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The Department of Justice said that the US government should add firing squads as one of the methods of executing people convicted of the heinous federal crimes.
On Friday, April 24, in a report that highlighted the difficulties in securing drugs for lethal injections, the DOJ presented a number of different methods, including electrocution and gas asphyxiation, for federal executions.
The report was an answer to President Donald Trump's promise to resume capital punishment in his second term.
In his first term, which ended in 2021, he resumed capital punishment after 20 years, executing 13 federal prisoners with lethal injections in his final few months in office.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who released the report, has authorised seeking death penalty sentences against nine people after Trump revoked a moratorium on federal executions by his predecessor, Joe Biden, the department shared.
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"Among the actions taken are readopting the lethal injection protocol utilised 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," it said in a statement.
Currently, five states allow for death by firing squad for those convicted of the death penalty who have exhausted the appeal process.
In March, a South Carolina man convicted of a double murder became the fourth person to be put to death by a firing squad since the 1970s.
In the report, Blanche instructed the Justice Department's Bureau of Prisons to modify its execution protocol to include methods permitted under state laws, including electrocution and nitrogen gas asphyxiation, a method which was first introduced in Alabama in 2024.
"This modification will help ensure the Department is prepared to carry out lawful executions even if a specific drug is unavailable," the report said.
Meanwhile, Biden previously commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates, leaving only three facing execution.
