Donald Trump’s administration is directing prison officials to bring back firing squads to execute federal death row prisoners, reviving a method of execution that hasn’t been used by the U.S. government in centuries.
Friday’s directive from the Department of Justice follows the president’s order to restart executions of federal death row inmates and aggressively seek the death penalty in future cases after Joe Biden ordered a pause on executions and commuted the sentences of more than three dozen people on death row.
Federal prosecutors are now seeking death sentences against nine people after Trump rescinded the Biden-era moratorium on his first day in office last year. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the previous administration “failed in its duty to protect the American people.”
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims,” Blanche said in a statement.
The Justice Department’s plan to “strengthen the death penalty” also directs the Bureau of Prisons to use pentobarbital for lethal injections and to turn to other methods – including firing squads and electrocution — to expedite executions.
Blanche’s directive also directs the agency to consider using nitrogen gas after Alabama performed the world’s first execution with the lethal drug in 2024.
“This modification will help ensure the Department is prepared to carry out lawful executions even if a specific drug is unavailable,” according to the Justice Department’s report.
The Bureau of Prisons is also directed to consider building new facilities specifically designed for federal executions.
Even as polls suggest support for the death penalty has plummeted in recent decades, Trump has pursued federal executions with unprecedented frequency.
During his first term, the federal government executed 13 people, the most under any president in more than 120 years, and a streak that resumed after a 17-year hiatus.
Only three other people have been executed by the federal government since 1963.
Before leaving office, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 people awaiting executions on federal death row, leaving death sentences in place for only three men.
Those death row inmates include Robert Gregory Bowers, who killed 11 people in an antisemitic attack at a Pittsburgh synagogue; Dylann Roof, who killed nine African Americans during a prayer service in North Carolina; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped coordinate the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured 264 others.
In Friday’s report, Trump’s Justice Department called those Biden-era moves “ extraordinary steps to weaken, delay, and dismantle the death penalty.”
Hours after returning to the White House last year, Trump signed an executive order directing the attorney general to seek the death penalty in future cases “for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.”
He ordered the Justice Department to seek the death penalty for every federal crime when a law enforcement officer was killed and when an undocumented immigrant is accused of a capital offense.
Trump’s order also instructed the attorney general to “take all necessary and lawful action” to help states obtain lethal injection drugs to carry out more executions.
Federal prosecutors sought the death penalty in several recent high-profile cases, including against a member of the cult-like Zizians group accused of killing a border officer, and against Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor in D.C., also sought the death penalty for Elias Rodriguez, who is accused of fatally shooting two Israeli embassy staffers last year.
Two dozen states do not carry out capital punishment, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Deterrence is “one of the most commonly expressed reasons” for using the death penalty, but despite Trump’s claims, evidence shows that “states that impose the death penalty are not safer than states that do not use the death penalty,” according to the center.
Five states currently allow death row prisoners to choose death by firing squad.
Since 1976, only four people have been executed by firing squad.
Last year, the Supreme Court allowed South Carolina to carry out the first execution by firing squad in 15 years.
A three-person firing squad fatally shot Mikal Mahdi, who cried out as the bullets struck him. He groaned twice before take one final breath.
An autopsy report later revealed two wounds on his chest, and none of the bullets directly hit his heart, which is where the gunmen are supposed to aim. Mahdi, 42, endured “excruciating conscious pain and suffering” for up to one minute and suffered a prolonged death, according to his attorneys.
Before Mahdi, the last person who shot to death by a state government was Ronnie Lee Gardner in Utah in 2010.
At least 13 death row inmates in state prisons are scheduled for execution this year, and at least 10 others — all in Ohio — are scheduled for execution in 2027.
Trump’s Justice Department accuses “anti-death penalty activists” of “undermining the effectiveness of the death penalty.”
“There is much that can be done to preserve and enhance the death penalty’s role in deterring heinous crimes, bringing closure to victims’ families, and affirming society’s most fundamental values,” according to the report.
