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By ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump promised on Tuesday to “vigorously pursue” capital punishment after President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of most people on federal death row partly to stop Trump from pushing forward their executions. Related Articles National Politics | Elon Musk’s preschool is the next step in his anti-woke education dreams National Politics | Trump’s picks for top health jobs not just team of rivals but ‘team of opponents’ National Politics | Biden will decide on US Steel acquisition after influential panel fails to reach consensus National Politics | Biden vetoes once-bipartisan effort to add 66 federal judgeships, citing ‘hurried’ House action National Politics | A history of the Panama Canal — and why Trump can’t take it back on his own Trump criticized Biden’s decision on Monday to change the sentences of 37 of the 40 condemned people to life in prison without parole, arguing that it was senseless and insulted the families of their victims. Biden said converting their punishments to life imprisonment was consistent with the moratorium imposed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder. “Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country,” he wrote on his social media site. “When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!” Presidents historically have no involvement in dictating or recommending the punishments that federal prosecutors seek for defendants in criminal cases, though Trump has long sought more direct control over the Justice Department’s operations. The president-elect wrote that he would direct the department to pursue the death penalty “as soon as I am inaugurated,” but was vague on what specific actions he may take and said they would be in cases of “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.” He highlighted the cases of two men who were on federal death row for slaying a woman and a girl, had admitted to killing more and had their sentences commuted by Biden. On the campaign trail, Trump often called for expanding the federal death penalty — including for those who kill police officers, those convicted of drug and human trafficking, and migrants who kill U.S. citizens. “Trump has been fairly consistent in wanting to sort of say that he thinks the death penalty is an important tool and he wants to use it,” said Douglas Berman, an expert on sentencing at Ohio State University’s law school. “But whether practically any of that can happen, either under existing law or other laws, is a heavy lift.” Berman said Trump’s statement at this point seems to be just a response to Biden’s commutation. “I’m inclined to think it’s still in sort of more the rhetoric phase. Just, ‘don’t worry. The new sheriff is coming. I like the death penalty,’” he said. Most Americans have historically supported the death penalty for people convicted of murder, according to decades of annual polling by Gallup, but support has declined over the past few decades. About half of Americans were in favor in an October poll, while roughly 7 in 10 Americans backed capital punishment for murderers in 2007. Before Biden’s commutation, there were 40 federal death row inmates compared with more than 2,000 who have been sentenced to death by states. “The reality is all of these crimes are typically handled by the states,” Berman said. A question is whether the Trump administration would try to take over some state murder cases, such as those related to drug trafficking or smuggling. He could also attempt to take cases from states that have abolished the death penalty. Berman said Trump’s statement, along with some recent actions by states, may present an effort to get the Supreme Court to reconsider a precedent that considers the death penalty disproportionate punishment for rape. “That would literally take decades to unfold. It’s not something that is going to happen overnight,” Berman said. Before one of Trump’s rallies on Aug. 20, his prepared remarks released to the media said he would announce he would ask for the death penalty for child rapists and child traffickers. But Trump never delivered the line. One of the men Trump highlighted on Tuesday was ex-Marine Jorge Avila Torrez, who was sentenced to death for killing a sailor in Virginia and later pleaded guilty to the fatal stabbing of an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old girl in a suburban Chicago park several years before. The other man, Thomas Steven Sanders, was sentenced to death for the kidnapping and slaying of a 12-year-old girl in Louisiana, days after shooting the girl’s mother in a wildlife park in Arizona. Court records show he admitted to both killings. Some families of victims expressed anger with Biden’s decision, but the president had faced pressure from advocacy groups urging him to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of capital punishment for federal inmates. The ACLU and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops were some of the groups that applauded the decision. Biden left three federal inmates to face execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018 , the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Michelle L. Price and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
House rejects Democratic efforts to force release of Matt Gaetz ethics reportCHICAGO — On quiet nights during the Christmas season, Ed O’Malley enjoys visiting the Nativity scene he helps set up every year in an Arlington Heights park. He’ll check whether the wind has blown over a statue, or whether any lights have gone out. On relatively warm evenings, many families will be out and about, O’Malley said. Usually, they’ll end up in front of the depiction of infant Jesus. “Many times, you’ll see the little children will look in and they’ll touch the statues,” said O’Malley, 64, of nearby Prospect Heights. “A few times, you see a father or a mother just get down on a knee, and you can see that she’s explaining to them what this is.” Despite some misconceptions — stemming from the First Amendment’s separation of church and state — private groups can put up Nativity scenes on public property as an expression of free speech after a federal judge ruled in 1988 that religious exhibits could be erected if maintained by private groups. Private groups can put up Hanukkah menorahs on public property to celebrate the Jewish holiday. Likewise, private groups can put up atheist, satanic, artistic, political, apolitical, eco-modernist or anarcho-pacifist displays on public property, if they so desire. The right to erect religious displays on government land wasn’t always clear — especially in December 1987, when government workers in Chicago began dismantling a Nativity scene in the Loop’s Daley Plaza, almost throwing the statue of the baby Jesus into a trash bin at one point and prompting members of the public to shield what was left of the display with their bodies. O’Malley said he’s learned much about the First Amendment as president of American Nativity Scene, a group that has helped put up more than 200 Nativity scenes on public property across the country. The group was founded in 2012 by O’Malley and his father-in-law. They believe that erecting Nativity scenes on public property is a good way to help keep the birth of Jesus at the center of a Christmas season that they say has become far too commercialized. “Christ is the reason for the season,” O’Malley said. With the backing of an anonymous donor of Nativity sets and conservative public interest law firm Thomas More Society, American Nativity Scene has helped put up scenes at public libraries, parks and courthouses. The group’s main goal is to display them in the country’s 50 statehouses. When O’Malley and his father-in-law created American Nativity Scene 12 years ago, about six or seven state capitol buildings, including the one in Springfield, had regular Nativity displays, O’Malley said. Since then, under American Nativity Scene’s watch, 43 state capitols have put up Nativity displays at least once. To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, American Nativity Scene will make “an all-out push” and try to have a Nativity scene on display at every state capitol during the 2026 Christmas season, O’Malley said. Adding a state to the tally isn’t an exact science. American Nativity Scene needs to find people in that state willing to form a local committee that will approach local officials about putting up a Nativity scene on capitol property. O’Malley said he has used friends and the Thomas More Society’s network to identify people who might be interested in forming a local committee in states lacking displays in their capitols. He’s also called random churches and local religious organizations like Knights of Columbus chapters, he said. “We want to be able to say that someone has a Nativity up in every state capitol,” O’Malley said. “I mean, we got Alaska and Hawaii — we got them one. They were interesting. You talk to a lot of great people.” Steven Melia, a Wyoming resident involved with local religious groups who has helped put up a Nativity scene at the statehouse in Cheyenne for the past four years, said he doesn’t remember how exactly O’Malley got in touch with him. After Melia agreed to help advance American Nativity Scene’s mission, O’Malley sent Melia a Nativity set and Melia’s rancher friend built a wooden structure to house it, Melia said. It’s fairly easy to schedule blessings of the Nativity set at the Wyoming statehouse and get permission to leave it up during the season, Melia said. He said the capitol hosts all sorts of school, religious and community gatherings throughout the year. “The capitol belongs to everybody ... I didn’t really know that at the beginning,” Melia said. Other than finding people to attend the blessing, pretty much all Melia has to do is buy insurance for the event and fill out a few forms, he said. One optional form is for inviting the governor, who showed up to the Nativity blessing the first three years, Melia said. O’Malley said he and his father-in-law decided to start American Nativity Scene after facing pushback while trying to erect a Nativity scene in 2012 in North School Park in Arlington Heights. O’Malley’s father-in-law brought in the founder of Thomas More Society, Tom Brejcha, who wrote a “strongly worded” letter to the park district about the pair’s right to put up religious displays on public property, according to O’Malley. Brejcha said he considers the 1988 ruling that protects the right of private groups to put up religious displays on public property as forms of free speech a “landmark” ruling. In summer 1987, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Nativity scene in Chicago’s City Hall violated the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion. Judge Joel Flaum wrote that City Hall visitors would be left with the unavoidable impression that the city tacitly endorses Christianity. In December 1987, a group put up a Nativity scene in Daley Plaza without posting a $100,000 bond demanded by the Public Building Commission of Chicago, which administered the plaza. The commission demanded the bond to cover the cost of defending itself against possible First Amendment lawsuits. After government workers began tearing down the plaza Nativity scene — almost throwing the statue of the baby Jesus into a trash bin at one point — members of the public intervened, shielding what was left of the display with their bodies. In a case stemming from the bond dispute and Nativity scene dismantling, federal judge James Parsons in November 1988 ordered the building commission to allow the Nativity group to put up a display without posting a bond. Parsons wrote that the commission had misplaced fears that allowing religious displays could violate the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion. He deemed the plaza a public forum and wrote that “religious expressive conduct in a traditional public forum enjoys the same protections afforded political, artistic, or other types of protected speech under the First Amendment.” O’Malley, who is also part of the group that continues to put up a Nativity scene on Daley Plaza every year, said that after the Arlington Heights park Nativity scene was successfully erected thanks to Brejcha’s letter, he and his father-and-law started to think about how they could expand. The idea of placing Nativity sets on other government land, especially state capitols, “clicked,” O’Malley said. Thomas More Society Executive Vice President Thomas Olp said the firm supports efforts to put Nativity scenes on public property and has a standard letter it sends to public officials explaining why religious displays on public property are allowed. Olp said the firm hasn’t had to file any lawsuits on behalf of American Nativity Scene. “Not to say there’s anything wrong with the free exercise of religion, but the free speech rationale cut through a lot of the opposition to this,” Brejcha said. ©2024 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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