The Trump administration is doubling down on the death penalty. The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday, April 24, a series of measures aimed at facilitating the use of capital punishment in federal cases, including expanding the allowed methods of execution beyond lethal injection.
These methods now include firing squads, electrocution, and lethal gas inhalation, which are in effect in some states, although lethal injection remains the most common method.
Since his return to the White House on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump had signed an executive order mandating the systematic use of the death penalty for the most serious crimes, as well as for the murders of police officers or crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.
The vast majority of executions in the country are carried out by states, not federal institutions.
The last federal executions took place at the end of the Republican president’s first term. After a 17-year hiatus, 13 convicted individuals were put to death between July 14, 2020, and January 16, 2021, four days before his Democratic successor, Joe Biden, took office.
Biden had commuted the sentences of 37 out of the 40 individuals sentenced to death by federal courts.
The Justice Department, in a statement on Friday, expressed its commitment to “resume its solemn duty to seek, secure, and carry out legitimate death sentences.” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche stated that under President Trump’s leadership, the Justice Department is once again enforcing the law and siding with victims, criticizing the Biden administration’s record on this matter.
The Biden administration had declared a moratorium on federal executions, which was overturned by Donald Trump.
In December 2024, at the end of his term, Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of the 40 individuals sentenced to death by federal courts, a decision demanded by human rights activists who feared a wave of executions under Donald Trump. This decision excluded three individuals from the clemency measure.
These individuals are Djokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers on April 15, 2013, Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine African Americans in a church in 2015, and Robert Bowers, who carried out an armed attack in a synagogue in 2018, killing 11 people, the deadliest attack against Jews in U.S. history.
