Trump Approves Firing Squads for Federal Executions
On April 24, the administration of Pres. Donald Trump (R) approved the use of firing squads as a method of killing federal prisoners slated for execution. The Department of Justice (DOJ), in an accompanying 48-page report entitled “Restoring and Strengthening the Federal Death Penalty,” outlined both the reauthorization of the firing squad as well as the readoption of the use of pentobarbital in federal executions via lethal injection. The decision came about amid a wider push by Trump to increase executions and lower the sentencing bar for the death penalty.
During Trump’s first term, 13 federal prisoners were executed after a gap of almost 20 years when no executions were performed. Following the election of former President Joe Biden (D), in 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland reversed this uptick by implementing a moratorium on carrying out executions of federal prisoners. Garland had also halted the use of pentobarbital.
And as PLN previously reported, during Biden’s final days in office, he commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 federal death row prisoners. [See: PLN, Jan. 2025, p.6.] On Trump’s first day back in office in 2025, however, he issued an executive order to ensure the prisoners granted clemency are “imprisoned consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes and the threats they post.” This order led to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi directing the DOJ to transfer 20 of the prisoners to the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado (ADX). While a district judge blocked the transfers in February 2026, citing a lack of meaningful due process, the transfers to the exceptionally harsh conditions at ADX were designed as a retaliation and rebuke of Biden-era policies. [See: PLN, Apr. 2026, p.27.]
The DOJ’s more recent announcement and report, which includes an introductory note from current Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, follows the same punitive rubric. It recommends that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) should consider “adopting additional manners of execution” that include “firing squad, electrocution and lethal gas.” In other words, the report suggests, the federal government should mimic the pattern set by a handful of states that have recently loosened execution protocols as lethal injection drugs become harder to come by, due largely to pharmaceutical companies refusing to provide them.
One hurdle to the policy shift the DOJ faces is that the federal government can only execute prisoners in states that allow executions to take place; it must also follow state law to carry them out. For example, Indiana—a state which has long acted as a staging ground for federal executions—would not function as an acceptable venue for executions by firing squad because it only allows for lethal injection.
Currently, there are five states that have approved firing squad-based executions: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah. Prior to 2025, there were only three firing squad executions carried out across the country in modern times, and they were each in Utah, in 1977, 1996 and 2010. Last year, however, South Carolina executed three prisoners by firing squad after it legalized the method in 2021.
According to NBC News, lawyers for one of the South Carolina prisoners, Mikal Mahdi, claimed that his execution was botched—and that only two bullets struck Madhi and “they largely missed his heart in such a way that he suffered long enough to violate constitutional law against cruel and unusual punishment.”
Despite these concerns, Idaho is pressing ahead with plans to follow through with a law passed in 2025 that authorized firing squads as the primary method of executing state prisoners by July 1 of this year. As PLN reports elsewhere in this issue, Idaho will spend upwards of $1 million to convert a killing chamber at a state prison to be able to accommodate a firing squad. [See: PLN, May 2026, p.13.]
In addition to announcing its approval of firing squads, the DOJ’s report recommended expanding the types of crimes eligible for the death penalty. These include: “murders of law enforcement officers; murders by aliens illegally in the United States; and murders constituted or committed in the commission of hate crimes, stalking, material support, or domestic violence.”
The administration also said it is aiming to “streamline the process for seeking death sentences” and to cut down the number of years between conviction and execution.
Additional source: The New York Times
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login