Trump is expected to end the Biden-era death penalty moratorium, extending it to other inmates

President-elect Donald Trump has put federal prison sentences on hold this campaign season, when he warned that he would repeal the moratorium on executions that existed under the Biden-Harris administration.

“President-elect Trump has never shied away from using the death penalty,” said Matt Mangino, a former county attorney in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, and an expert on the death penalty. “He oversaw 13 murders in the last year of his first term.”

However, the incoming president also says he wants to increase capital punishment for other crimes, including the execution of child rapists, human traffickers and illegal immigrants who kill Americans or police officers.

That would require the support of Congress and the Supreme Court.

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Some of those ideas face obstacles. In 2008, the Supreme Court declared the death penalty for child rapists unconstitutional if the child survived, the American Bar Journal reported Monday.

However, with Trump in the White House, a Republican majority in the Senate and conservatives holding a 6-3 advantage on the current Supreme Court, supporters are hoping to push back.

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“The Supreme Court has said that the death penalty should only apply when the death of the victim is involved, but that may change when the current Supreme Court is formed,” Mangino told Fox News Digital.

Three of the four justices dissented in the Kennedy v. Louisiana 2008 still on the court – Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

It would be an important step to impose the death penalty on people convicted of drug trafficking or human trafficking, Mangino said.

“The death penalty for drug trafficking will not be seen in western countries,” he said.

Rodrigo Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, caused an international outcry after the brutal war on drugs in his Southeast Asian country, he noted.

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View of the US Supreme Court on July 1, 2024 in Washington, DC (DREW ANGERER/AFP via Getty Images)

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has pledged to fight efforts to increase the death penalty.

In July, the organization noted that in the 1980s, Trump paid for a full-page ad that called for the execution of the “Central Park Five” – ​​those convicted of rape and assault in the park. New York state did not have a law authorizing the death penalty for rape at the time and banned the death penalty in 2004.

More than a decade after their wrongful convictions, all five were exonerated by DNA evidence. One of them, Yusef Salaam, is currently a New York City councilman.

There are currently 40 inmates on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, and the list includes Boston Marathon bombing survivor Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Dylann Roof, who killed nine parishioners in a South Carolina church.

Justice Department records show that the federal government has killed 16 people since 2001, with the death of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and, eight days later, with American drug trafficker Juan Raul Garza, who killed two men and killed a third himself.

A mug shot of police officer Timothy McVeigh is displayed on June 12, 2001 at the Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum in Oklahoma City, one day after he was killed. (Getty Images)

Thirteen of those killings came during Trump’s first term in office.

States executed 1,542 inmates between 1977 and 2022, according to federal data. Texas led the way with 587 murders, more than the next two states combined – Oklahoma with 119 and Virginia with 113.

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In roughly the same time period — between 1973 and 2023 — 192 inmates were sentenced and released, according to the ACLU.

Each state has its own capital punishment system – or lack thereof – and it will not be influenced by the Trump administration’s policy.

“Trump will have a GOP Senate and possibly a GOP House,” Mangino said. “There is so much he can do with the death penalty and only the Supreme Court can put the brakes on it – and how likely is that?”