The Trump Administration Is Bringing Back Federal Executions After 16 Years

The Trump administration plans to resume federal executions, reversing a 16-year de facto moratorium on the death penalty within the Department of Justice.

Attorney General William Barr instructed the Federal Bureau of Prisons on Thursday to schedule executions of five death-row inmates, who he said were convicted of “murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our society — children and the elderly.” The federal government has carried out three executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1988: two in 2001 and one in 2003.

But it’s not clear whether the federal government has successfully obtained the drugs required to perform lethal injections in the midst of a nationwide shortage.

“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the president,” Barr said in a statement.

Thursday’s announcement bucks a national trend toward phasing out the death penalty entirely. Faced with a shortage of lethal injection drugs, states have tried to experiment with untested cocktails of chemicals — and even kept some of the details secret. But trying to circumvent the shortage has led to botched executions in some instances and lawsuits questioning the humanity of new protocols.

As a result, the number of annual executions in US has declined in recent years — and public opinion has increasingly swung in favor of doing away with capital punishment entirely.