FILE - This photo provided by the South Carolina Department of Corrections shows the state’s death chamber in Columbia, S.C., including the electric chair, right, and a firing squad chair, left. (South Carolina Department of Corrections via AP, File) FILE - This photo provided by … more >

Trump DOJ adds firing squads and gas chambers to federal execution methods — here’s why

by · The Washington Times

The federal government can now execute death row inmates by firing squad — a method so rarely used that only four people have died that way since the 1970s.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Friday that the Justice Department is expanding the ways it can carry out federal executions, adding firing squads, gas asphyxiation and electrocution alongside the existing lethal injection protocol.

Mr. Blanche said the decision restores the department’s “solemn duty to seek, obtain and implement lawful capital sentences.” He called out the Biden administration, saying it “failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers and cop killers.”

The expansion also serves a strategic legal purpose: ensuring executions can proceed even if a specific drug becomes unavailable or a method faces a court challenge.

Five states currently allow death by firing squad. In March, a South Carolina man convicted of double murder became the fourth person executed that way since the 1970s.

President Biden had commuted the sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates. During Mr. Trump’s first term, 13 people were executed in the federal prison system.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, called the move “a stain on our nation’s history.”

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• DOJ approves use of firing squads in federal executions

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