The Justice Department announced Friday it will add firing squads as a permitted method of federal execution, the first time the department has included the method in its protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The department is also restoring single-drug pentobarbital lethal injections, the same protocol used to carry out 13 executions during Trump’s first term, which Attorney General Merrick Garland had withdrawn in the final days of the Biden administration after a government review found “significant uncertainty” about whether its use causes unnecessary pain and suffering.
The move lands as the federal death row sits nearly empty. Biden converted 37 death sentences to life in prison, leaving only three inmates currently on federal death row: Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers. The Trump administration has since authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the policy shift in a statement Friday, saying the prior administration “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.”
Five states currently permit executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. This is a developing story.
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