WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials announced Friday.
The Justice Department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration—more than under any president in modern history. The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol due to concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering.
The announcement signals a broader push to reinstate federal executions after a moratorium during the Biden administration. Currently, only three defendants remain on federal death row, following President Biden's decision to convert 37 death sentences to life in prison, while the Trump administration has authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stated, “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. Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”
Historically, the federal government has not included firing squads in its execution methods, which currently are permitted in five states: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.
The pentobarbital protocol was adopted by Bill Barr during Trump’s first term to replace a previous three-drug mix utilized in federal executions prior to Trump's presidency. Attorney General Merrick Garland withdrew the pentobarbital lethal injection policy in the Biden administration's final days due to significant uncertainty over causing suffering.
States are permitted to use various methods of execution, including electrocution, nitrogen inhalation, or firing squads. According to the Trump administration’s report, the Biden administration “got the standard and the science wrong,” failing to acknowledge that injections with pentobarbital swiftly render an individual unconscious, purportedly preventing pain.
Currently, three defendants are on death row: Dylann Roof for the 2015 racially motivated slayings of nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber; and Robert Bowers, responsible for a 2018 synagogue shooting that claimed 11 lives in Pittsburgh, marking the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
