President Trump’s suggestions that the suspects in two high-profile killings face the death penalty add to his administration’s increasingly aggressive approach toward capital punishment.
This week, Trump called for the 22-year-old accused of killing Charlie Kirk and the man charged in Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska’s stabbing on Charlotte’s light rail system to face execution.
It comes on the heels of the administration’s initial efforts to seek the death penalty for other high-profile murder defendants, like Luigi Mangione and the suspect charged with gunning down two Israeli Embassy staffers.
Together, the cases reflect the president’s attempts to make good on his campaign promise to “restore” the death penalty, a marked shift in how violent crimes are prosecuted compared to the Biden administration.
Kirk was fatally shot Wednesday while speaking at Utah Valley University. Authorities announced Friday they had taken Tyler Robinson, 22, into custody after a family friend turned him in, and a magistrate judge ordered him held without bail.
He was arrested on suspicion of felony discharge of a firearm and obstruction of justice, in addition to felony aggravated murder, which carries the possibility of the death penalty. Formal charges are expected to be filed in Utah on Tuesday.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) said Thursday that the state planned to pursue the death penalty against the suspect, who he called an “evil human being.”
“We’ve been working with our attorneys, getting everything that we need, affidavits ready, so that we can pursue the death penalty in this case,” Cox said at a press conference. “And that will happen here in the state of Utah.”
Trump swiftly echoed the calls for execution Friday, telling “Fox & Friends” that “I hope he gets the death penalty.” Murder can also carry the death penalty in the federal system in certain circumstances, though the Trump administration has not signaled whether it intends to file charges.
Zarutska, who fled Ukraine with her family in 2022 amid Russia’s ongoing war with the country, was killed Aug. 22. Her suspected killer, DeCarlos Brown Jr., has been charged with first degree murder in North Carolina and is accused in a federal complaint of committing a terrorist attack or other violence against a mass transportation system.
When a video of the stabbing later went viral, it fueled outrage online, particularly among Trump’s base who saw the random act by a repeat offender as proof that violent crime runs rampant as the president has vowed to crack down on crime in cities across the country.
Trump said Brown “should be given a ‘Quick’ (there is no doubt!) Trial, and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY.”
“There can be no other option!!!” he said Wednesday on Truth Social.
Capital cases are different than the average criminal case. While juries are usually tasked with determining a defendant’s guilt, in death penalty cases, they must also decide whether the facts of the case make the defendant eligible for execution.
Utah was the first state to resume executions after the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Since then, eight people have been executed, and four men remain on the state’s death row.
Trump began making moves on the death penalty within hours of taking office.
Trump signed a Day 1 order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue it for “all crimes of a severity demanding its use,” including cases where a law-enforcement officer is murdered or when someone in the country unlawfully commits a capital crime.
It ended President Biden administration’s moratorium on federal executions implemented in 2021.
Trump and Republicans also criticized Biden for commuting the death sentences of 37 of the 40 people on death row weeks before leaving office. Biden did so for all except the perpetrators of the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue shooting, the 2015 Charleston church shooting and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
“I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden said at the time. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
Trump can’t reverse the commutations, but his Justice Department has already implemented the president’s directive in several high-profile cases by moving closer to seeking capital punishment.
In April, the Justice Department provided formal notice that it intends to seek the death penalty against Mangione, who is charged with shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson late last year in Manhattan.
New York does not have capital punishment at the state level, so the administration’s federal involvement enables Mangione to potentially be put to death, if convicted.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett, a Biden appointee who oversees the case, is set to rule on Mangione’s request for additional information about the evidence the government will offer in seeking the death penalty. The motion became ripe for a decision Sept. 5.
In its written opposition, the administration insisted Mangione represents a continued public danger, comparing him to 27-year-old Shane Tamura, who killed four people before fatally shooting himself in July at NFL’s headquarters just blocks away. They said Tamura, like Mangione, left evidence behind for investigators to find and placed blame on his intended victims for a personal injury.
“Almost immediately, members of the public sympathetic to the defendant touted Tamura’s actions as a laudable continuation of the defendant’s philosophy,” prosecutors wrote in court filings.
Mangione’s legal team rejected that contention, writing back that Mangione is “no more responsible for the actions of Mr. Tamura or any other alleged killer whose actions followed his arrest than the President is responsible for the alleged mishandling of classified documents by those who served with him, before him or after him.”
The Justice Department is meanwhile laying the groundwork to seek the death penalty against Elias Rodriguez, who is charged with killing two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., in May.
Rodriguez faces nine counts, and prosecutors included “special findings” in his indictment that marks one of the first steps in eventually seeking capital punishment. Any final decision would lay with Bondi as attorney general.
“This is a weighty decision,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said last month. “It takes time.”
