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CNA Staff, Jan 21, 2025 / 17:30 pm (CNA).

President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order seeking to overturn Supreme Court precedents restricting capital punishment and expand states’ access to lethal drugs used in executions.

Trump in his order describes the death penalty as an “essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens.”

The order directs the U.S. attorney general to actively pursue the death penalty in federal cases, particularly for murders of law enforcement officers and crimes committed by people residing in the country illegally and encourages states to do the same.

It also directs the attorney general to ensure that states have a sufficient supply of drugs for lethal injection and to seek the overruling of Supreme Court precedents that limit the authority of state governments to impose capital punishment.

“[E]fforts to subvert and undermine capital punishment defy the laws of our nation, make a mockery of justice, and insult the victims of these horrible crimes,” the order reads.

“The government’s most solemn responsibility is to protect its citizens from abhorrent acts, and my administration will not tolerate efforts to stymie and eviscerate the laws that authorize capital punishment against those who commit horrible acts of violence against American citizens.”

The federal death penalty has been applied relatively sparingly since being reinstated in 1988 after a hiatus of several years. Since then, just 16 people have been put to death by the federal government — 13 during the first Trump administration, which restarted federal executions after a lengthy hiatus  — compared with nearly 1,600 people executed by the states during that time.

Trump’s Jan. 20 order is sharply at odds with Catholic teaching on the death penalty. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, reflecting a 2018 update promulgated by Pope Francis, describes the death penalty as “inadmissible” and an “attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” (No. 2267). Because of this teaching, the Church “works with determination for its abolition worldwide,” the catechism continues. 

Catholic leaders in the U.S. and elsewhere, while expressing compassion for the victims of crimes, often speak in support of lifelong prison sentences for those who have committed those heinous crimes rather than the death penalty.

Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, executive director of the anti-death penalty group Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN), criticized Trump’s order Tuesday, saying in a statement to CNA that the order “makes no sense.”

“​​What we know about the death penalty is that it does not deter crime or make communities safer. It’s immoral, flawed, and risky; arbitrary and unfair; cruel and dehumanizing. Both the state and federal death penalty systems are broken beyond repair and emblematic of a throwaway culture,” Vaillancourt Murphy said. 

She said despite Trump’s “regrettable declaration,” CMN and other Catholics will continue to advocate and pray for an end to the death penalty at all levels of government in the U.S. 

“As faithful anti-death penalty advocates, we know lives hang in the balance. Our work will not be over until capital punishment has been completely abandoned at every level of government in the United States,” she said. 

Under Trump during his first presidential term, Attorney General William Barr in July 2019 announced that the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons would resume federal executions after a hiatus of more than 15 years. All told, 13 inmates were executed in the final six months of Trump’s first term, including the first woman to be executed by the federal government in nearly 70 years.

In July 2021, under President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a moratorium on federal executions while the Department of Justice conducted a review of its policies and procedures to ensure the death penalty is being applied “fairly and humanely.” Despite overseeing the halting of new executions, the Biden administration sought to uphold the death sentences of several prisoners already convicted, including the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber.

In the waning days of the previous administration, Biden commuted the death row sentences of more than three dozen federal prisoners, noting that the order leaves in place the death sentences of three federal prisoners guilty of “terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

Catholic advocates, including the U.S. bishops, had urged the president to commute the sentences of the 40 people currently on federal death row in anticipation of Trump’s second term. 

Regarding the 37 prisoners whose sentences were commuted, Trump’s order directs the attorney general to evaluate the conditions in which they are incarcerated to “ensure that these offenders are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they pose.” It also directs the attorney general to explore avenues for further punishment, potentially including state-level capital charges. 

Pope Francis in December had even joined the call for the prisoners to be spared, praying that “their sentences may be commuted or changed.”