President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a presidential memorandum seeking to reinstate the death penalty in Washington, DC, as Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the Justice Department will be seeking capital punishment across the country.
“The death penalty in Washington,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “You kill somebody, or if you kill a police officer, law enforcement officer — death penalty. And hopefully they won’t do that.”
“It’s a very interesting capital punishment, capital city. Capital, capital, capital,” he added.
The memo specifically directs Bondi and US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro “to fully implement the death penalty here in Washington, DC, where the evidence and facts of the case indicate that the death penalty should be used,” White House staff secretary Will Scharf said.
Bondi, who stood beside Trump in the Oval Office, announced: “Not only are we seeking it in Washington, DC, but all over the country, again.”
President Donald Trump signs a presidential memorandum on the death penalty in the District of Columbia in the Oval Office at the White House, on Thursday, September 25, in Washington, DC. – Alex Brandon/AP
The attorney general added that the Justice Department is also in the process of placing inmates who had been moved off death row by former President Joe Biden into maximum security facilities.
“We’re moving them to Supermax facilities where they will be treated like they’re on death row for the rest of their lives,” Bondi said.
The presidential memo, and Bondi’s comments, come after Trump said last month that he would seek the death penalty in the nation’s capital, characterizing capital punishment as a “very strong preventative” measure. States, he said at the time, “are going to have to make their own decision.”
The move could could run into significant obstacles with city juries, CNN previously reported.
Traditionally, the DC Superior Court handles the bulk of murder cases in the city, and it would be bound by the city code that does not authorize capital punishment.
However, the US attorney’s office in DC, which prosecutes crimes in both the local and federal court in the city – unlike any other jurisdiction in the country – could bring federal charges in many capital-eligible cases and seek the death penalty.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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