Executive Order
# 14164 -- Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety (Jan. 20, 2025)
Highlights
Attorney General must seek federal death penalty in cases that might be traditionally left to states—especially officer killings or undocumented perpetrators. A key provision orders the Attorney General to reclassify individuals whose federal death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment as “high-risk offenders” and transfer them to the nation’s most secure facilities, including supermax or administrative maximum units such as ADX Florence.
Key Compliance/Risk Cue
While the EO primarily addresses federal incarceration policy, it calls on the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to expand coordination with state and local law enforcement agencies for fugitive apprehension and joint task force operations.
Litigation Snapshot
Taylor v. Trump 1:25-cv-01161 | U.S. District Court for the District of District of Columbia: Filed Date: April 16, 2025: twenty-one of the 37 prisoners with commuted death sentences filed suit challenging the AG's bypassing of statutorily-required procedures for reassignment of prisoners to transfer 37 inmates to ADX Florence, the harshest unit in the federal prison system.