DOJ approves use of firing squads in federal executions

The Justice Department has ordered the Bureau of Prisons to expand the number of methods of executing federal death row inmates, including adding firing squads and gas asphyxiation.

This decision fulfills Mr. Trump’s executive order to reinstate capital punishment. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is seeking the death penalty against nine people after Mr. Trump lifted a moratorium on federal executions imposed by President Joe Biden.

Mr. Blanche released a report Friday detailing the Justice Department’s efforts to expand methods for carrying out federal executions. He said the ruling restores the department’s “solemn duty to seek, obtain and carry out lawful death sentences.”

“Among the steps taken are re-adopting the lethal injection protocol used under the first Trump administration, expanding the protocol to include additional modes of execution such as the firing squad, and disseminating internal processes to expedite death penalty cases,” the report said.

“Under the leadership of President Trump, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims,” Mr. Blanche said.

In the report, Mr. Blanche said that expanded enforcement measures constitute “constitutional modes of enforcement that are currently provided for under the law of some states.”

He said this includes older methods such as firing squads and electrocutions, as well as the new method of gas asphyxiation adopted in Alabama in 2024.

“This change will help ensure that the Department is prepared to carry out lawful executions even if a specific drug is not available,” the report said.

Currently, five states allow execution by firing squad for death row inmates who have exhausted their appeals.

In March, a South Carolina man convicted of double murder became the fourth person to be executed by firing squad since the 1970s.

Mr. Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 convicted killers on death row. During Mr. Trump’s first term, 13 people were executed in the federal prison system.

“The previous administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to prosecute and bring ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers and police killers,” Mr. Blanche said.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the decision to reinstate the death penalty “a stain on our nation’s history.”

He added: “State-sanctioned murder is not justice. Today, the DOJ is turning back the clock by strengthening the barbaric practice of the federal death penalty – a cruel, immoral, and often discriminatory form of punishment.”

The report is part of the administration’s efforts to preempt legal challenges that arise around the death penalty. Several states and death row inmates challenge the execution methods as unconstitutional, arguing that such methods would cause unnecessary suffering.

These challenges have largely failed.

In October, liberal Supreme Court justices criticized their conservative colleagues for allowing an Alabama man to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia. A dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor offered a graphic depiction of execution methods in Alabama, noting that death by nitrogen lasts up to four minutes, which she said was a form of cruel and unusual punishment.