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Trump Has Already Launched More Death Penalty Prosecutions Than in His Entire First Term

Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche have pushed hard for new death sentences, including in states that have abolished executions.

Less than halfway through Trump’s second term, the U.S. Department of Justice has authorized a rash of new death penalty prosecutions, already surpassing the total number of capital cases brought during Trump’s previous four years in office.

Since Trump returned to the White House, DOJ prosecutors have moved to seek the death penalty against at least 42 defendants in 34 cases, according to figures compiled by The Intercept, based on legal records and data from the Justice Department and Federal Capital Trial Project. In at least two additional cases, federal prosecutors have conveyed their plans to seek death but have not yet submitted a notice of intent — the formal legal filing telling the defense and presiding judge that the DOJ seeks to execute a defendant. By comparison, the DOJ authorized some 38 capital defendants total over the course of Trump’s first term.

Many of the new cases have originated in places where the death penalty has been abolished — states like New Mexico, Colorado, and Maryland — as well as jurisdictions where there is no history of capital punishment, like the U.S. Virgin Islands. More than 70 percent of the defendants are people of color, most of them Black.

The spike in new death penalty cases is a striking illustration of Trump’s longtime enthusiasm for capital punishment, which led him to carry out an unprecedented execution spree in the months before he left office in 2021. It’s also in stark contrast to the Justice Department under President Joe Biden, who put capital prosecutions almost entirely on hold — and whose attorney general, Merrick Garland, deauthorized dozens of pending death penalty cases upon taking office.

Trump’s ramped up authorizations won’t necessarily bring a wave of new death sentences. Only a relative handful of federal capital authorizations end up going to trial — and fewer still result in a death sentence. Although executions have been on the rise across the United States since Trump retook office, new death sentences have been on a consistent decline for decades. Prosecutors have become more reluctant to seek death sentences, and jurors have also been less and less willing to send defendants to death row.

“The American public has made a very, very decisive turn away from the death penalty during the last 20 years,” said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “Twenty years ago, we had five times the number of new death sentences than we had last year.” Although Trump’s DOJ “purports to be acting consistent with the will of the American people,” she said, “those are American juries that are making different decisions now.”

The Trump administration’s death penalty plans have already come apart in many cases. Since then-Attorney General Pam Bondi first started filing notices of intent last year, roughly a third of the defendants have seen the death penalty taken off the table. In numerous cases, the presiding judge has struck down the government’s authorizations. In one case involving two co-defendants, the DOJ has withdrawn its prior authorization. And two cases have been resolved with guilty pleas.

This still leaves at least 27 defendants currently facing capital trials. With Blanche, who was previously Trump’s criminal defense lawyer, vying to become attorney general, there is no reason to expect the push to send people to death row to slow down anytime soon.

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The defendants facing the death penalty under Trump have been accused of grisly crimes, from mass shootings to gang murders. But if there’s one thing driving Trump’s escalating pursuit of new death sentences above all else, it is his sustained rage at Biden, who took the historic step of commuting 37 death sentences before leaving office, leaving........

© The Intercept