Two murder cases nearing trial in Maryland’s federal courts are getting a new review by federal officials over whether to seek the death penalty, following an executive order issued earlier this year by President Donald J. Trump.

This week, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher asked prosecutors in the two cases to let her know by Friday if the Department of Justice’s Capital Case Unit, which she said reopened the cases for capital review last month, would indeed seek the death penalty.

“The setting of this deadline does not suggest or imply that the Court believes any such change in position would be legally permissible or timely. The deadline is intended only to permit this issue to be litigated” before trial, Gallagher wrote.

The state of Maryland has banned the death penalty since 2013, but it has remained in effect on the federal level and applied sparingly.

During his first term, Trump oversaw more federal executions than any president in more than 100 years, though his DOJ did not pursue the death penalty in any new Maryland cases. The last Maryland execution during Trump’s first term was for Dustin Higgs, who was convicted of killing three women in a Southern Maryland wildlife refuge in 1996.

President Joe Biden’s Justice Department issued a moratorium on executions in 2021, which Trump reversed with an executive order in January. In the order, he urged the U.S. attorney general to pursue the death penalty “for all crimes of a severity demanding its use,” and mandated that it be sought for all cases involving the killing of a law enforcement officer or those committed by undocumented immigrants.

“Capital punishment is an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens,” the order reads.

One of the cases reopened for review is scheduled for trial next month. Matthew Hightower has been charged with orchestrating the murder of a witness in a health fraud case, which actually resulted in the fatal shooting of a woman who was not the intended target.

The Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the review process. The Maryland federal public defender did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Prosecutors allege that Hightower, while awaiting trial for a federal health fraud case, learned the identity of a whistleblower responsible for the charges. Prosecutors accused him of directing two men to fatally shoot her on the day she was to appear in court. Instead, the men shot and killed 41-year-old teacher’s aide Latrina Ashburne, a bystander who happened to live next door and was similar in appearance to the intended victim, prosecutors say.

Those men, Davon Carter and Clifton Mosley, both of Baltimore, were convicted and sentenced to multiple life sentences in 2021, but Hightower remained uncharged in the case until 2023. He is currently serving more than 30 years in federal prison for a separate murder, of a man who failed to pay back a loan.

The other case under new capital review is a racketeering case involving four men accused of carrying out killings as part of their membership in the MS-13 gang. They are accused of luring a woman suspected of associating with rival gang members to a park in Cockeysville and killing her, as well as another woman suspected of cooperating with law enforcement, alongside train tracks in Southeast Baltimore. The men, Wilson Arturo Constanza-Galdomez, Edis Omar Valenzuela-Rodriguez, Jonathan Pesquera-Puerto, Wualter Orellana-Hernandez, all of Baltimore, are accused of other attempted murders as well.

University of Richmond School of Law Professor Corrina Barrett Lain, an expert on the death penalty, said pursuing the death penalty in a state like Maryland could be a more costly endeavor.

“If they decide to go for it, they’re doing it in a state that has abolished the death penalty, and so the people themselves are not full of death penalty supporters,” Lain said. She said for example, the jury selection in the death penalty case against the Boston Marathon bombers in Massachusetts, a state that had long banned the death penalty, took two months and involved over 1,300 potential jurors.

She also said that any attempt to bring the death penalty would likely bring lengthier litigation.

“I think the current administration’s approach to the death penalty in general and executions in particular open up more possibilities for litigation than we’ve ever had before,” she said.

In the last two decades, death sentencings across the country, both federal and state, have dropped 80%, Lain said, to 26 last year from 125 new cases in 2004. Polling by Gallup also shows support for the death penalty at 53%, the lowest in 50 years.