Under Trump, federal cases are ticking up

Before a suspect was even publicly named, President Donald Trump declared that whoever gunned down 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue should “suffer the ultimate price” and that the death penalty should be brought back “into vogue.”

Trump has largely gotten his wish, at least on the federal level, with death penalty cases ticking back up under his Justice Department after a near-moratorium on such prosecutions in President Barack Obama’s last term, when he directed a broad review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection.

Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has so far approved at least a dozen death penalty prosecutions over the past two years, according to court filings tracked by the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel, with cases ranging from the high profile to the relatively obscure.

They include the man charged with using a rented truck to fatally mow down eight people on a New York City bike path a year ago; three men charged in a fatal armored truck robbery in New Orleans; a gang suspect in Detroit charged with “murder in aid of racketeering” and a man charged with fatally shooting a tribal police officer in New Mexico on the nation’s largest American Indian reservation.

The tally could grow higher over the next two months as federal prosecutors await Sessions’ decision in several other cases, including against the alleged synagogue shooter, Robert Bowers, who faces federal hate crime charges and 11 counts of murder.