President Trump said Tuesday the federal government would seek the death penalty for murders committed in Washington, D.C.
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\n“Anybody murders something in the capital, capital punishment,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. “Capital, capital punishment. If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, D.C., we’re going to be seeking the death penalty. And that’s a very strong preventative.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The District of Columbia hasn’t executed anyone since 1957, after Robert Carter was convicted of fatally shooting an off-duty police officer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
CBS News reported that previously, D.C. had mandatory death sentences for first-degree murders, a policy the Supreme Court later voided in the 1972 case\u00a0Furman v. Georgia<\/a>\u00a0when it found that the death penalty was being applied in an unconstitutionally arbitrary manner. Four years later, the high court\u00a0allowed<\/a>\u00a0capital punishment to be reinstated with clearer sentencing guidelines. The D.C. City Council, however, abolished the death penalty in 1981.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Washington went 12 days without a murder during the federal government’s crime crackdown, a streak broken early Tuesday with the killing of a 31-year-old man in Southeast D.C., according to the Metropolitan Police Department. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vice President\u00a0JD Vance,\u00a0a day earlier, said the capital typically averaged one murder every other day, before commending the president on saving 6-7 lives since deploying the National Guard<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On his first day in office, the president signed an executive order<\/a> directing the attorney general to seek the death penalty in cases involving the murder of a law enforcement officer or “a capital crime committed by an alien illegally present in this country.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n