{"id":604147,"date":"2026-04-24T18:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T18:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/604147\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T18:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T18:50:11","slug":"justice-department-is-bringing-back-firing-squads-in-federal-executions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/604147\/","title":{"rendered":"Justice Department is bringing back firing squads in federal executions"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. government should add firing squads, electrocution and gas asphyxiation as methods of \u200bexecuting people convicted of the gravest federal crimes, the Department of \u200cJustice said Friday in a report that noted difficulties in getting drugs for lethal injections.<\/p>\n

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The report was a fulfillment of President Donald Trump\u2019s promise to resume capital punishment \u200bin his second term. In his first term, which ended in \u200b2021, he resumed it after a 20-year gap, executing 13 federal \u2060prisoners with lethal injections in his final few months in office.<\/p>\n

Acting Attorney \u200bGeneral Todd Blanche, who released the report, has authorized seeking death sentences against \u200bnine people after Trump rescinded a moratorium on federal executions by his predecessor, Joe Biden, the department said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmong the actions taken are readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during \u200bthe first Trump Administration, expanding the protocol to include additional manners of \u200bexecution such as the firing squad, and streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases,\u201d \u200cit \u2060said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnder President Trump\u2019s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims,\u201d Blanche said.<\/p>\n

In the report, Blanche instructed the Justice Department\u2019s Bureau of Prisons to modify its execution protocol \u201cto \u200binclude additional, constitutional manners \u200bof execution that \u2060are currently provided for by the law of certain states,\u201d pointing to the older methods of firing squads and \u200belectrocution, and the new gas asphyxiation method pioneered by \u200bAlabama in \u20602024.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis modification will help ensure the Department is prepared to carry out lawful executions even if a specific drug is unavailable,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

Biden, a Democrat, commuted \u2060the \u200bsentences of 37 of the people awaiting executions \u200bon federal death row, leaving only three men.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. government should add firing squads, electrocution and gas asphyxiation as methods of \u200bexecuting people convicted of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-604147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}