The Trump Department of Justice issued a memo on Friday announcing it will expand federal execution protocols to include firing squads, a move the department framed as restoring its "solemn duty" to carry out lawful capital sentences after years of inaction and delay.
The memo, excerpts of which were first reported by Breitbart News, laid out a three-pronged approach: readopting the lethal injection protocol used during the first Trump administration, expanding execution methods to include the firing squad, and streamlining internal DOJ processes to speed up death penalty cases.
The language of the memo left little room for ambiguity about the department's direction. In the quoted excerpt, the DOJ stated:
"Today, the Department of Justice acted to restore its solemn duty to seek, obtain, and implement lawful capital sentences, clearing the way for the Department to carry out executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals."
That is not the language of a department hedging its bets. It is a direct signal that the federal government intends to resume carrying out death sentences, and intends to give itself more tools to do so.
The memo detailed three specific actions. First, the department is readopting the lethal injection protocol it used during President Trump's first term. Second, it is expanding that protocol to include "additional manners of execution such as the firing squad." Third, it is overhauling internal processes to move death penalty cases faster through the federal system.
Fox News reported that the DOJ directed the Bureau of Prisons to expand its protocols to include pentobarbital injections and firing squads. The department is also weighing steps to expand federal death row capacity, build additional execution facilities, and reduce delays in federal habeas review of state capital cases.
Those details paint a picture of a department that is not merely restoring an old policy but building the infrastructure to enforce it at scale. Expanding death row capacity and constructing new execution facilities are not symbolic gestures. They are concrete investments in the federal government's ability to carry out the sentences that juries and judges have already imposed.
The DOJ's broader posture under the Trump administration has been aggressive on multiple fronts. The department recently launched a sweeping fraud crackdown targeting taxpayer-funded programs, signaling that enforcement, not restraint, is the operative word at Main Justice.
The firing squad is not a relic. CNN reported that five states currently authorize its use in executions. USA Today identified those states as Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma, Idaho, and South Carolina.
Utah carried out its last firing squad execution in 2010. The method has persisted in state law partly because of recurring difficulties with lethal injection drug supply chains. Pharmaceutical companies have increasingly refused to sell drugs for executions, and legal challenges to injection protocols have stalled or delayed sentences for years.
By adding the firing squad to the federal protocol, the DOJ is effectively building a workaround. If lethal injection drugs become unavailable or if courts block a particular injection method, the government will have an alternative already authorized and in place.
That is a practical decision, not merely a political one. The federal death penalty has been hobbled for years, not because the law changed, but because the logistics of carrying it out became a tool of delay. The Biden administration imposed a moratorium on federal executions, and before that, opponents of capital punishment used every procedural lever available to prevent sentences from being carried out.
The administration has also been willing to press its authority in federal courts on other fronts. A recent D.C. Circuit ruling sided with the executive branch in a high-stakes legal confrontation, underscoring the DOJ's willingness to fight for its prerogatives.
The memo's reference to the first Trump administration is significant. Between 2020 and January 2021, the federal government executed thirteen inmates, the first federal executions in seventeen years. That burst of enforcement came after the DOJ adopted a new lethal injection protocol using pentobarbital, a single-drug method that courts upheld against legal challenges.
The Biden administration halted that momentum. Attorney General Merrick Garland imposed a moratorium on federal executions in July 2021, and the department did not carry out a single execution during Biden's four years. The moratorium was not a change in law. Congress did not repeal the federal death penalty. Juries continued to impose death sentences. The executive branch simply chose not to enforce them.
Friday's memo reverses that posture completely. The DOJ is not just lifting a moratorium. It is readopting the specific protocol that proved legally durable in the first term, adding a second execution method, and committing to faster case processing.
The department's internal restructuring efforts have extended well beyond capital punishment. Recent personnel moves, including the removal of officials from internal DOJ working groups, reflect a broader effort to reshape how the department operates.
The third element of the memo, streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases, may prove the most consequential over time. Federal capital cases move slowly. Appeals can stretch across decades. Inmates sentenced to death in the 1990s remain on federal death row.
The memo's language about reducing delays in federal habeas review of state capital cases is particularly notable. Habeas corpus petitions allow state death row inmates to challenge their convictions in federal court. Those proceedings can add years to a case. If the DOJ successfully accelerates that review process, the effects will ripple beyond the federal system and into state-level capital punishment as well.
None of this is without legal risk. Defense attorneys and civil liberties organizations will challenge the new protocols. Courts will be asked to rule on whether firing squads constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The Supreme Court has never squarely addressed that question in the modern era, though it has upheld lethal injection and has signaled broad deference to legislative choices about execution methods.
The DOJ under this administration has shown a pattern of pressing its legal authority and winning in court. A federal judge recently sided with the Trump DOJ in blocking a California law targeting federal agents, a case that illustrated the department's willingness to litigate aggressively on questions of federal power.
The memo raises questions it does not answer. No specific inmates or pending cases were named. The DOJ did not identify which official authored or signed the memo. It remains unclear whether the firing squad option would apply to all federal death penalty cases or only under specified circumstances, for instance, when lethal injection drugs are unavailable.
The question of execution facilities is also open. Fox News reported the department is considering building additional execution sites, but no timeline or location has been announced. The federal government currently maintains execution facilities at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, where all thirteen executions during the first Trump term took place.
And the political dimension is unavoidable. Capital punishment remains one of the sharpest dividing lines in American public life. Opponents will frame the firing squad announcement as a provocation. Supporters will see it as the federal government finally doing what the law already requires.
The core issue is straightforward. Federal juries, operating under federal law, sentenced defendants to death. Federal judges upheld those sentences. Federal courts reviewed the appeals. And then, for years, the executive branch simply declined to carry out the result.
That gap between sentence and enforcement is corrosive to the rule of law. It tells juries their verdicts are advisory. It tells victims' families that finality is optional. It tells the public that the federal government will impose the most severe penalty the law allows, and then walk away from it.
The DOJ's Friday memo is an attempt to close that gap. Whether it succeeds will depend on the courts, on Congress, and on whether the department follows through with the infrastructure and the will to act.
When the law says death and the government shrugs, it is not mercy. It is abdication. The DOJ just put the system on notice that abdication is over.