The federal government will once again carry out lethal injections after a nearly two-decade hiatus on capital punishment, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
Attorney General William Barr said that DOJ will switch from a “three-drug protocol” caught up in legal challenges to using a single drug to execute inmates by lethal injection, ordering the Bureau of Prisons to schedule executions for five of the nearly 60 inmates on federal death row.
“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.
Barr's directive calls for the five inmates convicted of particularly grisly murders — including of children and the elderly — to take place beginning in December at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. All five, DOJ said, have exhausted their post-conviction appeal options.
"Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding," Barr said. "The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system."
Only three federal prisoners have been put to death since capital punishment was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976, with the last execution taking place in 2003. Former President Barack Obama skirted the issue of executing federal prisoners throughout his presidency because of legal challenges, drug shortages, and questions about the protocol.
The move by Barr comes as opposition to the death penalty is at its highest point in almost half a century, according to Gallup polling, though a majority of Americans — 56 percent — continue to support capital punishment for individuals convicted of murder.
As of May 2019, 21 states and the District of Columbia had abolished the death penalty, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. Seven of those states abolished capital punishment — by ballot initiative, legislation or court order — in the past decade.
Critics of capital punishment have argued the practice is unfairly applied, holding up new technologies that have exonerated death row inmates and pointing to instances of botched executions nationwide.
The three-drug protocol DOJ is abandoning has been criticized for being too error-prone, resulting in excruciating pain for inmates if provided in the wrong dosage. Instead, the Bureau of Prisons will use a single dosage of the drug pentobarbital, which DOJ said has been used in 200 executions in 14 states since 2010.
"Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, have repeatedly upheld the use of pentobarbital in executions as consistent with the Eighth Amendment," DOJ said in a press release.
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine