The Justice Department announced it will reimplement lethal injection and add firing squads as execution methods, saying it is part of efforts to “strengthen” the federal death penalty. The department said it is readopting the lethal injection protocol used during the first Trump administration, expanding the protocol to include additional manners of execution such as the firing squad, and streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases. The moves, the DOJ said, are aimed at deterring the most serious crimes, delivering justice for victims, and providing closure to surviving loved ones.
President Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second administration directing that the death penalty be pursued “for all crimes of a severity demanding its use” and instructing the attorney general to seek capital punishment in cases involving the murder of law enforcement officers and certain capital crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.
During his first term, Trump restarted federal executions after nearly a 20-year pause. In 2021, the Biden administration instituted a moratorium to review execution policies and procedures; at the end of his term, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 federal inmates then facing death, reducing their sentences to life without parole. Three inmates did not receive clemency: the man convicted in the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, the gunman in the 2015 Emanuel AME Church mass shooting in Charleston, and the surviving Boston Marathon bomber.
In February 2025, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi lifted the Biden-era moratorium and ordered federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty where appropriate. Bondi instructed prosecutors to seek capital punishment in the case of Luigi Mangione, accused in the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson; a federal judge later dismissed firearms charges that could have made Mangione eligible for the death penalty. After Bondi’s ouster, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche authorized the top federal prosecutor in California to seek the death penalty against three alleged MS-13 members charged in a killing of a cooperating witness. Blanche criticized the prior administration for what he described as a refusal to pursue the death penalty against dangerous criminals, including terrorists, those who murder children, and those who kill police officers.
The department also released a report criticizing the Biden Justice Department for measures the report said “weakened, delayed and dismantled” the death penalty, and stating that the current DOJ position is that using pentobarbital for lethal injection does not violate the Eighth Amendment.