WASHINGTON (OSV News) ─ President Donald Trump said at an Aug. 26 Cabinet meeting that capital punishment will be sought for all murders in Washington, D.C.
Trump's comments came amid his federalization of the police force in the nation's capital and after he activated the National Guard in what he called an effort to combat crime in Washington.
"Anybody murders something in the capital: capital punishment," Trump said at the White House meeting. "Capital: capital punishment. If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, D.C., we're going to be seeking the death penalty."
Trump argued the policy was "preventative," a claim disputed by death penalty opponents.
Among the first actions of his second term earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order directing the U.S. attorney general to "pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use," and to "seek the death penalty regardless of other factors for every federal capital crime" that involves the "murder of a law-enforcement officer" or a "capital crime committed by an alien illegally present in this country."
The Catholic Church's official magisterium opposes the use of the death penalty as inconsistent with the inherent sanctity of human life, and advocates for the practice's abolition worldwide.
The late Pope Francis revised the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2018 to clarify the church's teaching that capital punishment is morally "inadmissible" in the modern world and that the church works with determination for its abolishment worldwide.
In his 2020 encyclical "Fratelli Tutti," Pope Francis addressed the moral problem of capital punishment by citing St. John Paul II, writing that his predecessor "stated clearly and firmly that the death penalty is inadequate from a moral standpoint and no longer necessary from that of penal justice."
About a decade prior to becoming Pope Leo XIV earlier this year, then-Bishop Robert Prevost wrote in a March 5, 2015, post on X, then known as Twitter, "It's time to end the death penalty."
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Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon.
