acts recklessly, but was not the triggerman and did not intend the killing. See, e.g., Tison v. Arizona, 481 U. S. 137 (1987). In the second case, a previously convicted child rapist kidnaps, repeatedly rapes, and tortures multiple child victims. Is it clear that the first defendant is more morally depraved than the second?"

[mad.casual]

COVID

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

We recently had to demonically perverted GAY PARENTS abuse their adopted sibling boys. Now that demands the death sentence , I see not a shred of counter-argument

"One of the couple's friends told police that Zachary once shared images of one of the boys being abused on Snapchat and wrote, "I'm going to f*** my son tonight. Stand by”.

The two accused even used social media platforms to pimp the two brothers to at least two men in the local paedophile sex ring, The New York Post report said.

They were arrested after police caught an alleged member of the ring downloading child porn."

[With Trump in, "now Lord you can let your servant go in peace"]

There is not one parent on here who wouldn't want the death penalty for the GAY COUPLE who adopted two brothers and abused them and posted it online. REPEATEDLY

THey got 100 year sentences with no hope of parole.
Yet you would calll the death sentence too much. DO YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO GAYS LIKE THAT IN PRSION ?????????????????

Death is mercy.

[Your Therapist]

So a heterosexual couple who would do something like that should get accolades you dumb mf?