‘I’m terrified I’ll be executed’: Trump win could bring spree of death row killings

If Donald Trump wins the election, he is expected to pursue a spree of executions that could fast-track the cases of people on federal death row, and threaten the life of a man with a longstanding innocence claim.

Advocates for people on death row fear a second Trump term could be worse than his first, which saw an unprecedented 13 federal executions. Under Trump, more people incarcerated in the federal system were put to death than under the previous 10 presidents combined, a staggering number that raised grave human rights concerns.

Among those who were executed were people with intellectual disabilities. Defendants were deprived of opportunities to present new evidence. Some were killed after lawyers said the execution method was "tortuous". In some cases, executions occurred over the objections of both victims and prosecutors.

Since his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Trump's pro-death penalty rhetoric, which dates back to his 1989 campaign against the Central Park Five, has only escalated. He's recently called for executions of "everyone who gets caught selling drugs" and has reportedly suggested government leakers should be executed for treason. Last year, Rolling Stone reported, Trump allegedly floated bringing back firing squads and hangings and pursuing group executions and televised killings.

Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint for a second Trump term that was written by Trump's allies, although it has been disavowed by the former president, calls for the US government to do "everything possible to obtain finality" for the 40 people on federal death row. It also urges the president to expand capital punishment to non-homicide crimes and push the US supreme court to overrule precedent limiting death sentences to murders.

"Trump has said he plans to finish what he started," said Billie Allen, 47, in a recent call from federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana. Allen, convicted of a 1997 robbery and murder, has maintained his innocence, but he has exhausted his appeals. "I'm terrified that I will be executed - not just because I'm going to die, but because I'm going to die for something I didn't do ... I can only hope that as someone who is innocent he would do the right thing."

The federal killings under Trump all took place during his final months in office, and they raised significant concerns about the rights of US capital defendants.