AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The Trump administration wants to put Luigi Mangione to death for fatally shooting United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, ending President Biden's moratorium on federal executions. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state charges, and his lawyers have told the court they oppose the federal push for the death penalty. As NPR's Kristin Wright reports, Mangione's case is part of the shifting politics of capital punishment in the U.S.
KRISTIN WRIGHT, BYLINE: Under the Trump administration, Attorney General Pam Bondi is directing federal prosecutors to aggressively pursue the death penalty. That includes in the case against Luigi Mangione. Here she is on Fox News.
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PAM BONDI: This guy's charged with a violent crime, and we're going to seek the death penalty whenever possible.
WRIGHT: Mangione appears to be the first high-profile case the Justice Department is tying to President Trump's Day 1 executive order that lifted President Biden's moratorium, though Mangione has yet to be formally indicted by a federal grand jury. Robin Maher is the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which does not take a position on the issue but opposes how it's been used. She says the timing of Bondi's announcement is telling.
ROBIN MAHER: Here we have Attorney General Bondi herself saying that her decision to seek death for Mr. Mangione was to, quote, "carry out President Trump's agenda." That statement, in combination with the unusual timing in this case, suggests that the death penalty is being used here to achieve some political purpose.
WRIGHT: Federal prosecutors in New York didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the perception of politics in the Mangione case. Maher says this all continues the shifting politics of the death penalty debate.
MAHER: In 1972, the United States Supreme Court invalidated both the federal death penalty and all state death penalty statutes. In 1988, the Federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act expanded the federal death penalty for drug-related murders.
WRIGHT: Then the pendulum swung again and Congress passed another law, expanding the death penalty in 1994. In 2001, Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, was the first federal death row inmate executed in almost 40 years. Maher says then things shifted again.
MAHER: Between 2001 and 2020, the federal death penalty was being heavily criticized and scrutinized because of a lot of concerns about the racially biased way that it was used.
WRIGHT: The first Trump administration executed 13 death row inmates, compared to three in all of the prior three presidencies. In the weeks leading up to Trump's second term, President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 people on federal death row. Now the Trump administration wants to ramp up federal executions and to help state officials bring their own capital cases against the inmates whose death sentences were commuted by Biden. The Justice Department is also pledging to help states secure enough drugs to carry out lethal injections. Twenty-seven states have the death penalty. One of them is South Carolina.
DAVID PASCOE: In South Carolina, we went over a decade without even having any executions because we just didn't have the drugs to administer for the execution - over a decade.
WRIGHT: That's David Pascoe, chief prosecutor for three counties in South Carolina. He pushed for a state law giving prisoners the option of execution by firing squad. South Carolina has now already executed three people this year. Pascoe prosecuted the most recent and welcomes support from the federal government to continue executions in his state.
Do you think it means that prosecutors in South Carolina will pursue the death penalty in more cases?
PASCOE: It's hard to say whether it'll be more cases or not, but it's going to be very appreciated in facilitating us to reach justice in our cases. I know that.
WRIGHT: Mangione faces federal and state murder charges. He's pleaded not guilty in New York State, which doesn't allow the death penalty for state convictions. The only three remaining federal death row prisoners are still appealing their cases. Kristin Wright, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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