The Justice Department has announced it will restore its prior lethal injection protocol, expand authorized execution methods to include firing squads, and streamline internal procedures to speed federal death penalty cases. The department said the changes are intended to “strengthen” the federal death penalty, deter the most serious crimes, provide justice for victims, and offer closure to surviving family members.
The agency plans to readopt the lethal injection protocol used during the first Trump administration and to broaden execution options to include the firing squad. Officials also said they would simplify internal review and case-handling processes to move capital prosecutions more quickly through the system.
President Trump issued 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 specified cases, including murders of law enforcement officers and certain capital crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.
During his first term, Trump resumed federal executions after nearly a 20-year pause. The Biden administration imposed a moratorium in 2021 to review execution policies and procedures; near 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 were not granted clemency: the person 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 directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty where appropriate. Bondi instructed prosecutors to pursue capital punishment in the case of Luigi Mangione, who was accused in the 2024 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson; a federal judge later dismissed firearms charges that could have exposed Mangione to the death penalty. After Bondi was removed from office, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche authorized the U.S. attorney in California to seek the death penalty against three alleged MS-13 members charged in the killing of a cooperating witness. Blanche has criticized the prior administration for what he called a refusal to pursue capital charges against dangerous offenders, including terrorists, those who murder children, and those who kill police officers.
The department also released a report that criticized the Biden Justice Department for measures it said had “weakened, delayed and dismantled” the death penalty. The report states the current DOJ position that using pentobarbital for lethal injection “does not violate the Eighth Amendment.”