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General Todd Blanche, who released the report, has authorized seeking death sentences against nine people after Trump rescinded a moratorium on federal executions by his predecessor, Joe Biden, the department said.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.
I’ll believe it when I see it g