The Department of Justice will expedite death penalty cases and allow the use of firing squads and lethal injections using pentobarbital as methods for federal executions, the department announced Friday.
The move is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to strengthen and hasten the process leading to the death penalty, which opponents say is inhumane and fails to deter crime. During President Donald Trump’s first term, 13 people were executed in death penalty cases in the federal prison system.
Five states currently allow those with death penalty convictions who have exhausted the appeals process to be killed by firing squad, a method which, until recently, had been increasingly rare. Since 1977, there have been six state-level executions using a firing squad, all in Utah and South Carolina, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Attorney General Merrick Garland placed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021, citing a need to review policies enacted during the first Trump administration. In his last days in office, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly all convicted felons on federal death row.
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In the statement announcing the policy reversal, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote that the Biden administration “failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment.” The action also includes allowing the use of pentobarbital in lethal injections.
Trump signed 26 executive orders in his first day in office, including one to strengthen capital punishment in the federal prison system. The Justice Department said Friday it would push to shorten the appeals process for state-level death penalty cases by streamlining federal court reviews, and to impose limits on the ability of those sentenced to death in seeking clemency from the federal government before the appeals process is complete.
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