How many federal capital prosecutions would there be if AG really pursued the death penalty “whenever possible”?
The question in the title of this post is prompted by this new article discussing statements today by Attorney General Pam Bondi. The piece is headlined “AG Pam Bondi Says Trump Is Going to Seek the Death Penalty ‘Whenever Possible’ — Including for Luigi Mangione.” Here is how the piece states:
Attorney General Pam Bondi doubled down on her desire to seek the death penalty for accused CEO killer Luigi Mangione on Sunday, telling Fox News that President Donald Trump’s administration is going to seek the death penalty “whenever possible.”
The AG stopped by Fox News Sunday this weekend, where host Shannon Bream asked her what she thought about Politico saying that using capital punishment against 26-year-old Mangione is “how Trump loses Gen Z.”
“The president’s directive was very clear: we are to seek the death penalty, when possible. It hasn’t been done in four years. I was a capital prosecutor, I tried death penalty cases throughout my career. If there was ever a death case, this is one,” Bondi said. “This guy is charged with hunting down a CEO, a father of two, a married man, hunting him down and executing him. I feel like these young people have lost their way. I was receiving death threats for seeking the death penalty on someone who was charged with an execution of a CEO.”
“We’re going to continue to do the right thing, we’re not going to be deterred by political motives,” she continued. “I’ve seen a protester walking down the street here — ‘Free Luigi’ — this guy’s charged with a violent crime and we’re going to seek the death penalty whenever possible.”
As I suggested in this post last week, there seems to be a disconnect between the Trump Administration’s bold statements and modest actions on capital prosecutions to date. After 12 weeks in power, the Mangione case represents the only federal capital prosecution announced nationwide during the Trump Administration. In sharp contrast, for decades, Ohio averaged nearly two new capital indictment each and every week (specifically, as detailed in an ABA report on Ohio’s death penalty, “[b]etween 1981 and 2005, there were a total of 2,768 capital indictments” in the Buckeye State). To keep the comparison federal, data from a 2000 DOJ study detailed that “[f]rom 1995 to 2000, the Attorney General authorized United States Attorneys to seek the death penalty for a total of 159 defendants,” which averages to more than two new capital indictment each and every month.
There is an obvious inconsistency between asserting that the feds are now “going to seek the death penalty whenever possible,” but then in fact almost never doing so. One might reasonably wonder if the Trump Administration really could or should pursue or even consider federal capital charges in the many hundreds of murders that take place across the country every month, especially given that all of these violent offenses will be investigated at the local level. But, of course, the federal criminal justice system finds the resources to bring many thousands of federal drug, property and public order charges every month even though nearly all those offenses can be addressed at the local level. If violent crime, and especially capital murder, really were to be a federal prosecutorial priority in the Trump Administration, I would expect to see many more, perhaps many dozens more, federal capital charges being brought each and every month.
It is surely is easier to talk about pursuing federal capital prosecutions “whenever possible,” than to actually do so. And yet AG Bondi’s statement still has me thinking about what it would really look like if the feds really started “to seek the death penalty whenever possible.” The Trump Administration has, in various ways, shown an eagerness to disregard various legal norms and customs. But the norm and custom of very limited pursuit of the death penlaty seems, at least so far, to be still intact.