There is a legal question here.
When you listen to President Trump's words, he does seem to be indicating that all murder cases in the city would become death penalty cases, even though that is not part of D.C. law right now. So how would he do that? Talking to experts, perhaps he would have to try and apply a federal standard somehow to city crimes.
However, there is a legal problem there, not only with D.C. law, but with USA law. The Supreme Court in the 1970s ruled that mandatory death penalty for sentences is unconstitutional. We talked to the death penalty information center, and they said that not only would this be breaking a precedent for Washington, D.C., but, in that way, for the nation.
