Death Penalty News

The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Friday that it will resume the federal use of capital punishment and that it is seeking death sentences against 44 defendants. DOJ also said that it will use firing squads, electrocution, or nitrogen asphyxiation if the drug used in lethal injection is unavailable. The announcement follows the Restoring and Strengthening the Federal Death Penalty report, published on April 24. The report is especially critical of the moratorium on federal executions, ordered by Attorney General Merrick Garland in July 2021, to remain until the death penalty could be conducted “fairly and humanely.” Garland was concerned about the federal lethal injection protocol, which uses only one drug, pentobarbital, and the possibility that it causes “unnecessary pain and suffering.” In response to Garland’s moratorium and concerns, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 prisoners on federal death row, leaving only three prisoners.

Federal prosecutors were directed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi this week to pursue the death penalty against Luigi Mangione, the man accused of murdering United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year in New York City. Mangione allegedly shot Thompson as the executive was headed to a health care conference on Dec. 4, killing the father of two on the street. The 26-year-old faces federal murder and stalking charges and 11 state charges, including murder and terrorism charges, which are not eligible for the death penalty.

On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed more than two dozen Executive Orders, includ­ing a call to ​“restore” the fed­er­al death penal­ty . The Order, while lack­ing many impor­tant details, instructs the Department of Justice’s Attorney General to ​“pur­sue the death penal­ty for all crimes of a sever­i­ty demand­ing its use,” includ­ing the killing of a law enforce­ment offi­cer or ​“a cap­i­tal crime com­mit­ted by an ille­gal alien present in this coun­try” and to encour­age state attor­neys gen­er­al to bring state-cap­i­tal charges for these crimes. President Trump also calls on the Attorney General to ​“take all nec­es­sary and law­ful action” to ensure that states with cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment have suf­fi­cient access to the drugs need­ed for lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions. The Order also directs the Attorney General to seek to over­rule any estab­lished Supreme Court prece­dent that ​“lim­it the author­i­ty of state and fed­er­al gov­ern­ments to impose capital punis...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed a sweeping execution order Monday on the death penalty that directs the attorney general to “take all necessary and lawful action” to ensure that states have enough lethal injection drugs to carry out executions. Trump’s order, coming just hours after he returned to the White House, compels the Justice Department to not only seek the death penalty in appropriate federal cases but also to help preserve capital punishment in states that have struggled to maintain adequate supplies of lethal injection drugs.

As three men challenge their commutations, others brace for imminent prison transfers and the finality of a life sentence with no chance of release. In the days after President Joe Biden commuted his death sentence, 40-year-old Rejon Taylor felt like he’d been reborn. After facing execution for virtually his entire adult life for a crime he committed at 18, he was fueled by a new sense of purpose. He was “a man on a mission,” he told me in an email on Christmas Day. “I will not squander this opportunity of mercy, of life.”

AG Merrick Garland wrote there is 'significant uncertainty' around whether drug inflicts unnecessary pain and suffering The federal government will no longer use pentobarbital in executions due to concerns of "unnecessary pain and suffering," a decision made less than one month after Tennessee announced it would be using the drug in upcoming lethal injections.

In an August 31, 2024, editorial from The New York Times , the newspaper’s editorial board writes that capital punishment is “immoral, unconstitutional and useless as a deterrent to crime,” and asserts that President Joseph Biden should follow through with his campaign pledge to end the federal death penalty.  The Times believes “it would be an appropriate and humane finale to his presidency for Mr. Biden to fulfill that pledge and try to eliminate the death penalty for federal crimes.” Since 2000, public support for the death penalty has steadily declined, as have the number of new death sentences and executions. 

It's the first time the party has not opposed the practice nationally since 2016 and the first time since 2004 that it has been omitted entirely. The Democratic Party has omitted the death penalty from its national platform for the first time in 20 years, following back-to-back cycles of opposing the practice outright. The news came on Aug. 19, when the delegates to the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago voted to approve the new document, which is to guide the party’s electioneering for the next four years. 

Former President Donald Trump has signaled he will continue his administration’s aggressive pursuit of the death penalty if he is elected, while Vice President Kamala Harris has gone mum on the issue.  Trump made his most detailed comments yet on capital punishment since launching his campaign during remarks at the Arizona border on Thursday, at the same time that Harris has come under scrutiny for her silence on the matter.

A conversation with Death Penalty Action Co-founder and Executive Director Abe Bonowitz. Now that Joe Biden is a lame duck president, activists are holding him accountable to make good on his promise to end the federal death penalty during his remaining six months as president. Biden’s election campaign in 2020 had pledged to end the federal death penalty and incentivize the remaining 27 states that still allow executions to do the same. While he made history as the first president in the United States to openly oppose the death penalty, there has been no movement to actually end federal executions during his nearly four years in office.

Sen Ted Cruz says Biden admin should 'unequivocally deny' Moussaoui's request A 9/11 terrorist’s plea to a Virginia judge that he be sent home to France from a federal Supermax prison to avoid the prospect of Donald Trump ordering his execution led to outrage from lawmakers on Monday. A letter from Zacarias Moussaoui to federal Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria lays out the so-called "20th hijacker’s" concerns that a future Trump administration will lead to his swift demise.

The United States ranks among the top countries using capital punishment, contributing to a worldwide surge in executions last year. That’s according to data released last week by Amnesty International, which opposes capital punishment in all cases. The London-based rights group’s annual report on the global use of the death penalty documents more than 1,100 executions in 2023.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As he prepared to take office three years ago, Joe Biden’s incoming administration considered a host of possible options to fulfill a campaign pledge to end the federal death penalty. One idea was an executive order, according to people familiar with the matter. But the White House did not issue one or push for legislation in Congress. Six months later, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium on federal capital punishment to study the protocols used to execute people, a narrower action that has meant no executions under Biden. The Justice Department has since pushed for the death penalty against the suspects charged with mass shootings in Pittsburgh and Buffalo.

President Joseph Biden's stated opposition to the death penalty is running counter to his administration's decision on the fate of the racist who murdered 10 Black people in a Buffalo supermarket in 2022. "It's really out of synch with what Biden said during his campaign," said Karen Pita Loor, a clinical law professor at Boston University who has written of the Department of Justice's decision to seek the death penalty in another case.

U.S. prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Payton Gendron, the then-18-year-old man who in 2022 killed nearly a dozen Black shoppers at a Tops Friendly Market grocery store in Buffalo, New York. In a court filing Jan. 12, Trini Ross, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of New York, informed the court and the defendant of the United States’ intent to seek the death penalty for Gendron’s crimes, in part because of the defendant’s expressed “bias, hatred, and contempt toward Black persons and his animus toward Black persons.” 

"This Justice Department is far more reluctant to use the death penalty, certainly than the Trump administration was, and far more cognizant of the problems, but it's not willing to throw away the death penalty altogether." WASHINGTON - Just a few months after he took office, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a moratorium to halt federal executions -- a stark contrast after his predecessor carried out 13 in six months. Under Garland's watch and a president who vowed to abolish the death penalty, the Justice Department took on no new death penalty cases. That changed Friday as federal prosecutors said they would seek capital punishment for a white supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket. The decision doesn't change the halt on federal executions, but Garland's first approval of a new capital prosecution opens a new chapter in the long and complicated history of the death penalty in the U.S.

Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a white supremacist who killed 10 Black people in a mass shooting at a Buffalo supermarket, they said in a court filing Friday.  Payton Gendron, 20, is already serving a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole after he pleaded guilty to state charges of murder and hate-motivated domestic terrorism in the 2022 attack.

The U.S. prison bureau transferred Nasih Ra'id to Terre Haute in 2005.  A man who died on federal death row last month told loved ones he planned to kill himself in the weeks before U.S. prison staff reported finding his body.   Friends of Nasih Khalil Ra’id said he had been struggling to cope with conditions at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. The facility houses the U.S. prison bureau’s “Special Confinement Unit,” or federal death row.

There’s still no decision on whether the federal government will seek the death penalty for the man who shot and killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo Tops grocery store on May 14, 2022. In a status conference Tuesday morning, prosecutors said the question of the death penalty has recently moved to the Office of the U.S. Deputy Attorney General.  That’s the next step before it goes to the attorney general, who makes the final decision on seeking the death penalty. 

Since reaching historic highs in the late 1990s and early 2000s, use of the death penalty in America has steadily declined, with a dwindling number of jurisdictions responsible for a growing portion of executions. While capital punishment remains legal in 27 states and for the federal government – and a majority of US adults say they’re in favor it for convicted murderers – the number of jurisdictions that keep the death penalty on the books versus those that actually use it to punish the so-called “worst of the worst” illustrates critics’ complaints of how arbitrarily it is administered.