A proposed policy agenda organized by a conservative think tank for former President Donald Trump's potential second term calls for the expedited execution of all federal inmates on death row — and expanded use of capital punishment for what planners consider "heinous crimes."
The execution plan, written by former Trump administration lawyer Gene Hamilton, appears on page 554 of the 887-page "Project 2025" policy transition manual in a section devoted to recommendations for the Justice Department, which was first pointed out by HuffPost.
Project 2025, organized by the Heritage Foundation, is intended to provide Trump with a "well-conceived, coordinated, unified plan and a trained and committed cadre of personnel to implement it."
In the manual, Hamilton, who served as counselor to the attorney general from 2017 to 2021, said enforcement of the federal death penalty should be expedited "where appropriate and applicable" because "the current crime wave makes deterrence vital at the federal, state, and local levels."
The "next conservative Administration should therefore do everything possible to obtain finality for the 44 prisoners currently on federal death row," he wrote.
"It should also pursue the death penalty for applicable crimes — particularly heinous crimes involving violence and sexual abuse of children — until Congress says otherwise through legislation," Hamilton added.
In a footnote, Hamilton said his plan could require that the Supreme Court reverse its 2008 ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana, which banned the death penalty for the rape of a child that didn't result, and wasn't intended to result, in the victim's death.
The most recent FBI statistics show that violent crimes in the U.S. decreased 1.7% from 2021 to 2022, with murders and non-negligent homicides down 6.1%, while property crimes increased 7.1%.
Both the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center and the court-sponsored Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project list only 40 federal inmates on death row.
The most recent federal execution took place four days before Trump left office in January 2021, according to the Bureau of Prisons, and Attorney General Merrick Garland imposed a moratorium on any more in July of that year.
In addition to its policy prescriptions, the Project 2025 website includes a portal for job-seekers to be "properly vetted and trained" to join Trump's administration. This cadre would work at largely dismantling the federal government, firing some 50,000 federal workers and replacing the system with a vision concocted by Trump and his rightwing backers.
"We need to flood the zone with conservatives," Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project and a former Trump administration official, told the Associated Press.
