Following executive actions from President Donald Trump, the Department of Justice is exploring expanded execution methods, including allowing firing squads in federal death row cases, according to a recent memo.
In an April 24 memo, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the DOJ is working to “strengthen” the federal death penalty. The plan includes reinstating lethal injection protocols used during Trump’s first term and exploring additional methods, including firing squads.
“Expanding the protocol to include additional manners of execution, such as the firing squad, and streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases.”
In a statement, Blanche criticized the Biden-Harris administration for allegedly failing “in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals.”
During his term in office, former President Joe Biden placed a moratorium on several federal executions and reversed some work done to expand the death penalty in other cases, done under Trump’s first term.
There is also a sense from Americans that firing squads are a controversial method of execution involving multiple shooters. During the tour of her book, “Secrets of the Killing State,” Corinna Lain, a George E. Allen chair in Law at the University of Richmond (UR), said that as fans spoke out against the practice.
“One person said to me, as I was on a book tour this fall, ‘Well, that’s what murderers do,’” the author said.
“The firing squad is bloody. It is violent. It is a grotesque thing to see.”
While labeling firing squads as a form of “dehumanization” and as “explicit brutality,” Lain points out that not only is the method highly controversial, but it is also only legal in five states – South Carolina, Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Utah.
Lain also argued that resources could be better spent elsewhere, noting that replacing death sentences with life without parole would significantly reduce costs.
“You would save millions of dollars by just converting those death sentences to life without parole, or just abolishing the death penalty and going for life without parole,” the expert said.
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Source: Black Enterprise
