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The Justice Department is amending protocols to allow lethal gas, electrocution and the death firing squad, as five federal prisoners are expected to be executed before dedication day.
The new rule was published in the Federal Register on Friday. It states that federal executions must be carried out by lethal injection “or in any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was passed or which has been appointed by a court” in accordance with the laws governing death sentences. .
“If the applicable law provides that the prisoner can choose among several modes of execution, the director or his representative must inform the prisoner of this option”, indicates the rule.
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The rules will take effect 30 days from Friday.
Currently, only lethal injection is used for federal executions, but other states give death row prisoners the option of other forms of execution.
In Florida, for example, an inmate can specifically ask to be killed by electrocution and in Washington state, inmates can ask to be put to death by hanging. In Utah, prisoners sentenced before May 2004 can choose a firing squad. State law also permits the use of a firing squad if lethal injection drugs are not available.
Many states have had problems securing appropriate drugs for lethal injections.
After a botched state execution in Oklahoma in 2014, President Barack Obama ordered the Justice Department to review capital punishment and lethal drug injection issues.
A federal prison complex in Terre Haute, Indonesia. The Justice Department is quietly changing its execution protocols, no longer requiring that federal death sentences be carried out by lethal injection and paving the way for other methods like firing squads and poison gas. (AP Photo / Michael Conroy, file)
The Trump administration resumed federal executions in July 2019 after a 17-year ban. Lisa Montgomery, 52, is one of the federal inmates scheduled for execution and the only woman on death row. His execution is scheduled for December 8.
She was convicted of the murder of a pregnant woman in 2004.
Brandon Bernard, convicted of the murders of two youth ministers in 1999, will die on December 10. In a court filing last week, the Justice Department said it was scheduling the executions of Alfred Bourgeois for December 11, and Cory Johnson and Dustin Higgs for January 14 and 15.
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Prosecutors said Bourgeois tortured, sexually assaulted and then beat his 2.5-year-old daughter to death.
Johnson was one of three crack dealers convicted of a series of murders. Prosecutors said he killed seven people in an attempt to expand gang territory in Richmond, Va., And silence informants. His co-defendants, members of the same drug gang, are also sentenced to death.
Four of the five inmates who are due to die before President Trump’s term expires will be executed at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indonesia, by lethal injection.
Higgs’ mode of death, convicted of kidnapping and murdering three women, has not been disclosed. Federal inmate Orlando Hall, convicted of murdering a 16-year-old girl, was executed last week.
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President-elect Joe Biden has expressed his opposition to the death penalty and will work to end the practice, a spokesperson said. The opposition stems in part from wrongly convicted prisoners who have been sentenced to death.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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