The U.S. Department of Justice announced it will permit firing squads as a method of federal execution and will reauthorize single-drug lethal injections using pentobarbital. Officials said the changes are part of the Trump administration’s effort to increase and accelerate federal capital punishment cases.
Pentobarbital was used in 13 federal executions during President Trump’s first term — more than under any modern president — but the Biden administration removed it from federal protocol over concerns that it might cause unnecessary pain and suffering. The policy shift announced Friday follows a period in which the Biden administration imposed a moratorium on federal executions and President Joe Biden converted 37 federal death sentences to life in prison, leaving three inmates currently on federal death row. The Trump administration has sought death sentences in 44 federal cases.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche criticized the prior administration in a statement, saying it “failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” and added that the Department of Justice is “once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”
Federal execution protocols previously did not include the firing squad. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, five states — Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah — currently allow executions by firing squad. Other states permit alternatives such as electrocution or nitrogen hypoxia.
The pentobarbital protocol was adopted under Attorney General William Barr during Trump’s first term to replace an earlier three-drug combination used when federal executions resumed in that period. In the final days of the Biden administration, Attorney General Merrick Garland withdrew the pentobarbital policy after a government review found “significant uncertainty” about whether its use could cause unnecessary pain and suffering. The new report released Friday disputes that assessment, asserting the earlier review did not fully consider evidence that pentobarbital renders an injected inmate rapidly unconscious and incapable of experiencing pain.
A 2020 Justice Department rule established under Barr allowed federal executions by lethal injection or “any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed.” The recent announcement expands the federal options for carrying out capital sentences.
Those still on federal death row include high-profile defendants such as Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in 2015; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018.