The US justice department announced on Friday that it is taking steps to “strengthen the federal death penalty”, including bringing back firing squads and readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump administration.
“Today, the Department of Justice acted to restore its solemn duty to seek, obtain, and implement lawful capital sentences – clearing the way for the Department to carry out executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals,” the justice department said in a news release.
In the statement, the department said that the actions taken include “readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump Administration”, which “relies on pentobarbital as the lethal agent”, and “expanding the protocol to include additional manners of execution such as the firing squad”.
The justice department also said that it was “streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases”.
In addition, the justice department said that it has “rescinded” the Biden-era moratorium on federal executions and has “authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants”. The statement added that Todd Blanche, the acting US attorney general, had “already authorized seeking death sentence against nine of these defendants”.
Shortly after taking office last January, Donald Trump signed an executive order committing to pursue federal death sentences and directing the attorney general to ensure that states have sufficient supplies of lethal injection drugs for executions.
The justice department said on Friday that since then, “the Department has taken sustained action to implement that directive and reverse the Biden Justice Department’s efforts to erode the death penalty.”
Federal executions had been on hold since 2021, when the then-attorney general, Merrick Garland, imposed a moratorium on federal executions under the Joe Biden presidency, pending “a review of the Justice Department’s policies and procedures”.
During Trump’s first term, the government also resumed federal executions after a nearly 20-year pause.
On Friday, the justice department also said in the statement that it planned in the coming weeks to also “consider a rule that will empower states to streamline federal habeas review of capital cases”, to “publish a proposed rule prohibiting capital inmates from submitting clemency petitions” and more.
At the state level, five states – Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah – allow executions by firing squad in certain circumstances, according to the Associated Press.
Executions in the US rose last year to their highest level in 16 years. Meanwhile, public support for the death penalty in the US appears to be declining. A Gallup poll published in October found that support for capital punishment in the US for people convicted of murder has been steadily declining over the past three decades, from 80% in 1994 to 52% in 2025.
The Death Penalty Information Center also said last year that “the evidence shows that the death penalty in 2025 is increasingly unpopular with the American people even as elected officials schedule executions in search of diminishing political benefits.”
A statement from Matt Wells, the deputy director of the human rights group Reprieve, said Friday’s report illustrated “the federal government’s determination to execute, at all costs”.
Wells’s statement said: “They don’t care how they do it – this report opens the door to a whole range of appalling methods.”
