Washington The Supreme Court on Monday He rejected a challenge to the Trump administration’s efforts to resume federal executions, paving the way for the Justice Department to end its effective freeze on capital punishment next month.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would accept the appeal of four death row inmates.
The Justice Department announced nearly a year ago that it would restart federal executions in death penalty cases after a 16-year span, since the Bureau of Prisons had adopted a new execution protocol. The department then scheduled executions starting in December for five death row inmates who were convicted of murdering children.
But attempts by the Trump administration to resume capital punishment became the subject of judicial challenges, as four inmates attempted to block the use of the new protocol in their executions. Last year, a federal judge in Washington prevented the Justice Department from carrying out executions, ruled that the protocol did not comply with the Federal Death Penalty Act, a 1994 law that requires the federal government to impose a sentence of death “in the manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence is imposed.”
A three-judge panel at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the Supreme Court refused to lift the suspension late last year, temporarily blocking the Trump administration from ending the informal freezing of capital punishment. But in April, the DC circuit rejected the lower court order.
Earlier this month, Attorney General William Barr ordered the Bureau of Prisons to schedule new dates for the executions of four death row inmates, three of whom were involved in the case before the Supreme Court, beginning in mid-July. .
By refusing to accept the appeal of four of the prisoners, the Supreme Court leaves in its place the ruling of the DC Circuit in favor of the Trump administration.
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