President Donald Trump said that his administration will seek the death penalty in all murder cases in Washington, DC, a move that could run into significant obstacles with city juries.
“Anybody murders something in the capital, capital punishment. Capital, capital punishment. If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, DC, we’re going to be seeking the death penalty,” the president said during a meeting with Cabinet members Tuesday.
The president did not immediately outline any specifics, but called capital punishment a “very strong preventative” measure. States, he said, “are going to have to make their own decision,” though in the nation’s capital, prosecutors would seek the death penalty.
“We have no choice,” he said.
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.
Actually getting the sentence, though, might not be so easy, as prosecutors would have to convince jurors to sign off. Historically, prosecutors have faced challenges in convincing special juries to impose capital punishment in DC, even if they vote unanimously to convict the defendants, multiple people in Washington’s legal community have told CNN in recent weeks.
“It’s going to be difficult to find 12 people in DC who are going to do that,” said Jon Jeffress, a former federal public defender-turned-private defense lawyer in the city.
The federal court in the District of Columbia hasn’t held a death penalty trial since 2003, when Rodney L. Moore was convicted of 10 killings and Kevin L. Gray was convicted of 19 killings, according to multiple people familiar with the court and that case. In that case, the jurors said they couldn’t agree unanimously on death sentences for the two men rather than life imprisonment, court records show.
In recent months, the Justice Department has indicated in at least three cases in DC’s federal court that it may seek the death penalty, according to court records.
One of those cases is against Elias Rodriguez, who is accused of shooting two Israeli embassy staff members leaving a Jewish community event in May.
The Department of Justice is also actively considering seeking the death penalty in DC District Court for two Mexican nationals who were charged in 2008 in a gang case and recently brought to the US, and for two young men who were indicted for a 2023 carjacking, according to court records.
This comes at a time where the federal death row is down to three, after President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of about three dozen federal inmates who had been sentenced to death. Trump has vowed since the first day of this administration to restore the use of capital punishment in the US, directing the attorney general to pursue the death penalty for crimes wherever possible.
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