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- The Trump administration is rushing to make a number of federal regulatory changes before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20, ProPublica reported on Wednesday.
- One of these changes, proposed by the Department of Justice, would allow some federal death row inmates to be executed by means other than lethal injection. Many states allow electrocution and firing squad if lethal injection is not available or another method is preferred by the prisoner.
- Eight federal death row inmates have been executed since the DOJ resumed federal executions in July 2020, with five more federal executions scheduled during Trump’s lame duck period.
- As ProPublica noted, the rule change is unlikely to affect any executions, given that the remaining scheduled executions are expected to be carried out by lethal injection before Biden, who opposes the use of the death penalty, does not. begins his presidency.
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The Trump administration is rushing to finalize a number of regulatory changes before President Donald Trump steps down next month, including one that could re-allow the use of firing squads and electrocutions in executions federal, reports ProPublica.
A rule change proposal listed by the Justice Department in the Federal Register on Aug. 5 would change the way death row inmates are executed.
As the proposal notes, the default method for federal executions is lethal injection, unless a judge explicitly orders otherwise. But many death row states allow executions by other means, including electrocution, firing squad, or nitrogen hypoxia. Tennessee, for example, executed a death row inmate by electrocution in December 2019.
The amended rule would essentially allow federal executions to take place using methods other than lethal injections in states that allow other means of killing prisoners.
While lethal injection was initially touted as a more humane and less violent method of execution than the electric chair or firing squad, some lethal injection drugs or problems with administration resulted in complications and botched injections, causing painful deaths for inmates.
The proposed rule change document notes that “firing squad death and death by electrocution do not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment” according to the Supreme Court precedent. He also cited Bucklew v. Precythe and Glossip v. Gross, cases in which death row inmates challenged state use of lethal injection as a violation of the Eighth Amendment, but to no avail.
The proposed rule, according to the DOJ, “ensures that the Department is permitted to use the widest range of humane enforcement manners permitted by law.”
But, as ProPublica noted, the change may never change any actual execution. All remaining federal executions scheduled before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20 are expected to be carried out by lethal injection. Biden opposes the use of the death penalty and has indicated that his administration will not demand the execution of federal death row inmates.
So far, eight federal death row inmates have been executed under the Trump administration since the DOJ, which oversees the Federal Bureau of Prisons, reinstated federal executions for death row inmates in July 2019.
In July 2020, Daniel Lewis Lee, convicted of murdering an Arkansas family in 1996, became the first federal death row inmate in 17 years, and most recently Orlando Hall was executed on November 20 after being executed. was sentenced to death for 1994. kidnapping, raping and murdering a teenager from Texas.
Five other inmates – Lisa Montgomery, Alfred Bourgeois, Brandon Bernard, Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgins – are expected to be executed by January 20. Information center on the death penalty.
The Trump administration carrying out multiple federal executions during a period of transition and lame duck is highly unusual and unprecedented, the Center said. He revealed that the Trump administration is the first to execute a death row inmate during a presidential transition period since the outgoing administration of Grover Cleveland in 1889.
In addition to the federal government, 28 states currently apply the death penalty while 22 states have either legislated or issued moratoria on its use, according to the Center.
According to ProPublica, the Trump administration is also aiming to make significant regulatory changes in other areas of immigration, environmental policy, energy standards and water use, and the regulation of major factories. food.
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