WASHINGTON D.C. – U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi wrote to staff last week about the revival of the federal death penalty, after President Trump’s recent Executive Order 14164, “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety.”
In this letter, the Attorney General describes the death penalty’s purpose of being a “just punishment for the most egregious crimes,” noting how the Department of Justice holds a duty to fulfill these death sentences and keep the American people “undoubtedly…safer, and…more secure.”
The AG also explained the recent political shift in death penalty policy during President Biden’s leadership, where the Department of Justice pushed for commutations of death sentences, describing it as a “shameful era.”
The Attorney General announced the revival of the death penalty and ordered five actions to be effective immediately.
In the first action, the AG said the previous Attorney General’s suspension of the death penalty was to be lifted, meaning the DOJ must now carry out the death penalty by law.
In the second action, Bondi said the death penalty will be applied to “the most serious, readily provable offenses,” and expects the death penalty to be used in “cases involving the murder of a law-enforcement officer and capital crimes committed by aliens who are illegally present in the United States.”
The AG added drug-related prosecutions and non-drug crimes by cartels or aliens will face capital punishment, encouraging prosecutors to use the various statutes related to drug trafficking and “the violence it brings.”
The Attorney General called for a review of no-seek decisions for all pending capital-eligible cases still in progress for conviction and match the guidelines for potential death penalty, charged between January 2021 to January 2025.
The AG added this will include a reassessment of whether to add on capital charges to the case, with more attention being brought for accused associated with transnational criminal organizations including cartels, and this will be completed within 120 days.
In another action, AG Bondi will lift the Memorandum of the former Attorney General in January 2025 that rescinded an addendum from July 2019 that described the lethal injection of pentobarbital for the death penalty.
Bondi also ordered another report within 90 days that reviews all “policies and procedures concerning capital crime,” reevaluates the July 2019 addendum, and proposes revisions to policies in order to “strengthen the federal death penalty.”
In the fifth and final action, the Attorney General ordered the Federal Bureau of Prisons to work with states to provide help with supplies, resources and inmate transportation to carry out capital punishment, directing the Office of Legal Policy to “promptly address state’s pending requests for certification.”
