Washington D.C., Jul 25, 2019 / 08:41 am
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) will resume executions after an almost two-decade lapse, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Thursday.
"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," Attorney General William Barr said in a written statement on Thursday.
The Bureau of Prisons, adopting a proposed addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol, has scheduled five executions for the first time since the last federal execution in 2003. Five death-row inmates, convicted of the murders of children and adults and in some cases torture, are to be executed on dates in December 2019 and January 2020, and the DOJ said that the scheduling of "additional executions" will occur in the future.
The new federal lethal injection process will utilize one drug, pentobarbital, instead of the old three-drug process used in previous federal executions. It is similar to protocol in Missouri, Georgia, and Texas, a DOJ press release said.