15 November 2024 :
November 11, 2024 - USA. Trump wants to expand death penalty
President-elect Donald Trump said during his campaign he would like to expand the death penalty to include child rapists, immigrants who kill U.S. citizens and police officers, human traffickers and drug dealers.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in 2008 that it is unconstitutional to impose the death penalty for the rape of a child that does not result in the child’s death.
Since then, Florida and Tennessee have passed laws authorizing the death penalty for child rapists. Supporters of the laws hope that they will lead the Supreme Court to overturn the 2008 decision, Kennedy v. Louisiana, according to prior coverage.
In the 6 months before Trump left office, the federal government executed 13 inmates, including the only woman on federal death row, according to NBC News and the Catholic News Agency. They are among 16 federal inmates executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1988.
After President Joe Biden took office, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium on executions to review changes in the Trump administration. Those changes allowed some executions to be carried out by electrocution, nitrogen gas, firing squad or the single drug pentobarbital.
40 federal inmates are currently on death row, according to statistics from the Death Penalty Information Center.
The anti-death penalty Catholic Mobilizing Network plans to petition Biden to commute the sentences of all federal death row inmates.
