Trump says he wants DOJ to seek death penalty for all DC murders: ‘Capital punishment’

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Tuesday that he wants the Justice Department to seek the death penalty in all murder cases in DC — hours after the capital’s 12-day murder-free streak ended.

“Anybody murders something in the capital, capital punishment. Capital punishment,” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting following the first muder since his crime crackdown began.

“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 and everybody that’s heard it agrees with it.”

DC, which logged 187 murders last year, hasn’t executed anyone since 1957 and the DC Council formally abolished the death penalty in 1981.

All murder cases in Washington are tried by the local US attorney’s office, led by Trump-appointed Jeanine Pirro, whose press team did not immediately offer comment.

The unique status of the DC US attorney’s office makes it easier to bring federal charges against murder suspects.

“The same team of prosecutors would probably just walk out of the Superior Court grand jury over to the federal court grand jury and seek the indictment there,” former DC US attorney Roscoe Howard Jr. said in 2015 of theoretical capital cases.

“Handling local and federal crimes out of the same office has its advantages.”

Murder charges are typically are brought under state laws.

The federal government has, in certain high-profile cases, sought the death penalty in jurisdictions that have abolished the practice, including winning such a sentence against Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Federal law defines murder as “the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought.”

Historically special conditions have been needed to bring federal charges in murder cases — such as an interstate killing spree or during the commission of another federal crime like a bank robbery. 

It’s unclear whether those norms would in any way hamstring death-penalty cases in DC.

The FBI’s website asserts that murder “is not a federal offense unless, for example, a federal official is murdered while performing official functions.”