USA | Justice Department Encourages New Capital Charges Against Commuted Federal Death Row Prisoners

On Dec. 23, 2024, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. commuted the sentences of nearly all federal death row prisoners, sparing 37 men from execution. Just 28 days later, on Jan. 20, 2025, newly inaugurated President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order encouraging state and local prosecutors to pursue new charges against those same prisoners, reopening the possibility of capital punishment in state courts.

In an article by Eduardo Medina for The New York Times, Medina explains how the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed that individuals can be prosecuted for the same crime in both federal and state court under a legal doctrine known as “dual sovereignty.”

According to the article, most legal experts agree that dual sovereignty is constitutional. However, lawyers opposing capital punishment dispute extending the doctrine to capital cases.

Among the men whose sentences were commuted by former President Biden in December 2024 was death row inmate Brandon Council, who was convicted of killing two women in Conway, South Carolina, in 2017. In the article, family members of the two women expressed their outrage over Biden’s December order. The daughter of one victim described the trauma on Facebook as “indescribable.”

Former President Biden campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty and led the Justice Department to issue a moratorium on federal executions during his term. President Trump has directed the Justice Department to seek the death penalty in several high-profile murder cases since his inauguration in January.

In the article, and according to a November 2024 Gallup poll, a majority of Americans support the death penalty for those convicted of murder, though that level of support has been declining.

Since President Trump’s January order, prosecutors in several states have filed new state charges against four of the former federal death row prisoners, including South Carolina’s Council. Most of the men are from states that do not carry out executions or have cases that are too old to be renewed, however.

The legal situation facing the four men has no clear precedent. Dual sovereignty was only reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019, and the partisan tug-of-war over federal death sentences has further complicated the fight in the courts.

In the article, American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Brian W. Stull said, “This is completely uncharted territory … and it will prompt vigorous and time-consuming litigation in opposition.”

Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, commented in the article that death row inmates “will have no interaction with the public ever again … They will die in prison some day an old man.”

Prosecutors also argue in the article that filing new charges provides a second chance for justice and closure for victims’ families. Nathan Williams, a former federal U.S. attorney who led the prosecution of Council, argued that former President Biden’s moratorium did not take into account the “emotional cost to the families.”

Bradley R. Burget, the district attorney for Catahoula Parish, Louisiana, is pursuing the death penalty against Thomas Steven Standards, who pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murdering a 12-year-old girl in 2010. Burget said in the article about the renewed prosecution, “It doesn’t matter if it’s hard work or it’s going to be difficult … the biggest factor into this is, is it the right thing to do?”

Source: davisvanguard.org, Staff, December 26, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

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