It's a Long Way From Trump's Tweet to an Execution for the TriBeCa Attacker

President Donald Trump made it clear he wants federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Sayfullo Saipov, the 29-year-old New Jersey resident from Uzbekistan who killed eight and wounded 12 with a rented truck along a Manhattan bike path Tuesday.

NYC terrorist was happy as he asked to hang ISIS flag in his hospital room. He killed 8 people, badly injured 12. SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017

But death penalty cases are rare, and there's a lengthy process before Saipov might ever face execution.

Federal prosecutors did charge Saipov with a death-eligible crime: violence and destruction of motor vehicles. The statute traces back to the 1950s, when a man named John Gilbert Graham blew up a plane killing 44 people including his mother. He was tried in Colorado state court for her murder, according to old news reports, and there was no federal law at the time explicitly making it a capital crime to blow up a plane killing passengers. Congress passed a law in 1956 to punish "the willful damaging or destroying of aircraft or motor vehicles" involved in interstate commerce and made it a capital crime if death results.

It's rarely charged, although prosecutors did use it in the case of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.

While the charge could carry the death penalty, there's no guarantee. The Attorney General will ultimately decide after a review process looking at the factual and legal issues. And if the United States Attorney's office does file a notice of intent to seek the death penalty, there are a number of additional hurdles. Jury selection typically takes longer, and if a defendant is convicted, there's essentially a second trial within the trial for the jury to consider unanimously recommending death or to settle on life in prison.

Death penalty cases are also rare on the federal level. The Attorney General authorized prosecutors to seek capital punishment against about 500 defendants from 1988 until 2016, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. About 150 were ultimately sentenced to life in prison and 80 were sentenced to death. Only three people in the past 50 years — and none since 2003 — have been put to death at the federal level.