Lisa Desjardins:
A lot to pack in those 18 or so seconds — unpack, rather. And let me start backwards.
First of all, this idea that the death penalty itself is a deterrent, there has long been debate about that. But the scholarship in the last 30 years has been moving away from the idea that it is a deterrent. And there is certainly not evidence that it is in any way a strong preventative, as the president says. No evidence for that.
Now, let’s talk about what exactly is happening here. A lot of people are scratching their heads. It’s a very serious thing the president is saying here saying that he can make all murder cases capital punishment cases in the United States capital of Washington, D.C.
Now, the issue here is that, of course, Washington, D.C., does not have the death penalty right now. The city abolished it in the 1980s. And in the 1990s, the citizens of Washington, D.C., also voted to keep it abolished. But it’s a federal city. And the prosecutor there is the U.S. attorney who works for the Department of Justice and works for President Trump.
He hasn’t given details here, but the thinking is that that is somehow how he hopes to get this accomplished.
