The Death Penalty Information Center spoke with The New York Times, PBS News Hour, and other media outlets to answer this question.
When President Trump called for imposition of the death penalty for all murders in the nation’s capital, journalists turned to DPI for fact-checking, context, and legal perspective. DPI Executive Director Robin Maher explained how Trump’s proposal, if imposed, would violate almost 50 years of legal precedent and overwhelm Washington, DC’s legal system:
“It would be a tremendous investment of taxpayer dollars,” Ms. Maher said. “Because death penalty cases are many times more expensive than other criminal cases that do not seek a death sentence. Capital cases are much longer, take much longer to complete.”
She noted that there were many additional rules and restrictions mandated in death penalty cases, as well as, potentially, years of appeals after a death sentence is imposed. Last year, for example, Texas executed a man for rape and murder 18 years after he was first sentenced to death. Not long after, a Texas judge declared a mother on death row innocent in the death of her 2-year-old daughter — 17 years after she was sentenced to death.
Ms. Maher said that the added legal bureaucracy had the potential to jam the criminal justice system in the city.
“If he were to seek a death sentence in every possible case,” she said of Mr. Trump, “even though violent crime is down in D.C., there would still be enough of those crimes, enough prosecutions, to completely overwhelm the legal system.”
In an appearance on PBS News Hour, Ms. Maher provided further explanation, noting that Supreme Court precedent has found mandatory death sentences, which Trump appeared to propose, unconstitutional.
DPI has closely tracked use of the death penalty for over 30 years. When President Trump issued an Executive Order on the death penalty on his first day in office, DPI was prepared with data, context, and analysis to help the media and the public understand the potential consequences. Ms. Maher said to NPR, "I think we can read this executive order as a wish list, as directions to his attorney general regarding the priorities that he or she should set when they take office. But there's going to be a great deal of resistance to many of these efforts. And again, they are contradictory to well-settled law and procedure, so I don't think any of this will be easy to do."
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