In the United States, the Justice Department has decided to adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases. The Justice Department is also reauthorising the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration -more than under any President in modern history. The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering. The moves were announced as part of a broader push to step up federal executions after a moratorium under the Biden administration.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the federal government has not previously included firing squad as a method of execution in its protocols. Five states currently allow executions by firing squad. These include, Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.
