The Justice Department has moved to expand the methods available for federal executions by adding firing squads to the federal toolkit, alongside a renewed embrace of a single-drug lethal injection protocol using pentobarbital. The change is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases after a moratorium under the prior administration.
For many readers, the word “firing squad” sounds like something from a very distant chapter of American history. But in a handful of states it is still on the books, and now federal execution policy is being reshaped to make room for it, too.
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What the DOJ changed
Federal executions are governed by Justice Department protocols, which set out how an execution may be carried out once courts have finalized a death sentence and the date is set. The administration’s new approach does two main things:
- Adds firing squads as a permitted method for federal executions.
- Reauthorizes a single-drug lethal injection protocol using pentobarbital, the drug used in 13 federal executions during President Trump’s first term.
The federal government has not previously included firing squad as a method of execution in its protocols, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The administration’s rationale
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche framed the shift as a return to aggressively pursuing the death penalty in federal cases.
Blanche said: "The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,"
adding, "Under President Trump's leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims."
Why pentobarbital is back
The renewed use of pentobarbital is not just a technical choice. It reverses the prior administration’s decision to remove it from federal protocols over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering. That earlier move followed a government review of scientific and medical research that found there remains "significant uncertainty"
about whether its use causes unnecessary pain and suffering.
The pentobarbital protocol was adopted during President Trump’s first term to replace a three-drug mix used in the 2000s, the last time federal executions were carried out before Trump’s first term in office.
The current administration disputes the prior review’s conclusion. In a report released alongside the policy shift, officials argued the prior administration "got the standard and the science wrong."
The report said the earlier findings, among other things, "failed to address the overwhelming evidence"
that a person injected with pentobarbital "quickly loses consciousness—rendering him unable to experience pain,"
which the report says would prevent the person from experiencing pain.
Federal and state methods
One of the most confusing parts of the death penalty in the United States is that executions can be both a federal and a state matter. Most executions in modern America are carried out by states under state law. Federal executions are comparatively rare, but they are governed by their own rules.
A key turning point came in 2020, when the Justice Department published a rule allowing federal executions by lethal injection or by “any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed.” That matters because states vary widely in what they permit, including electrocution, inhaling nitrogen gas, and firing squads.
With the DOJ now explicitly authorizing firing squads in federal protocols, the federal government is signaling it wants more than one path available if an execution method is challenged or becomes difficult to use.
Is it constitutional?
The Constitution does not list permitted methods of execution. The central constitutional debate tends to land on the Eighth Amendment, which forbids “cruel and unusual punishments.”
In everyday terms, the question is not whether a punishment is harsh. The death penalty is, by definition, harsh. The legal question is whether a method creates an unconstitutional risk of unnecessary suffering, or whether it is so out of step with modern standards that it becomes “unusual” in the constitutional sense.
That is where methods matter. Different methods produce different factual disputes in court: How likely is severe pain? How predictable is the process? What safeguards exist? How often have things gone wrong, and why?
Adding firing squads will almost certainly generate new Eighth Amendment litigation, including disputes about protocol design, training, and reliability.
States that allow firing squads
While the federal government has not historically listed firing squads in its own protocols, some states already do. Five states currently authorize executions by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.
That state experience is likely to shape what happens next at the federal level, including how facilities are designed, what witness procedures look like, and what kinds of evidence courts consider when challenges are filed.
Federal death row now
At the moment, the federal death row population is unusually small. After President Joe Biden converted 37 federal death sentences to life imprisonment, three people remained under federal death sentences, including Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers.
At the same time, the administration has been expanding the pipeline of cases where federal prosecutors may seek capital punishment. So far, it has authorized pursuit of the death penalty against 44 defendants.
This combination, a small current death row with a larger set of capital-eligible prosecutions, helps explain the policy focus: the Justice Department appears to be building infrastructure and legal arguments now for a broader federal death penalty posture in the years ahead.
The civic takeaway
Whether you support or oppose the death penalty, it helps to separate three questions that are often blended together:
- Authority: When can the federal government seek and carry out a death sentence?
- Method: How the government carries out an execution, and what safeguards are required.
- Oversight: How courts evaluate challenges under the Eighth Amendment and due process principles.
The Justice Department’s decision to add firing squads and restore pentobarbital is a policy choice with constitutional consequences, because it changes what will be tested in court next. In a system built on checks and balances, execution protocols are not just administrative details. They are where law, medicine, and the Constitution meet.