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1 1 (March 10, 2025)

handle is hein.crs/govesrk0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Federal Capital Punishment: Recent Executive Action March 10, 2025 On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order addressing pursuit of the death penalty as a sentencing possibility in federal capital cases. Attorney General Pamela Bondi released a memorandum implementing President Trump's order on February 5, 2025, lifting a moratorium that then- Attorney General Merrick Garland had ordered on federal executions on July 1, 2021. Then-President Joe Biden had commuted to life imprisonment the sentences of the federal prisoners then on death row under the custody of the Bureau of Prisons. Most death penalty cases are state criminal cases. As of January 1, 2025, there were three civilian inmates and four inmates in military custody on federal death row, while the state death row population consisted of 2,088 inmates. Background The death penalty has been a feature of federal criminal law from the beginning. The first Congress designated murder within federal enclaves, treason, piracy, forgery, and counterfeiting of federal certificates as capital offenses. Treason and murder under various federal jurisdictional circumstances remain federal capital offenses, and 27 states also currently authorize the death penalty for at least one offense. Over the course of time, the federal government and the states have used a range of methods of execution-from hanging, to firing squads, electrocution, lethal gas, and lethal injunction. The U.S. Supreme court decision in Furman v. Georgia, which held that imposition of capital punishment under the then-applicable laws in Georgia and Texas would constitute unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment, cast doubt on the constitutionality of the sentencing procedures used in state and federal capital cases. In a series of subsequent cases, the Court found constitutionally acceptable a process under which the death penalty was reserved for the most serious offenses and for the most egregious offenders, identified by balancing the aggravating and mitigating circumstances in a particular case. Following Furman and subsequent cases, Congress enacted the Federal Death Penalty Act, under which espionage, treason, and murder under various jurisdictional circumstances were revived as federal capital offenses or became federal capital offenses. The path from sentence to execution often features pauses for the resolution of process-related issues by the courts. The elapsed time between sentence and execution recently stood at over 19 years, on average. Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB11276 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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