Trump wants to extend the death penalty to drug traffickers: the Pike case reignites the debate

In April, the Department of Justice lifted the moratorium on federal executions and reinstated the pentobarbital protocol previously used during the first Trump administration. Other methods permitted by law have also been brought back into consideration, including the firing squad, whilst the Department has accelerated its review of cases in which the death penalty may be sought and announced a legislative proposal to be submitted to Congress.

This is where the Supreme Court comes into the picture. In 2008, the judges were presented with the case of Patrick Kennedy, who had been sentenced to death in Louisiana for the rape of his eight-year-old stepdaughter. The girl had survived. By five votes to four, the Court quashed the sentence and ruled that, for a crime against the person, the death penalty could not be imposed when the victim had not been killed.

The case of Kennedy v. Louisiana, however, did not concern offences against the State, and the judges expressly cited, amongst those on which they did not intend to rule, treason, espionage, terrorism and ‘drug kingpin activity’ (‘the activities of major drug traffickers’). That clarification did not authorise the death penalty for a drug trafficker who had not killed anyone; it simply left the issue outside the scope of the judgement.

Since then, that limit has not been tested. A law introducing the death penalty for major drug traffickers, regardless of whether a murder has been committed, could bring the issue back before the Supreme Court, whilst the Trump administration seeks new cases with which to challenge the precedents that limit the application of the death penalty.

In 2025, there were 47 executions in the United States, compared with 25 in 2024. As of 29 September this year, there had been 29 in six states. In May, 52 per cent of Americans considered the death penalty morally acceptable, according to Gallup, four percentage points down on the previous year.

For Tennessee, Pike’s is also a back to the past. In 2022, Bill Lee had suspended executions after an independent investigation found repeated breaches of procedure, including checks on the drugs used for lethal injections. The state rewrote the protocol and, by the end of 2024, opted solely for pentobarbital – the drug administered twice to Pike without success. His lawyers argue that the intravenous access points did not function correctly and that some of the substance ended up in the tissues. The Department of Corrections states that the protocol was followed. It will now be up to the investigation ordered by the governor to establish what happened. Until then, no one will be executed in Tennessee. In Washington, however, Trump is working to extend the list of those who might be executed.