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DOJ Expands Federal Execution Methods to Include Firing Squad and Gas Asphyxiation

DOJ Expands Federal Execution Methods to Include Firing Squad and Gas Asphyxiation
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The US Department of Justice moved on Friday to dramatically expand the methods it can use to execute federal inmates, authorizing firing squads, electrocution and gas asphyxiation alongside a revived single‑drug lethal injection protocol using pentobarbital.washingtonpost +1 The changes, laid out in a 48‑page report and directive to the Bureau of Prisons, followed President Donald Trump’s order to “restore and strengthen” the federal death penalty and ended a Biden‑era moratorium on executions.nbcnews +1

In its report, “Restoring and Strengthening the Federal Death Penalty,” the department said the new options were needed to ensure executions can proceed despite chronic shortages of lethal‑injection drugs and mounting litigation over injection protocols.washingtonpost +1 The move builds on a 2020 regulation that already allowed federal executions to be carried out using any method authorized in the state where a death sentence was imposed, including older techniques such as firing squads and the electric chair.cnbc

What Exactly Changed — And Why Now?

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche directed federal prisons to readopt the pentobarbital protocol used during Trump’s first term, when the government executed 13 inmates between July 2020 and January 2021, and to formally expand the protocol to include firing squad, electrocution and gas asphyxiation.washingtonpost +1 Officials framed the shift as necessary to “stand with victims” and to avoid future disruptions from drug boycotts or court injunctions targeting specific chemicals.washingtonpost

The department cited Supreme Court precedents in Baze v. Rees, Glossip v. Gross and Bucklew v. Precythe to argue that pentobarbital and the newly endorsed methods comply with the Eighth Amendment, which bars “cruel and unusual punishments.”nbcnews +1 A 2020 rule in the Federal Register, still in force, already permits executions “by any other manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence was imposed,” allowing the federal government to piggyback on firing‑squad or electrocution statutes in five states, including Utah and South Carolina.cnbc +1

Although President Joe Biden commuted 37 federal death sentences in 2024, leaving only three men — Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof and Tree of Life synagogue gunman Robert Bowers — on federal death row, the Justice Department said it has since authorized prosecutors to seek new death sentences in 44 cases.washingtonpost +1 Even so, legal analysts noted that extensive appeals and expected challenges to the revised protocols mean it could be years before another federal execution is scheduled.washingtonpost +1

Backlash, Legal Fights and the Future of Capital Punishment

Civil‑rights organizations, medical ethicists and many Democratic lawmakers condemned the decision, warning that reviving methods long criticized as brutal would push the United States further out of step with other Western democracies.6abc +1 Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, said the Justice Department was embracing forms of execution “widely denounced for their cruelty and unnecessary infliction of extreme pain.”6abc Senator Dick Durbin, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, called the measures a “stain on our nation’s history.”inkl

Opponents are preparing a wave of lawsuits focused on the risk of severe pain from pentobarbital — including reports of gasping and convulsions in recent state executions — and on whether firing squads, electrocution and nitrogen gas can meet constitutional standards.6abc +2 They are expected to challenge not only individual methods but also the way the Justice Department adopted and applies its protocols under the Administrative Procedure Act.cnbc +1 The department, for its part, has signaled additional steps to speed capital cases, including proposed rules to streamline federal habeas review of state death sentences and to limit when condemned prisoners may seek clemency.washingtonpost +1

The Bigger Picture

The policy shift underscored a widening divide over capital punishment in the US: while executions and new death sentences have declined in many states, the federal government under Trump is again positioning itself as an active executioner, with an expanded toolkit designed to outlast drug shortages and courtroom setbacks.6abc +1 With only a handful of prisoners currently on federal death row but dozens of new capital prosecutions authorized, the next phase of the death‑penalty fight is likely to unfold less in Congress than in federal courts, where judges will be asked to decide whether the return of firing squads, gas and the electric chair marks a lawful evolution of punishment — or a step backward into punishments the Constitution no longer tolerates.