President Trump announced Tuesday that the federal government will pursue the death penalty for murders committed in Washington, D.C., marking a significant escalation in his administration’s crime crackdown.
The president has made Washington a test case for stronger federal law enforcement measures, while also pushing to establish National Guard forces in every state that can be mobilized quickly in response to civil unrest. On Monday, he signed an executive order focused on crime, directing the defense secretary to prepare these plans.
“Anybody murders something in the capital, capital punishment,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting. “Capital, capital punishment. If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, D.C., we’re going to be seeking the death penalty. And that’s a very strong preventative.”
The District has not carried out an execution since 1957, when Robert Carter was put to death for fatally shooting an off-duty police officer. Years ago, D.C. had mandatory death sentences for first-degree murder, but that policy was struck down in the 1972 Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia, which ruled that the death penalty was being applied in an unconstitutionally arbitrary way. The high court later allowed capital punishment to return under new sentencing guidelines in 1976, but the D.C. City Council formally abolished the practice in 1981.
During the federal government’s recent crime initiative, Washington went 12 consecutive days without a murder — a streak broken early Tuesday when a 31-year-old man was killed in Southeast D.C., according to the Metropolitan Police Department.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order instructing the attorney general to seek the death penalty in cases involving the murder of a law enforcement officer or “a capital crime committed by an alien illegally present in this country.”
