US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he wants to bring the death penalty back to Washington, DC, where capital punishment has been outlawed for more than 40 years.
In a cabinet meeting, Trump pitched bringing back the death penalty as part of his purported solution to what he claims is Washington, DC's violent crime crisis—one that isn't backed up by data.
"Anybody murders something in the capital? Capital punishment," Trump said. "If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, DC, we're going to be seeking the death penalty. And it's a very strong preventative. And everybody that's heard it agrees with it. I don't know if we're ready for it in this country... we have no choice. So in DC and Washington, states are going to have to make their own decision, but if somebody kills somebody... it's the death penalty, OK?"
It's unclear how Trump would implement the death penalty given that the DC Council abolished it in 1981 and DC voters overwhelmingly voted against a referendum to bring it back in 1992. However, the Trump administration has been trying to hit alleged criminals in the city with federal charges that could potentially expose them to harsher punishments.
Prosecutors in DC are permitted to seek the death penalty for certain crimes, including some homicides, but a jury has to agree to it.
Trump has a long history of glorifying the death penalty dating back to at least 1989, when he took out a full-page newspaper ad in which he declared it was time to "bring back the death penalty" to deal with crime in New York City.
The Trump ad was printed in the wake of five Black male teenagers—known popularly as the "Central Park Five"—being falsely accused of brutally beating and raping a woman in Central Park. Even after the five men were eventually exonerated years later, Trump refused to acknowledge their innocence and continued to insist upon their guilt, as recently as during the 2024 presidential election campaign.
In the last months of his first term, Trump went on what one publication called an "execution spree," ordering the federal executions of at least 13 people who were on Death Row.
