State lawmakers have taken up President Trump’s aggressive push to expand the use of the death penalty, setting up legislative and legal battles that could make a wider range of crimes subject to capital punishment.
In September alone, 15 states sought the federal government’s support in their quest to increase the death penalty’s scope outside the Supreme Court. State legislators have also introduced bills challenging the Court’s precedent, eager to expand executions to crimes for which the GOP has long sought harsher punishments.
Democrats and legal experts say some of these efforts are unconstitutional. But Republicans are hopeful the conservative Supreme Court will take their side.
“The Supreme Court has previously said that giving the death penalty to child trafficking, child molesters, is cruel and unusual punishment,” Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) told The Hill in an interview. He introduced death penalty legislation as a state lawmaker before being sworn into the House in April.
“But I think there’s a belief that they will change their perspective on that,” he said.
Experts and lawmakers say that the rise of legislation seeking to expand capital punishment can be traced back to Trump’s January executive order to “restore” the death penalty, which called it “an essential tool” of deterrence and punishment.
Throughout his presidency, Trump has continued to push for increased use of capital punishment. Late last month, he signed a presidential memo authorizing the use of the death penalty in D.C. amid his recent calls for the death penalty in high-profile cases.
The January order also called for Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the death penalty for any crimes involving the murder of a law enforcement officer and all federal capital crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.
He also instructed the Justice Department to “seek the overruling of Supreme Court precedents” that limit state and federal use of capital punishment.
Though Trump has claimed capital punishment has broad support, polls indicate support is steadily dropping, with a slight majority now supporting the death penalty for murder.
Since Trump returned to office, state executions have skyrocketed. Legislators have also rushed to clear legal pathways for capital punishment, leading to a rise in death penalty bills across legislatures.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), over 100 bills intended to modify the death penalty reached the floors of statehouses this year — a significant increase from years prior.
This year, an increasing number of bills have focused on expanding aggravating factors for the death penalty — the circumstances that a judge or jury considers when weighing capital punishment — and increasing its application.
The Hill reviewed a list compiled by DPIC of recent death penalty-related legislation and found that at least 23 bills expanding death eligibility or aggravating factors for a death sentence have been introduced across 14 states this year.
Only six were introduced in statehouses nationwide in 2024. The number of states trying to reinstate capital punishment also increased from eight to nine this year.
These bills, introduced primarily by Republican legislators, largely sought to increase the severity of crimes that have been hot-button issues for the GOP: the death of law enforcement officers, sex offenses against children, abortion, and crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.
At least seven states this year have also attempted to legalize alternative methods of execution such as the firing squad, which would help them avoid delays in executions caused by lawsuits people appealing against the use of lethal injection — the primary method of capital punishment, which has caused painful, botched executions.
In Pennsylvania and Florida, state representatives — including Fine — introduced bills mandating the death penalty for undocumented immigrants who commit capital crimes. Lawmakers in South Carolina, Indiana, and Alabama sought to make abortion a capital crime — part of a national push to treat abortion as murder. Oklahoma, Virginia, and Missouri were among at least five states to introduce legislation allowing the death penalty for child traffickers and sex offenders.
Fine said his bill was “absolutely” inspired by Trump’s January executive order. It passed both Florida’s House and Senate earlier this year and was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
“We wanted to make sure that the state was lined up to follow in President Trump’s lead,” Fine said.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R), another Florida politician, has led federal efforts to make non-lethal statutory rape and possession of child porn death-eligible offenses. She and Pennsylvania state Rep. Eric Davanzo (R), who introduced a bill similar to Fine’s in the Keystone State, also believe Trump has influenced support and legislation for expanding capital punishment.
“Whenever President Trump was on his campaign trail, he actually brought [up]…the death penalty for any illegal immigrant to commit murder to U.S. citizens,” Davanzo said.
But their legislation and at least 12 other state bills introduced this year seem to run afoul of longstanding Supreme Court precedent.
In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that a North Carolina law that mandated capital punishment for convicted first-degree murderers was unconstitutional. In 2008, the court held in Kennedy v. Louisiana that it was unconstitutional to seek the death penalty in any other cases besides homicides or crimes against the state — including against child rapists.
“There is a hope and an intent to use this legislation as a way of changing the law and pushing the law in the direction that some of these legislatures believe that it should go,” Robin Maher, DPIC’s executive director, said.
“That includes greater use of the death penalty without some of the restrictions that the Supreme Court has placed around its use,” she said.
The push to expand the death penalty comes at a time when public support for it sits at a five-decade low.
A Gallup poll last year showed 53 percent of people support capital punishment for murder, down from 80 percent 30 years ago. The death penalty has also been paused or abolished in 27 states.
Critics have pointed to racial disparities in the death sentencing process and the risk of wrongful convictions. DPIC estimates that over 40 percent of people on death row in the U.S. are Black. Since 1973, at least 200 people sentenced to death have been exonerated.
“The legislation and expansion of this is clearly a sign that our legislators aren’t doing what the people want,” Herman Lindsey, executive director of Witness to Innocence, an organization of death row exonerees fighting to end the death penalty, said.
Both he and Amy Bergquist, associate program director of the International Justice Program at Advocates for Human Rights, pointed to research showing that capital punishment is ineffective and said much of the legislation this year has amounted to political showboating.
“What we’re seeing here is people wanting to sound tough on crime,” Bergquist said. “It’s a cheap stunt. It’s an illusion of doing something.”
Lindsey and Maher criticized Florida’s leading role in executions and legislation expanding the death penalty. Since January, the Sunshine State has executed 13 people and passed five bills related to the death penalty, the most of any state.
Last month, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) led 15 state attorney generals in sending a letter to Bondi and White House counsel Dave Warrington seeking the federal government’s support in challenging Supreme Court precedent and upholding death sentences for “child rape.”
The letter referenced Trump’s January executive order and pointed to the passage of bills allowing the death penalty for child sexual abuse across multiple states, including Florida and Tennessee.
“[T]he work continues nationwide,” the attorney generals wrote. “The undersigned attorneys general therefore commit to urging their state legislatures…to promptly enact legislation authorizing the imposition of the death penalty for the rape of a child.”
Idaho State Rep. Bruce Skaug (R) introduced a bill that would allow for the death penalty in certain cases of statutory rape. It passed unanimously this year in the Idaho legislature.
“Other states are passing this law with the idea that when it gets to the U.S. Supreme Court, we can say, look, other states are trending this way for justice,” Skaug said.
Both Bergquist and Maher said that the Supreme Court has mostly stopped hearing death penalty cases in recent years, which usually means states can move ahead with planned executions.
It has not granted any requests to stay an execution in 2025 so far — a sharp departure from their historical role regulating the death penalty.
“Some of the legislation, I think, is a reaction to that relinquishment of authority by the Supreme Court and that deferral to their expertise in the states,” Maher said.
But both sides of the death penalty debate expect the Supreme Court will eventually be forced to weigh in on efforts to expand capital punishment.
“They’re going to have to for sure because eventually that law will be enforced,” Fine said. “Someone will appeal and when they appeal, that will take the law to the court for them to make that decision.”
Skaug was optimistic that the court’s conservative majority, which Trump solidified during his first term in office, would support an expansion of capital punishment.
“We have a new U.S. Supreme Court that I think will favor it,” Skaug said.