The Justice Department has moved to broaden the methods available for carrying out federal death sentences, adding the firing squad to the list of approved execution options and restoring the single-drug pentobarbital protocol used during President Donald Trump’s first term. The change was announced April 24 as part of a wider effort to revive and accelerate the federal death penalty after the moratorium and sentence commutations of the Biden years.

The department said it directed the Bureau of Prisons to expand its execution protocol beyond lethal injection and to prepare for additional methods, including the firing squad. In some accounts of the announcement and supporting materials, electrocution and gas-based methods were also identified as options the department wants available in federal cases, though the central operational change announced Friday was the addition of firing squads and the reauthorization of pentobarbital-based lethal injection.

The policy shift does not mean the federal government is about to carry out a large number of executions. Federal death row is now very small. But it does mark a clear change in direction: the administration is not only restoring capital punishment machinery that had been paused, it is trying to make sure executions can proceed even if one method is challenged, unavailable, or delayed.

What the department changed

The most concrete change is procedural. The Justice Department said the Bureau of Prisons will once again use the execution protocol adopted during Trump’s first administration, which relies on pentobarbital as a single-drug lethal injection. That protocol was used in 13 federal executions during the final stretch of Trump’s first term, the highest number of federal executions under any modern president.

At the same time, the department said it is expanding its protocol to include other methods, most notably the firing squad. The federal government has not previously used the firing squad as part of its execution protocol. Five states currently authorize execution by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. South Carolina carried out several firing squad executions in 2025, which has made the method newly relevant in national debate over how governments carry out capital punishment when lethal injection faces legal or logistical obstacles.

The department also said it wants to streamline internal processes for death penalty cases and reduce delays between sentencing and execution. That includes proposed changes to federal review procedures and changes inside the Justice Department’s own capital-case decision-making. In addition, the Bureau of Prisons was told to study expanding or relocating federal death row or building another execution facility so that more than one execution method could be accommodated if needed.

Why the administration says it is doing this

The administration’s explanation is straightforward. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the prior administration failed in its duty by refusing to carry out death sentences against what he described as the most dangerous offenders, including terrorists, child murderers, and people convicted of killing police officers. In the Justice Department’s framing, the federal government has a legal obligation not just to seek death sentences where authorized, but to implement them once appeals are exhausted.

The policy also fits a larger Trump administration effort to bring the federal death penalty back into regular use. On his first day back in office, Trump issued an executive order directing the department to prioritize seeking and implementing death sentences. Since then, the administration has lifted the Biden-era moratorium and said it has authorized seeking the death penalty against 44 defendants. Nine of those authorizations, according to one account of the department’s announcement, have already been personally approved by Blanche.

The move also addresses a practical problem. States and the federal government have struggled for years with access to drugs used in lethal injections, in part because pharmaceutical companies object to their products being used in executions. The department’s new report acknowledged that recent supply and litigation problems make it risky to rely on a single method. By adding firing squads and other options, the administration is trying to make sure a shortage of one drug or a court challenge to one protocol does not halt federal executions altogether.

The fight over pentobarbital and the Eighth Amendment

A central dispute in the new policy is whether pentobarbital can be used constitutionally. During the Biden administration, Attorney General Merrick Garland withdrew the pentobarbital protocol after a review of scientific and medical literature found what he called significant uncertainty about whether the drug could cause unnecessary pain and suffering. That concern went to the core of the Eighth Amendment, which bars cruel and unusual punishment.

The Trump Justice Department reached the opposite conclusion. In a 52-page report released with Friday’s announcement, it said the Biden administration got both the science and the legal standard wrong. The report argued that a person injected with pentobarbital quickly loses consciousness and is therefore unable to experience the pain alleged by opponents of the method. In the department’s view, single-drug pentobarbital complies with the Eighth Amendment.

That debate is not academic. During federal executions in 2020 and 2021, attorneys for condemned prisoners argued that pentobarbital caused flash pulmonary edema, producing a sensation akin to drowning or suffocation before death. Some witness accounts from executions described visible body movement and distress after the drug was administered. Garland’s review treated those concerns as unresolved. Blanche’s report rejected that reading and said the department should not delay executions because of uncertainty it considers legally insufficient.

The firing squad enters that argument from a different angle. Supporters of the method often contend it is simpler and less medically uncertain than lethal injection because it does not depend on sedatives, vein access, or disputed drug effects. Opponents argue that its reintroduction reflects a broader retreat from efforts to make execution appear clinical or restrained. The Justice Department did not frame the issue in moral terms. It framed it as a matter of lawful implementation and operational flexibility.

How much immediate effect this will have

In the short term, the direct effect is limited by the size of federal death row. After President Joe Biden commuted 37 of the 40 federal death sentences in December 2024, only three men remained on federal death row: Dylann Roof, convicted in the 2015 racist murders at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the Boston Marathon bombing; and Robert Bowers, convicted in the Tree of Life synagogue mass shooting in Pittsburgh.

So the significance of the DOJ action is not that dozens of federal executions are suddenly imminent. It is that the institutional framework for carrying them out is being rebuilt. The department is restoring a protocol, broadening permissible methods, studying facilities, and changing internal rules so that new death sentences can move more efficiently through the system. It is also signaling to prosecutors and courts that the administration intends to treat capital punishment as an active part of federal criminal enforcement rather than a dormant one.

The decision also carries consequences beyond the federal system. Most executions in the United States take place under state law, not federal law, but federal policy still shapes the broader legal climate around capital punishment. By formally adding the firing squad and reaffirming pentobarbital, the department has placed the federal government on the side of a more expansive reading of what execution methods remain constitutionally and practically available.

In practical terms, that is what Friday’s announcement amounts to. The Justice Department did not merely revive an old protocol. It built redundancy into the system and made clear that, as long as federal death sentences remain on the books, it wants more than one way to carry them out.