I have no obvious opposition to capital punishment as a matter of principle, although in practice, the costs of exacting the death penalty from initial trials and appeals to the execution itself vastly supersede that of lifelong prison sentences. Furthermore, the number of costly death penalties pursued are orders of magnitude greater than those executed.

The same President Trump who signed landmark prison reform into law has also resumed federal executions, and if we are to accept the death penalty as a valid punishment, the list of criminals sent to the chopping block thus far have deserved it. Of the eight federal criminals executed during Trump’s tenure, all have committed murder. Half also raped their victims, three of whom were minors. (The fourth rapist had previously served time for child molestation and statutory rape.) Those who did not rape their victims were involved in uniquely perverse schemes, such as Daniel Lewis Lee, who murdered a family of three and planned to create a white ethnostate with stolen arms, and Dustin Lee Honken, who murdered five people to conceal his meth operation.