Former President Donald Trump has signaled he will continue his administration’s aggressive pursuit of the death penalty if he is elected, while Vice President Kamala Harris has gone mum on the issue.
Trump made his most detailed comments yet on capital punishment since launching his campaign during remarks at the Arizona border on Thursday, at the same time that Harris has come under scrutiny for her silence on the matter.
As he was addressing punishments for illegal migrants who commit crimes, Trump said he would impose the death penalty “for anyone guilty of child or woman sex trafficking.”
Trump has also repeatedly suggested that a solution to the nation’s drug trafficking and addiction problems is to impose the death penalty on drug traffickers, citing countries such as China, which he has said successfully combats illegal drugs with a punishment of death. The former president reiterated those sentiments Thursday.
“We'll also impose the death penalty on major drug dealers and traffickers,” Trump said. “In other countries on their immigration papers, there is a statement that says, ‘Death for drug traffickers.’ Big letters, big bold letters, 10 times the size of everything else on the page. I saw it this morning, and those are the countries where they have no problem with drugs.”
It is unclear which countries Trump was referring to, but PolitiFact found in 2018 that Trump accurately made similar comments about China and Singapore imposing the death penalty for drug trafficking. The outlet also noted, though, that there is little data to assess how effective the policy was in those countries.
Trump said his administration would also seek the death penalty for those who kill police, U.S. Border Patrol officers, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
Lastly, Trump addressed the protracted period of time that criminals wait on death row, saying his administration would seek a “quicker trial, not a trial that lasts 15 years and everybody gets exhausted.”
His comments align with the Trump administration’s historic use of the death penalty. Sixteen federal executions have been carried out since 1988, all by lethal injection. Thirteen of them were under Trump’s tenure, when Attorney General Bill Barr lifted an Obama-era freeze on them.
Harris, a former district attorney and California attorney general, has embraced a persona as “prosecutor” on the campaign trail, but she has a complicated history with the death penalty and has taken no position on it since she was chosen as Trump's opponent.
During Harris's tenure as vice president, the Department of Justice vowed to halt federal executions, but it did not entirely live up to that promise.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium on them in 2021 but changed gears in January when government prosecutors sought the death penalty for 20-year-old Payton Gendron. Gendron pleaded guilty to murdering 10 black people in a racially motivated attack at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022.
Prosecutors under Garland also asked for the death penalty in two cases brought by the Trump administration: Robert Bowers’s murder of 11 people at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue and Islamic extremist Sayfullo Saipov’s murder of eight people in a New York City bike path.
No federal executions have been carried out since Harris became vice president, but the DOJ's authorization of the death penalty in rare cases upset opponents of it. Gendron is fighting his punishment in court, Bowers's appeal is still playing out, and Saipov received a life sentence despite prosecutors asking for death. Bowers is among about 40 defendants sitting on death row.
Twenty years ago, Harris opposed the death penalty and received significant blowback when she announced as San Francisco district attorney that she would not seek it in the slaying of police officer Isaac Espinoza.
But later, when she campaigned for California attorney general, she said she would “enforce the death penalty as the law dictates.”
She once again flip-flopped on capital punishment when she unsuccessfully ran for president in 2019, saying she would institute a moratorium on it.
Now, amid a competitive campaign against Trump, Harris is facing a crossroads as she has embraced a tough-on-crime brand, at least when it comes to her opponent, whom she describes as a "convicted felon." Her party has historically opposed the death penalty, but Trump has called for cracking down on crime with it.
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In addition to Harris's unclear stance on the topic, the newly released Democratic 2024 platform makes no mention of the death penalty, which HuffPost observed was a first for the party since 2004.
A Harris campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
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