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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump promised on Tuesday to “vigorously pursue” capital punishment after President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of most people on federal death row partly to stop Trump from pushing forward their executions.
Trump on Monday criticized Biden’s decision to replace the sentences of 37 of the other 40 people sentenced to life in prison without the option of parole, arguing that it was absurd and insulting to the families of his victims. Biden said converting their sentences to life in prison is consistent with the moratorium on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass killings.
“Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” he wrote on his social media site. “When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”
WATCH: Why Biden commuted the sentences of 37 people on federal death row
Historically, presidents have not been concerned with dictating or recommending the sanctions that federal prosecutors seek from defendants in criminal cases, even though Trump has long sought greater direction over the operations of the Justice Department. The president-elect wrote that he would direct the branch to carry out the death penalty “at my inauguration,” but was unclear about what concrete steps he might take, saying they would be in cases of “rapists, murderers and violent murderers. “
He highlighted the case of two men who were on federal death row for the murder of a girl and a boy, admitted to killing more and had their sentences commuted through Biden.
During his election campaign, Trump called for expanding the federal death penalty, adding the death penalty to those who kill police officers, those convicted of drug and human trafficking, and immigrants who kill American citizens.
“Trump has tried to say that he believes the death penalty is a vital tool and that he needs to use it,” said Douglas Berman, a sentencing expert at Ohio State University College of Law. “But if that can happen, if it’s possible or not. “According to the current law or other laws, it is a big task. “
Most Americans have historically supported the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to decades of annual polling by Gallup, but support has declined over the past few decades. About half of Americans were in favor in an October poll, while roughly 7 in 10 Americans backed capital punishment for murderers in 2007.
Before Biden’s commutation, there were 40 federal death row inmates, compared to more than 2,000 state death row inmates.
“The reality is all of these crimes are typically handled by the states,” Berman said.
A question is whether the Trump administration would try to take over some state murder cases, such as those related to drug trafficking or smuggling. He could also attempt to take cases from states that have abolished the death penalty.
Berman said Trump’s statement, as well as some recent moves in the states, may simply be an effort to get the Supreme Court to reconsider a precedent that views the death penalty as a disproportionate punishment for rape.
“It would literally take decades to implement. It’s not something that happens overnight,” Berman said.
Before one of Trump’s rallies on August 20, his prepared remarks published in the media indicated that he would announce that he would seek the death penalty for rapists and child traffickers. But Trump never kept his promises.
One of the men Trump highlighted Tuesday is former Marine Jorge Ávila Torrez, who sentenced to death for the murder of a sailor in Virginia and later pleaded guilty to the fatal killing of an 8-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl in a park in suburban Chicago several years earlier.
The other man, Thomas Steven Sanders, sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of a 12-year-old woman in Louisiana, days after shooting the woman’s mother to death in a Louisiana wildlife park. Arizona. Court records show he admitted to either murder.
Families of some victims have expressed anger over Biden’s decision, but the president has faced pressure from defense teams who have suggested he make it harder for Trump to use capital punishment for federal prisoners. The ACLU and the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were among the teams that applauded the decision.
Biden allowed 3 federal inmates to be executed. They are Dylann Roof, who committed the racist murders of black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 2013 Boston Marathon bomber; and Robert Bowers, who shot and killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U. S. history.
Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Michelle L. Price and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
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