Washington — President Trump said Tuesday the federal government would seek the death penalty for murders committed in Washington, D.C.
It’s the latest move in a federal crackdown on crime, with Washington as a test case, as the president ramps up federal law enforcement efforts in Washington and seeks to establish forces in each state’s National Guard to be ready on short notice to address civil unrest. The president on Monday signed a crime-focused executive order that included a directive to the defense secretary to organize these plans.
“Anybody murders something in the capital, capital punishment,” Mr. Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. “Capital, capital punishment. If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, D.C., we’re going to be seeking the death penalty. And that’s a very strong preventative.”
The District of Columbia hasn’t executed anyone since 1957, after Robert Carter was convicted of fatally shooting an off-duty police officer. Decades ago, D.C. had mandatory death sentences for first-degree murders, a policy the Supreme Court voided in the 1972 case Furman v. Georgia when it found that the death penalty was being applied in an unconstitutionally arbitrary manner. Four years later, the high court allowed capital punishment to be reinstated with clearer sentencing guidelines. The D.C. City Council, however, abolished the death penalty in 1981.
Washington went 12 days without a murder during the federal government’s crime crackdown, a streak broken early Tuesday with the killing of a 31-year-old man in Southeast D.C., according to the Metropolitan Police Department.
On his first day in office, the president signed an executive order directing the attorney general to seek the death penalty in cases involving the murder of a law enforcement officer or “a capital crime committed by an alien illegally present in this country.”
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