- Propblick reported Wednesday that the Trump administration is rushing to make a number of federal regulatory changes before Biden takes office on January 20.
- One of those changes, proposed by the Department of Justice, would allow some federal death-row prisoners to be executed by means other than lethal injection. Many states allow electrification and firing squads if lethal injection is not available or another method is chosen by the prisoner.
- Eight federal death row inmates have been executed since the DOJ introduced the federal death penalty in July 2020, with five more federal executions during Trump’s lame-duck period.
- As ProPublika noted, the rule change will not affect any executions, although Biden, who opposes the use of the death penalty, will carry out the rest of the scheduled execution by lethal injection before his president takes office.
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According to ProPublica reports, the Trump administration is rushing to finalize a number of regulatory changes before President Donald Trump leaves office next month, including one that could re-authorize the use of firing squads and electrocution in joint executions.
The proposed rule change, introduced by the Justice Department in the Federal Register on August 5, will change the method of executing death row inmates.
As noted in the proposal, the basic method of federal execution is lethal injection, unless the judge explicitly orders. But many states with the death penalty allow the death penalty by other means, including electrocution, firing squad or nitrogen hypoxia. Tennessee, for example, executed a death row inmate with electrification in December 2019.
The amended rule would allow states to facilitate federal executions using methods other than lethal injection that allow prisoners to have another means of executing death.
Fatal injection was initially introduced as a more humane and less violent method of execution than an electric chair or firing squad, while some lethal injection drugs or the problems they administered included complications and some bossed injections, leading to painful death of prisoners.
The proposed rule change document notes that death by firing squad and death by electrification “under the prevailing example of the Supreme Court” is not a violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. It also cited Bucklev v. Preseth and Glossip v. Gross, cases in which dead prisoners challenged the state’s use of lethal injection in violation of the Eighth Amendment, but failed.
The proposed rule, according to the DOJ, “ensures that the department is authorized to use a wide range of enforcement permitted by law.”
But, as ProPublika noted, change will not really change any real implementation. All other federal executions are planned to be carried out by lethal injection before Biden takes office on January 20. Biden opposes the use of the death penalty and has indicated that his administration will not impose the death penalty on federal death row inmates.
D.O.J., who oversees the Federal Bureau Pr Prison. So far, eight federal death-sentence prisoners have been executed under the Trump administration since the death penalty was granted to federal prisoners in July, 2019.
In July 2020, Daniel Lewis Lee, convicted of killing the Arkansas family in 1996, became the first federal prisoner to be executed in 17 years, and most recently, Orlando Hall was executed on November 20, 1994, after being sentenced to death. . Kidnapping, rape, and murder of a Texas teenager.
Lisa Montgomery, Alfred Burgos, Brandon Bernard, Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgins – five other prisoners are now set to be hanged between now and January 20. Death Penalty Information Center.
During the transition and lame-duck period, the Trump administration carried out several federal executions, the center said. It was found that the Trump administration was the first to impose the death penalty during the transition period of the President after Grover Cleveland’s outgoing administration in 1879.
In addition to the federal government, 28 states currently employ the death penalty while 22 states have legally abolished its use or issued mortgages, the center said.
According to PropBallica, the Trump administration also aims to make consequential regulatory changes in immigration, environmental policy, energy release standards and other areas of water consumption and regulation of major food plants.
