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'Ghoulish': Trump Expands Federal Death Penalty
The Republican president "articulated his plan to drastically increase executions, and we all know this is one promise he can't wait to keep," said one death penalty abolitionist.
Jan 21, 2025
Delivering on a promise to "vigorously pursue the death penalty," U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday night signed an executive order that reverses his predecessor's moratorium on federal capital punishment and calls for expanding it.
The widely expected order—one of several issued on Inauguration Day—was swiftly criticized on factual and moral grounds.
Attorney and death penalty expert Robert Dunham pointed out that the order "starts with a demonstrable falsehood ('Capital punishment is an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes'), signaling that the administration intends not to allow the facts to affect its policy decisions."
"In fact, the death penalty does not contribute anything to public safety," said Dunham, citing a study by the Death Penalty Policy Project, which he directs. "As for 'deterring the most heinous crimes,' see my analysis of the worst of the worst mass shootings in the United States."
"It is essential, with the importance and deadly consequences of this policy, that media coverage report the truth and not just the rhetoric," he stressed. "The executive order is grounded in a false, dark fantasy about deterrence and has nothing to do with making the public safer."
Declaring that "the death penalty is unjust and cruel," the ACLU warned that Trump's order not only directs an expansion of its use at the federal level but also encourages states to do the same.
Specifically, the order says that "in addition to pursuing the death penalty where possible," the attorney general shall seek it "regardless of other factors" for federal cases involving the murder of a law enforcement officer or a capital crime committed by an undocumented immigrant—and shall "encourage state attorneys general and district attorneys to bring state capital charges for all capital crimes with special attention to" those circumstances, "regardless of whether the federal trial results in a capital sentence."
The order further directs the head of the U.S. Department of Justice to "seek the overruling of Supreme Court precedents that limit the authority of state and federal governments to impose" the death penalty and "ensure that each state that allows capital punishment has a sufficient supply of drugs needed to carry out lethal injection."
Last week, outgoing U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland "withdrew the Justice Department's protocol for federal executions that allowed for single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital, after a government review raised concerns about the potential for 'unnecessary pain and suffering,'" The Associated Pressreported. "The protocol could be imposed by Trump's new acting Attorney General James McHenry III, or his pick to lead the Justice Department, Pam Bondi, once she's confirmed by the Senate."
Though Trump's order doesn't name Garland, it explicitly takes aim at former President Joe Biden for his moratorium as well as his attempt to prevent another GOP killing spree like the one that occurred at the end of the Republican's first term, accusing the Democrat of commuting the sentences of "37 of the 40 most vile and sadistic rapists, child molesters, and murderers on federal death row: remorseless criminals who brutalized young children, strangled and drowned their victims, and hunted strangers for sport."
Biden said last month that "in good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted." He left Charleston church gunman Dylann Roof, Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers, and Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on death row. The others now face life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Trump cannot reverse Biden's commutations, but he directed the attorney general to "evaluate the places of imprisonment and conditions of confinement for each" of those 37 men and "take all lawful and appropriate action to ensure that these offenders are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose."
The president also said that the attorney general "shall further evaluate whether these offenders can be charged with state capital crimes and shall recommend appropriate action to state and local authorities."
Death Penalty Action executive director Abraham Bonowitz said in a Monday statement:
President Trump's executive order demanding capital charges for the murder of law enforcement officers or capital crimes by illegal aliens is unnecessary bluster, because the death penalty already exists for such crimes. But Trump can't help himself. Donald Trump's Agenda2025 articulated his plan to drastically increase executions, and we all know this is one promise he can't wait to keep.
We are also dismayed at President Biden's cynical compromise that commuted 37 federal death sentences while leaving seven prisoners on federal and military death rows. While expressing both his personal opposition to the death penalty and his desire to maintain the moratorium on executions he imposed in 2021, Biden has nevertheless primed the pump for Donald Trump to resume his execution spree.
Social media users also slammed Trump's order, with one saying that "this is extremely disturbing" and another calling it "one of the most ghoulish things I've ever fucking read." Many critics highlighted that the president issued the measure while pardoning over 1,500 insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, which led to the deaths of multiple police officers.
James Goodwin, policy director at the Center for Progressive Reform, noted that it "is straight out of Project 2025," the sweeping Heritage Foundation-led playbook from which Trump unsuccessfully tried to distance himself during the campaign.
Trump has a long history of supporting capital punishment. As journalist Prem Thakker
put it, "On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the man who bought [a] full-page [newspaper] ad calling for the execution of the Central Park Five—five Black and Latino teens wrongfully convicted of rape—makes one of his first acts as president to restore and prioritize the death penalty."
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Family of Robert Brooks Says Killing by Prison Guards Must Be 'Catalyst for Change'
"We are demanding that every single person, every single thug, that had anything to do with the death of Robert Brooks be fired and arrested," said one advocate.
Dec 31, 2024
As family members and supporters held a vigil at Monroe County Jail in Rochester, New York, on Monday night, inmates in the prison cells above them flashed their lights on and off in solidarity with Robert Brooks, who suffered an apparently fatal beating at a facility more than 100 miles away earlier this month.
Body camera footage of Brooks being savagely beaten by 14 correctional officers and prison staffers at Marcy Correctional Facility was made public on Friday by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
The video, which was taken on December 9 from body cameras worn by four of the staffers, showed officers choking Brooks, one person kicking him and forcing him onto an exam table, one punching his upper body, and two officers dragging his limp body over across the room and trying to hoist him up against a window.
Brooks, who was 43, was pronounced dead the following day at a hospital. An autopsy report has not yet been released. A preliminary report from the medical examiner's office showed "concern for asphyxia due to compression of the neck as the cause of death, as well as the death being due to actions of another."
At the rally on Monday, his son, Robert Brooks Jr., said Brooks "had a loving, generous heart and a special concern for young people" and said the family's "deepest wishes are that my father's death will not be in vain."
"His killing must be a catalyst for change," he said.
Brooks' father also spoke at the vigil, decrying the actions of both the people who beat his son and of a nurse at the facility who, according to the video, stood by and watched while the beating took place.
"When you have taken the law officers' oath of honor, the Hippocratic oath, or the Florence Nightingale Pledge for nurses, but you participate or sit idly by smiling and chatting as if this was just another day at the office, while a man is being beaten to death, that's evil," he said. "Between 2016 and 2019, approximately 15,679 fathers, daughters, mothers, and sons died in state prisons. They say 47% died from illnesses—I don't believe it. After watching that video, there is nothing they can tell me that I will believe."
Brooks was more than halfway through serving a 12-year sentence for assault, which he had been serving at nearby Mohawk Correctional Facility. He was moved to Marcy on the day of the attack, The New York Timesreported.
The Correctional Association of New York, the state's independent prison watchdog, completed a report on Marcy in 2022, finding that 70% of inmates reported racial bias among staff members. Brooks was Black and the officers in the video—like 91% of the prison's staff members, according to the 2022 report—were white.
Four out of five inmates reported having experienced or witness abuse my correctional officers or other staffers, with one saying physical abuse was "rampant" and reporting that an officer had told him Marcy was "a hands-on facility."
The Timesreported on Saturday that at least three of the guards implicated in Brooks' beating had previously been named in federal lawsuits filed by inmates who they attacked; one plaintiff was left using a wheelchair after the beating and another was disfigured.
Elizabeth Mazur, an attorney who is representing Brooks' family, told Rochester-based CBS affiliate that the reports about the officers raise "questions about you know whether there's a real cultural problem that's been allowed to fester at Marcy or sort of within the prison system in general."
"The way that Mr. Brooks was killed is just horrifying," she said. "It's terrible enough to lose a loved one, especially an incarcerated loved one when the family knows that they weren't with them during their final moments, but I think it's especially hard to know that you've lost a loved one this way—to this kind of senseless act of violence."
The family is planning to file a civil lawsuit in the future, Mazur said.
Rallies were also held to demand justice for Brooks in New York City, with supporters gathering outside Gov. Kathy Hochul's office.
"We are not going to sit down and just pray, and just hope," said Rev. Kevin McCall, a community activist. "We are demanding that every single person, every single thug, that had anything to do with the death of Robert Brooks be fired and arrested."
The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said Monday that 13 people involved in the attack have been suspended without pay, while one person has resigned.
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'Shame': Homeless Woman Was in Labor and Needed Care, But Was Given Ticket Instead
One advocate called out "the politicians who paved the way for this tragedy."
Dec 19, 2024
"I've got to go to the hospital," a pregnant woman filmed by the Louisville Metro Police Department's body cameras in late September told officers, standing near a mattress beneath a busy overpass. "What am I doing wrong?"
The woman was in labor and had told the police as they approached her that she thought her water had broken, but that didn't stop the officers from giving her a ticket for violating a new Kentucky law that bans all street camping—one of dozens of laws criminalizing homelessness that were passed this year.
Lt. Caleb Stewart, who cited the woman in Louisville, told her that he would call an ambulance for her, but when she began moving toward the street to wait for the emergency workers, he yelled at her to stop.
"Am I being detained?" she asked.
"Yes, you're being detained," he replied. "You're being detained because you're unlawfully camping."
Stewart was later heard on the body camera's audio saying he didn't believe the woman was in labor; a public defender representing her told Kentucky Public Radio that she had in fact given birth later that day and the family was living in a shelter while waiting for a January trial date regarding her citation.
The upcoming trial and the video underscore "both the absurdity and cruelty of anti-camping laws in KY and those cropping up nationwide," said Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center. "This is an extreme incident, but unfortunately, it is not an isolated one. Instead of addressing the cause of homelessness—the fact that more and more people struggle to afford rent—politicians are passing laws that kick people when they are down and make homelessness worse. The solution to homelessness is housing and help, not tickets or fines."
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in July that officials can ban sleeping and camping in public places. Since then, said Rabinowitz, nearly 150 cities across the U.S. have passed anti-camping bills.
The video was also publicized days after Republican elected officials celebrated "the person who murdered Jordan Neely, a homeless New Yorker," said Rabinowitz. "And [President-elect] Donald Trump and his billionaire cronies want to round up homeless people and put them in detention camps. All of these things make homelessness worse."
Shameka Parrish-Wright, director of advocacy group VOCAL-KY, said that "the disregard and disrespect of these two lives is the direct result of the so-called 'Safer Kentucky Act' that was enacted this year."
"People experiencing homelessness are fighting for their lives across the country and right here in Louisville. Investing in immediate, affordable housing and healthcare is the only way to stop this from happening again—not by handing out more tickets that won't house a single person," said Parrish-Wright. "Shame on the politicians who paved the way for this tragedy.”
"If politicians actually cared about homeless Kentuckians," she added, "they would focus on getting them the housing and support they need."
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