18 U.S.C. § 1118 — Murder by a Federal prisoner

(a) A person can be confined in a federal correctional institution under a sentence of life imprisonment. If they commit murder there, they can be punished by death or by life imprisonment. The court may choose either punishment; the section does not say which factors decide between them. (b) This section defines three terms. A "Federal correctional institution" means any federal prison, federal correctional facility, federal community program center, or federal halfway house. "Murder" means a first-degree or second-degree murder, as defined in section 1111. A "term of life imprisonment" means a sentence for natural life, or a sentence commuted to natural life. It also includes an indeterminate sentence of at least fifteen years up to life, or an unexecuted death sentence.

The source credit indicates that this section was added by Public Law 103–322, title VI, § 60005(a), enacted September 13, 1994, and published at 108 Stat. 1970. The credit reflects a single enactment event with no subsequent amendment noted, meaning the text has apparently remained in its original form since 1994. Public Law 103–322 is the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a large omnibus crime statute commonly associated with that era's broader legislative response to concerns about violent crime in the United States. Title VI of the Act is generally understood to have substantially expanded the range of federal offenses eligible for capital punishment, adding new death-penalty-eligible crimes to federal law. Within that broader effort, a provision specifically addressing murder committed by a person already confined under a federal life sentence is consistent with a recognizable policy concern of the period: that inmates already serving the maximum available federal sentence might otherwise face no additional criminal sanction for committing further violence while incarcerated. This is a plausible general explanation consistent with the Act's known scope, but the available record here does not include committee reports, sponsor statements, or other legislative history establishing Congress's specific reasoning for enacting this particular section. Accordingly, beyond the Act's well-documented general purpose of expanding federal capital offenses, the specific legislative intent behind § 1118 cannot be confirmed from the materials provided.