Biden-era death penalty pause may end, as Trump plans to expand it to more federal inmates.

During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would lift the moratorium on federal death row executions, which had been put in place by the outgoing Biden-Harris administration.

"In his first term, President-elect Trump oversaw 13 executions."

The incoming president has stated that he intends to broaden the use of capital punishment for various offenses, including child rapists, human traffickers, and illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes against Americans or police officers.

That would require support from Congress and the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the death penalty for child rapists is unconstitutional when the child survives, according to the American Bar Journal.

With Trump in the White House, a Republican majority in the Senate, and conservatives holding a 6-3 advantage in the current Supreme Court, proponents are optimistic for a reversal.

Trump states that the only effective method to prevent drug trafficking is through the imposition of the death penalty on dealers.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty should only be used when the victim's death is involved, but this decision may change with the current Supreme Court's makeup, according to Mangino, who spoke to Planet Chronicle Digital.

The three dissenting justices from the 2008 Kennedy v. Louisiana decision, namely John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, are still on the court.

Mangino suggested that imposing the death penalty on individuals convicted of drug or human trafficking would be a revolutionary step.

He stated that the imposition of the death penalty for drug and human trafficking would be unprecedented in the western world.

Rodrigo Duterte, the ex-president of the Philippines, sparked an international outcry due to a violent drug war in his Southeast Asian nation.

The ACLU has pledged to oppose efforts to broaden the use of capital punishment.

In the 1980s, Trump advocated for the execution of the "Central Park Five" in a full-page ad, despite New York state's lack of a law authorizing the death penalty for rape cases and its eventual ban on capital punishment in 2004.

Over a decade ago, the five individuals were wrongfully convicted. However, DNA evidence later exonerated them. One of them, Yusef Salaam, is currently a New York City councilman.

The Death Penalty Information Center reports that there are currently 40 federal inmates on death row, including surviving Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Dylann Roof, who killed nine people in a South Carolina church.

Since 2001, the federal government has carried out 16 executions, including the deaths of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and American drug trafficker Juan Raul Garza, who killed two men and executed a third himself.

Thirteen of those executions came during Trump's first term in office.

Between 1977 and 2022, federal data shows that 1,542 condemned inmates were executed by individual states. Texas had the highest number of executions with 587, followed by Oklahoma with 119 and Virginia with 113.

Between 1973 and 2023, 192 death row inmates were exonerated and released, according to the ACLU.

The Trump administration's capital punishment policy would not significantly affect the individual states' systems for capital punishment or the lack thereof.

"With a GOP Senate and House, Trump has the potential to enact policies related to the death penalty. However, the Supreme Court has the power to halt these policies, but how likely is that?"