Federal prosecutors will stop fighting a judge’s order against seeking death for a man charged with killing a Terre Haute police detective.

Judge James Patrick Hanlon of the Southern District of Indiana told the government in February that it could not reverse its earlier decision against pursuing capital charges for Shane Meehan, who is charged with killing Det. Greg Ferency outside an FBI office in 2021.

The U.S. Attorney’s office appealed that order in March but withdrew its motion last week.

The struggle over Meehan’s sentence coincides with a battle over how the federal government handles capital cases.

Prosecutors’ initial decision in 2022 not to seek the death penalty was consistent with other federal cases during the Biden administration, which issued a moratorium on federal executions and reduced sentences for most prisoners on federal death row.

Meehan’s attorney agreed with the move on account of her client’s overlapping mental and neurological conditions.

But since Donald Trump’s second inauguration, the Department of Justice has pursued death sentences more aggressively. The president signed an executive order last March that it would always seek the death penalty for the murder of law enforcement, “absent significant mitigating circumstances.”

Prosecutors announced their intent to seek execution for Meehan in November. His defense team moved to strike that motion, saying that because capital cases are handled differently it would be unfair to switch several years into the case.