Washington, D.C – The Justice Department announced Thursday that they will seek the death penalty for a man who is accused of killing another prisoner at the federal government’s “Supermax” jail in Florence, Colorado. The man is already serving a life sentence for killing his cellmate at another prison.
As part of Trump’s plan to bring back the death penalty, Ishmael Petty, who was found guilty of assaulting jail staff, is the latest person who could face the death penalty. This past week, the Justice Department said that Luigi Mangione would be put to death for killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
On her first day as U.S. Attorney General, Pam Bondi lifted a ban on federal executions put in place by Vice President Joe Biden. She has said she will seek the death sentence “whenever possible.”
Petty, who is 56 years old, was facing a life term at ADX Florence, the U.S.’s most secure federal prison, when prosecutors say he killed another prisoner in the same unit in 2020. In 2002, he got life in jail for killing another prisoner while he was already there for robbing a bank in 1998. He was also found guilty in 2015 of attacking three people who were bringing books to his cell: two teachers, a case manager, and a clerk.
In this case, Petty did not yet have an attorney named. An email sent to a lawyer who used to defend him didn’t get a response right away.
During Trump’s first term, 13 people were put to death by the federal government. This is more than any other president in recent times. On his first day back in the White House, he signed an order telling the Justice Department to not only seek the death sentence in appropriate federal cases, but also to help states that have had trouble keeping enough lethal injection drugs on hand.
During the Biden administration, federal killings were stopped when Attorney General Merrick Garland asked for a review of the rules for the death penalty. Democratic President Joe Biden recently commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 federal prisoners on death row to life in jail. He did this in his last few weeks in office.