Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety

Many provisions in this order will empower states to more easily apply the death penalty if they so choose, like expediting consideration of state requests for federal certification of their appeals processes, and ensuring they have access to drugs necessary for executions. In these respects it reverses prior administration efforts to undermine state death penalty enforcements.

 What to watch: The order also calls for the U.S. Attorney General to seek Federal jurisdiction for every capital crime committed against a law-enforcement officer, or by an illegal alien. In this it contributes to a decades-long trend of federal agencies expanding their prosecution of crimes that are the purview of state courts, so it will be interesting to see if state authorities push back.

Restoring The Death Penalty And Protecting Public Safety – The White House

January 20, 2025