Trump Administration Approves Firing Squad Executions for Death Penalty

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/24/us/politics/trump-firing-squad-executions-death-penalty.html

Trump Administration Approves Firing Squad Executions for Death Penalty
The Justice Department also reauthorized the use of a death penalty drug, and will seek to shorten the length of some legal appeals.
By Devlin Barrett
April 24, 2026

The Trump administration said on Friday that it would allow firing squads and readopt lethal injection as part of a broader push to revive the death penalty.

The moves come after President Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in the White House to renew capital punishment in the federal prison system. During the first Trump presidency, 13 people were executed in the federal prison system.

In 2021, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland issued a moratorium on executions of federal inmates and banned the use of a lethal drug protocol using pentobarbital. In his final days in office, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 convicted killers on federal death row.

In a report issued Friday, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said that those Biden-era decisions “inflicted untold damage on victims of crime, and, ultimately, to the rule of law itself.”

The department, he said, had reauthorized the use of pentobarbital to execute federal inmates. The Justice Department would also allow the use of firing squads and additional methods of execution.

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https://www.reuters.com/world/us/justice-department-readopts-firing-squads-us-federal-executions-2026-04-24/

US should use firing squads, electrocution as execution methods, Justice Department says
By Jonathan Allen
April 24, 2026

April 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. government should add firing squads, electrocution and gas asphyxiation as methods of ​executing people convicted of the gravest federal crimes, the Department of ‌Justice said on Friday in a report that noted difficulties in getting drugs for lethal injections.

The report was a fulfillment of President Donald Trump's promise to resume capital punishment ​in his second term. In his first term, which ended in ​2021, he resumed it after a 20-year gap, executing 13 federal ⁠prisoners with lethal injections in his final few months in office.

Acting Attorney ​General Todd Blanche, who released the report, has authorized seeking death sentences against ​nine people after Trump rescinded a moratorium on federal executions by his predecessor, Joe Biden, the department said.

"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 streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases," ‌it ⁠said in a statement.

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