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 confirmed on Friday. The department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital, which were employed to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration — more than under any president in modern history.
The Biden administration had previously removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol due to concerns about potential unnecessary pain and suffering. These changes come as part of a broader initiative to increase federal executions following a moratorium under President Joe Biden. Currently, only three defendants remain on federal death row after Biden commuted 37 death sentences to life imprisonment, though the Trump administration has authorised seeking the death penalty against 44 defendants.
Acting Attorney General's Statement
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."
Firing Squad as a New Method
The federal government has not previously included firing squad as an execution method in its protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states currently allow executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. The pentobarbital protocol was originally adopted by Attorney General Bill Barr during Trump's first term to replace a three-drug mix used in the 2000s.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, in the final days of the Biden administration, withdrew the pentobarbital lethal injection policy after a government review found "significant uncertainty" about whether its use causes unnecessary pain and suffering. In 2020, under Barr's leadership, the Justice Department published a rule allowing federal executions by lethal injection or "any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed." Several states permit other methods, including electrocution, nitrogen gas inhalation, or firing squad.
Trump Administration's Response
The Trump administration, in a report released Friday, argued that the Biden administration "got the standard and the science wrong." The report claimed that the Biden administration's findings "failed to address the overwhelming evidence" that an inmate injected with pentobarbital "quickly loses consciousness — rendering him unable to experience pain."
Current Death Row Inmates
Currently on federal death row are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
