The Justice Department says it will also streamline internal processes to “expedite death penalty cases.”
The US will resume the use of firing squads, electric shock and gas suffocation to execute criminals convicted of the worst federal crimes, the Justice Department said in a statement on Friday.
The department has said “Re-adopting lethal injection protocols previously used during the Trump administration,” This is being expanded to include “Additional methods of execution,” And “Streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases.”
After returning to office last January, Trump said he would direct the D.O.J. “pursue hot” Death penalty to save Americans “Violent rapists, murderers and monsters.”
The Justice Department said the new policy clears the way for executions of death row inmates after their appeals are exhausted. The AP reported it is the first time the federal government has explicitly allowed firing squads, although a 2020 rule already allowed the use of any legal execution method in a state that imposes the punishment.
The decision reverses the approach taken by former President Joe Biden, whose administration halted federal executions. In December 2024, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 people on federal death row, commuting them to life without parole and leaving only three federal prisoners still facing execution.
American public support for the death penalty is divided, with Gallup reporting only a slight majority of 52% in favor at the end of 2025, down from a peak of 80% in 1994, while a record-low share believes the punishment is applied fairly.
The United States is currently the only country in the Americas that actively carries out capital punishment, while more than two-thirds of the world’s countries have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice.
Russia retains the death penalty in law, but there has been a moratorium on executions since 1996. A recent poll found that about half of Russians now favor bringing it back, but lawmakers have argued that it would be legally impossible to do so because the ban was imposed by the Constitutional Court, whose decisions cannot be overturned.
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