The days of unaccountability for crime in Washington, D.C. are over!
During his most recent Cabinet meeting, President Trump announced the U.S. government will seek the death penalty for any murders that occur in Washington, D.C..
Trump’s motive behind the plan is to attempt to curb the murder rate in the nation’s Capital.
CBS was the first to break the announcement by Trump and shared the history of the death penalty being used in D.C.:
President Trump said Tuesday the federal government would seek the death penalty for murders committed in Washington, D.C.
It’s the latest move in a federal crackdown on crime, with Washington as a test case, as the president ramps up federal law enforcement efforts in Washington and seeks to establish forces in each state’s National Guard to be ready on short notice to address civil unrest. The president on Monday signed a crime-focused executive order that included a directive to the defense secretary to organize these plans.
“Anybody murders something in the capital, capital punishment,” Mr. Trump said during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday. “Capital, capital punishment. If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, D.C., we’re going to be seeking the death penalty. And that’s a very strong preventative.”
The District of Columbia hasn’t executed anyone since 1957, after Robert Carter was convicted of fatally shooting an off-duty police officer. Decades ago, D.C. had mandatory death sentences for first-degree murders, a policy the Supreme Court voided in the 1972 case Furman v. Georgia when it found that the death penalty was being applied in an unconstitutionally arbitrary manner. Four years later, the high court allowed capital punishment to be reinstated with clearer sentencing guidelines. The D.C. City Council, however, abolished the death penalty in 1981.
Washington went 12 days without a murder during the federal government’s crime crackdown, a streak broken early Tuesday with the killing of a 31-year-old man in Southeast D.C., according to the Metropolitan Police Department.
Watch the 47th President make the announcement below:
President Trump: "If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington DC, we're going to be seeking the death penalty. And that's a very strong preventative." pic.twitter.com/SkAzXphotl
— CSPAN (@cspan) August 26, 2025
Since Trump has deployed the National Guard to D.C., crime has gone down exponentially.
At one point, there were no murders for 12 consecutive days but that streak has since been broken, according to The Hill:
A man was killed in Washington, D.C., early Tuesday, marking the first apparent homicide reported in the city in 12 days.
ADVERTISEMENTOfficers responded to reports of a shooting at approximately 12:25 a.m. on Tuesday in Southeast Washington, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) said in a statement.
The officers found a man “unconscious and breathing, suffering from a gunshot wound.”
The man was transported to a local hospital, “where after all lifesaving measures failed, he was pronounced dead,” MPD said.
The White House has touted preliminary police data showing no homicides reported since Aug. 14.
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