Under Trump, Maryland's national cases receive a review of the death penalty

Two murder cases that approach Maryland's federal courts before the process About whether the death penalty according to a executive regulation issued by President Donald J. Trump at the beginning of this year will be raised at the beginning of this year.

This week, the US district judge Stephanie Gallagher asked the prosecutors in the two cases to tell them until Friday whether the capital case department of the Ministry of Justice, which would have reopened the cases for the capital review last month, would actually obtain the death penalty.

“The termination of this period does not indicate that the court is of the opinion that such a change of position would be legally permissible or permissible in good time. The deadline should only be thought that this problem can be brought to justice, wrote Gallagher.

The state of Maryland has banned the death penalty since 2013, but has remained in force at the federal level and has used economical.

During his first term, Trump supervised more federal statements in more than 100 years than any president, although his Doj did not pursue the death penalty in Maryland in new cases. The last execution of Maryland during Trump's first term was for Dustin Higgs, who was convicted of killing three women in a wildlife in Southern in 1996.

President Joe Biden's Ministry of Justice published a moratorium for executions in 2021, which Trump dealt with an executive regulation in January. In the arrangement, he asked the US general Prosecutor to “pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a seriousness that his use”, and asked to search for all cases in which a law enforcement officer or the undocumented without papers were committed Immigrants.

“The death penalty is an essential instrument to deter and punish those who commit the most hideous crimes and actions of deadly violence against American citizens,” the order says.

One of the cases that were reopened for review Test version next month. Matthew Hightower was accused In the fatal shooting of a woman who was not the intended goal.

The US public prosecutor's office in Maryland refused to comment on the review process. The Maryland Federal Public Defender did not immediately answer a request for a comment.

The prosecutors claim that, while waiting for a case for health fraud, high -tower, while waiting for a case for health fraud, was identified by a whistleblow. The public prosecutor accused him of showing two men to shoot them fatally on the day on which they should appear in court. Instead, the men, Latrina Ashburnne, shot a viewer who happened to live next door and was similar to the intended victim, say the prosecutors.

These men, including Carter and Clifton Mosley, both from Baltimore, were convicted in 2021 and sentenced to several lifelong prison terms, but high -tower remained uncharged in this case until 2023.

The other case in New Capital Review is a case in which four men are involved that are accused of carrying out murders as part of their membership in the MS-13 gang. They are accused of having lured a woman who is suspected to contact a park in Cockeyville with competing gang members and kill them and another Woman who is suspected of working with law enforcement agencies together with the railway tracks in the southeast of Baltimore. The men, Wilson Arturo Constanza-Galdomez, Edis Omar Valenzuela-Rodriguez, Jonathan Pesquera-Puerto, Wualter Orellana-Hernandez, all from Baltimore, are also accused of other attempted murders.

The professor of the University of Richmond School of Law Corrina Barrett Lain, an expert in the death penalty, said that the death penalty in a state like Maryland could be more expensive.

“If you choose, do it in a state that abolished the death penalty, and so people themselves are not full of supporters for the death penalty,” said Lain. For example, she said the selection of the jury in the event of the death penalty against the Boston Marathon Bombers in Massachusetts, a state that had banned the death penalty in a long time, lasted two months and participated over 1,300 potential jurors.

She also said that every attempt to bring the death penalty would probably bring longer legal disputes.

“I think the approach of the current administration to the death penalty in general and the executions in particular open up more legal options than ever before,” she said.

In the past two decades, 80%of the federal and state governments have decreased in the past year, said Lain of 125 new cases in 2004.