DOJ approves use of firing squads in federal executions
by Jeff Mordock · The Washington TimesThe Justice Department has ordered the Bureau of Prisons to expand the number of ways inmates on federal death row could be executed, including adding firing squads and gas asphyxiation.
The move is a fulfillment of Mr. Trump’s executive order to resume capital punishment. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is seeking death sentences against nine people after Mr. Trump rescinded a moratorium on federal executions by President Joe Biden.
Mr. Blanche released a report on Friday detailing the Justice Department’s efforts to increase methods to carry out federal executions. He said the decision restores the department’s “solemn duty to seek, obtain and implement lawful capital sentences.”
“Among the actions taken are readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump Administration, expanding the protocol to include additional manners of execution such as the firing squad and streaming internal processes to expedite death penalty cases,” the report said.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims,” Mr. Blanche said.
In the report, Mr. Blanche said the expanded execution measures are “constitutional manners of execution that are currently provided for by the law of certain states.”
He said that includes older methods such as firing squads and electrocutions, as well as the new gas asphyxiation method adopted in Alabama in 2024.
“This modification will help ensure the Department is prepared to carry out lawful executions even if a specific drug is unavailable,” the report said.
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Currently, five states allow for death by firing squad for those on death row who have exhausted their appeals process.
In March, a South Carolina man convicted of double murder became the fourth person to be executed by a 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 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,” Mr. Blanche said.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the decision to resume the death penalty “a stain on our nation’s history.”
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He added, “State-sanctioned killing 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 get ahead of legal challenges springing up around the death penalty. Several states and death row inmates are challenging execution methods as unconstitutional, arguing that such methods would cause unnecessary suffering.
Those challenges have largely failed.
In October, the Supreme Court’s liberal justices criticized their conservative colleagues for allowing an Alabama man to be executed using nitrogen hypoxia. A dissent authored by Justice Sonia Sotomayor offered a graphic depiction of Alabama’s execution methods, noting that the nitrogen death lasts up to four minutes, which she said was a form of cruel and unusual punishment.
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• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.