Trump DOJ reinstates firing squad in federal execution policy

The Justice Department has moved to bring firing squads into federal execution policy for the first time, a sharp escalation that widens the legal, ethical and constitutional fight over how the government can carry out death sentences. The new rule also restores the Trump administration’s pentobarbital lethal-injection protocol, signaling a broader push to speed federal capital cases after years of restraint and review.

In a policy announced on April 24, 2026, the department directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to readopt the execution protocol used in Trump’s first term and expand it to include additional methods such as the firing squad. The department said the change is meant to strengthen and expedite the federal death penalty. Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said the prior administration had failed to protect the public by refusing to pursue and carry out death sentences against what he called the most dangerous criminals.

The move is especially consequential because the federal government had never before included firing squad in its execution protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states currently allow executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah. South Carolina carried out the nation’s first firing squad execution in 15 years on March 7, 2025, and the United States saw three firing squad executions in 2025, the most in a single year since 1976.

The Justice Department’s accompanying report, Restoring and Strengthening the Federal Death Penalty, framed the Biden-era moratorium as a break from Justice Department practice. It also said the department is considering other execution methods, including electrocution and lethal gas, and argued that pentobarbital use is consistent with the Eighth Amendment. The report’s table of contents includes separate sections on firing squad, electrocution and lethal gas, underscoring how far the administration is prepared to go beyond lethal injection alone.

The policy reverses the broad federal pullback that began when Biden halted federal executions in January 2021 and Attorney General Merrick Garland imposed an indefinite moratorium on July 1, 2021. In December 2024, Biden commuted 37 of the 40 federal death sentences, leaving just three men on federal death row. Reuters reported at the time that those commutations cannot be reversed, but future capital cases can still be pursued more aggressively. The Trump administration has already authorized seeking death sentences against 44 defendants, and the first Trump administration carried out 13 federal executions using lethal injection, more than any president in modern history.