On his first day in office last year, President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department to resume seeking executions.
President Trump extends ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon by three weeks
President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he is extending the temporary ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon by three weeks.
The Justice Department has directed federal prisons to expand the range of methods of execution, including shooting, gas asphyxiation, and electrocution.
In a memo released April 24, the department said the measure would “strengthen” the death penalty and “deter the most barbaric crimes, provide justice for victims, and bring long-overdue closure to surviving loved ones.”
On his first day in office last year, President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department to resume seeking executions.
“Among the steps taken are re-adopting the lethal injection protocol used during the first Trump administration,” “expanding the protocol to include additional execution methods such as firing squads, and streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases,” the Justice Department said in a statement Friday.
The Biden administration had suspended executions in most federal cases and reversed much of the work done under Trump’s first administration to expand the death penalty in federal cases. Before leaving office, former President Joe Biden pardoned 37 of the 40 people on federal death row.
“The previous administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and enforce ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and police killers,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement.
Dylann Roof, who is currently on death row, committed the racist killings of nine black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015. 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. And Robert Bowers shot and killed 11 worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.
