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Donald Trump’s latest reported musings on the death penalty are clearly deranged: wondering about "bringing back" firing squads, public and group executions, even hangings and the guillotine, according to Rolling Stone.
But if he retakes the White House in 2024, Trump would encounter an obstacle to carrying out every bloodthirsty fantasy he comes up with: the law.
That’s because federal executions are actually guided by how states carry them out, not whatever unhinged spectacle a president dreams up. Specifically, under the Federal Death Penalty Act, federal executions happen “in the manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence is imposed.” (If a particular state doesn’t have capital punishment, then the court designates another state that does.)
The federal act might not be common knowledge, so you could be forgiven for not having heard of it. But there was some litigation over the law during Trump’s execution spree in the waning days of his presidency, while he was also busy attempting to overturn the 2020 election he lost. All of the federal executions were done by lethal injection, and there were arguments over how those lethal injections were carried out (arguments left unresolved thanks to the Republican-majority Supreme Court, which helped the Trump administration rush through 13 executions before he left office).
That’s not to say that the federal government couldn’t possibly execute people by means other than lethal injection, only that they couldn’t do so without any reference to what state procedures call for. (As an aside, some people challenging their executions by lethal injection have raised the firing squad as a more “humane” alternative, but obviously that’s not what’s motivating Trump.)
The bottom line is that if Trump or another capital punishment fanatic like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wins the White House in the future, the reality is that how federal executions are carried out isn’t completely up to the psychotic whims of a president like Trump or DeSantis, or an attorney general like William Barr. And, of course, how many federal prisoners there are to execute if a Republican takes over is currently up to President Joe Biden, whose supposed anti-death penalty inclinations prompted Trump, Barr and the Supreme Court to rush through those executions. But Biden's actions and inactions on capital punishment have so far left the door open for another spree.