Barr Orders U.S. to Resume Executions in Some Federal Cases
Barr Orders U.S. to Resume Executions in Some Federal Cases
(Bloomberg) -- Attorney General William Barr ordered the U.S. government to resume executions of people on federal death row after a 16-year hiatus, and lethal-injection dates were set for five convicted murderers.
The inmates scheduled to be put to death beginning in December were “convicted of murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our society -- children and the elderly,” the Justice Department said in a statement Thursday.
The last federal prisoner was executed in 2003. A botched execution by the state of Oklahoma in 2014 prompted former President Barack Obama to review federal capital punishment procedures, though a moratorium was never put in place.
“Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding,” said the Justice Department. “We owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”
President Donald Trump has publicly advocated for capital punishment in some high profile cases, including the gunman who killed 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue last year.
There are 62 federal prisoners on death row, according to a database maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center.
Only three people have been executed by the U.S. government since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988. They included Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of the 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing and executed in 2001. In the last federal execution, Louis Jones was put to death in 2003 for the kidnapping and murder of a female soldier.
Executions around the country have been on the decline since reaching a modern high of 98 in 1999. Ten people have been put to death so far in 2019.
Executions have slowed in part because of concerns that some prisoners have suffered painful deaths during lethal injections. Facing pressure from death-penalty opponents, major pharmaceutical companies have blocked the use of their products for executions, making it harder for officials to get the drugs they need.
Botched Execution
The Supreme Court in 2015 upheld the use of a lethal-injection drug that had been used in three recent botched execution.
The Justice Department said Thursday the government plans to replace the three-drug lethal injection procedure previously used in federal executions with a single drug, pentobarbital. That drug has been used by 14 states in more than 200 executions since 2010, the department said.
The government said it scheduled executions for five men convicted of murder in federal courts in Arkansas, Arizona, Missouri, Texas and Iowa. Three of them will be put to death in December and the other two in January, according to the statement.
The Justice Department announcement comes just as the Supreme Court is growing more willing to let executions go forward. The court became more receptive to the death penalty last year when Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to succeed the court’s swing vote, the now-retired Justice Anthony Kennedy.
The Supreme Court halted executions nationwide in 1972, saying the death sentence was being imposed arbitrarily, before reinstating the practice in 1976. Capital punishment is now legal in 29 states, though only a fraction of those states perform executions on a regular basis.
In April the court voted 5-4 to let Missouri give a lethal injection to a man who said his rare medical condition meant he would probably choke on his own blood.
To contact the reporters on this story: Joe Sobczyk in Washington at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net;Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.net, Laurie Asséo, Joe Sobczyk
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