WASHINGTON, DC – Attorney General Pam Bondi distributed several memos to employees of the Department of Justice last week, including one that read, according to The Intercept, “Reviving the Federal Death Penalty and Lifting the Moratorium on Federal Executions.”
As The Intercept writes, the memo detailed how the agency plans to put into practice an executive order to initiate federal executions that President Trump signed on his first day in office.
Further, the memo denounced the pause on federal executions former President Joe Biden placed under his presidency, claiming DOJ officials neglected their jobs by upholding Biden’s moratorium on federal executions—which halted executions launched by Trump in his first term, according to The Intercept.
The Intercept writes that despite there being no evidence that the death penalty is productive in its goal to reduce crime, the Trump’s administration still wants the federal government to direct substantial monetary resources to carry out more executions.
Further, the Intercept noted the argument that most human rights advocates uphold: that the conditions of many federal correctional institutions are inhumane, and that Trump aims to keep them that way.
According to The Intercept, in the January 20 executive order, Trump directed his attorney general to analyze the conditions of federal institutions of the 37 people commuted from federal death row at the end of Biden’s term.
Further, The Intercept states, he commanded his attorney general to “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 Intercept article states Trump’s command to the federal government to use conditions of confinement as additional punishment to be unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, according to Miriam Gohara, a professor of law at Yale University and former public defender.
Further, The Intercept suggests Trump’s command also indicates his administration’s goal is to maintain inhumane conditions in federal institutions.
“The one thing that was clear from the order was that it sounded like the administration was going to try to influence placement of people, and try to do so under conditions that they called ‘monstrous’ in their order,” Gohara told the Intercept.
According to The Intercept, she added, “Certainly, if I were leading the (Bureau of Prisons) or if I were working in the BOP, I wouldn’t want to suggest that there are any monstrous conditions in my facilities.”
The language describing federal detention as “monstrous” aligns with how Trump has spoken on criminal justice from the start, Dale Baich reports to the Intercept. Baich previously led the Arizona Federal Defender’s Office that represents individuals sentenced to death in post-conviction trials, according to the Intercept.
In The Intercept, Baich states, “I was really taken aback by the number of adjectives in the order… But, you know, that’s how he campaigned, that’s how Project 2025 was drafted. We really shouldn’t be surprised.”
Activists and incarcerated people have consistently critiqued the inhumane condition of incarceration as a whole, federal prisons and local jails alike, arguing that the government has not done enough to improve it, notes The Intercept, adding there are a multitude of detention facilities that have not made improvements, regardless of policy or court order.
Pursuing a policy encouraging the reinforcement of such inhumane conditions will make reform more difficult,” Baich said, adding, “It’s hard enough to challenge conditions of confinement when departments of corrections or the Bureau of Prisons is saying that it’s not unconstitutional.”
Baich continued, “So I just think it’s going to be a real heavy lift going forward to challenge those conditions,” according to The Intercept.
However, Baich emphasizes the importance of continued challenges to these inhumane conditions, saying, “What is important is to continue to pursue unconstitutional conditions of confinement and hold the government accountable,” in The Intercept.
According to The Intercept, Bondi’s memo also orders the Bureau of Prisons to assist states that allow the death penalty in maintaining “sufficient supplies and resources to impose the death penalty,” like lethal injection drugs, and assisting in the transfer of incarcerated people “to the appropriate authorities to carry out those sentences.”
The memo also instructs the US attorney general to find opportunities to increase the charges against those federally incarcerated with commuted death sentences, and to make such recommendations to state and local authorities, an alternative route to justifying their execution, writes The Intercept.
This could lead to the Department of Justice federalizing state crimes in states without the death penalty, subjecting countless people to the threat of execution, Baich said.
States without the death penalty, or those who rarely use it, are preparing for the possible effects of the Trump Administration’s policy, according to the Intercept. Trump asserts such pushback from the states would be a “weaponization” of the courts, adds the Intercept.
In an attempt to downplay a history of failed executions following the election, Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs fired an independent commissioner just before their publishing of an investigative report of the state’s past failed executions by lethal injection, according to the Intercept.
Although never published, the report concluded that death by firing squad was quicker and less painful than lethal injection, states the article. Arizona’s next execution will take place on March 19, the state’s first in two years, said The Intercept.
According to The Intercept, capital trials are expensive and resource-intensive, making it unclear whether the Trump Administration would offer financial support to rural counties that generally do not have the means to carry out such trials or executions.
Since Trump’s inauguration, one person has already been moved by the Justice Department to be executed, writes the Intercept—George Hanson, an incarcerated person in Oklahoma, was cleared by Bondi to be transferred to Louisiana for execution. Hanson’s execution was originally scheduled for 2022, but Biden’s Justice Department denied the transfer, said The Intercept.
To Baich, this is an “example of this newly found cooperation between DOJ and the states,” cited The Intercept.
Baich said, “Mr. Hanson was never going to get out of prison. Deliberate decisions by government officials have deprived Mr. Hanson of the guarantees of due process. This trampling of constitutional protections and the rush to execute are consistent with what we saw at the end of the first Trump administration where thirteen people were executed.
“The death penalty does nothing to promote public safety, and, in fact, detracts from public safety resources,” said Baich. And, the Trump Administration’s choice to focus on federal executions steals resources from the causes it claims to benefit, like helping victims and decreasing crime, said Gohara, according to The Intercept.
