Department of Justice adds firing squad as means of execution, ‘deterring barbaric crimes’ 

The Department of Justice said Friday that it will readopt lethal injection and firing squads to strengthen the death penalty.

In response to President Donald Trump’s day-one executive order on capital punishment, the Justice Department announced Friday it directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to reinstate the lethal injection protocol used during the first Trump administration and to expand execution protocols to include other methods, such as firing squads.

The agency cited the steps as “critical” for “deterring the most barbaric crimes,” delivering justice for victims and providing closure for their families.

Additionally, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche authorized seeking death sentences for nine people following a Biden-era moratorium on federal executions.

“The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers and cop killers,” Blanche said in a statement. “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”

The executive order did not explicitly mention firing squads, though it did order the attorney general to ensure each state that allows capital punishment has “a sufficient supply of drugs needed to carry out lethal injection.”

A South Carolina inmate was executed by firing squad in March 2025, the first such execution since 2010, according to multiple reports. Brad Sigmon, convicted in a double murder, reportedly chose the method over lethal injection or the electric chair.

“When President Biden took office in 2021, he allowed his Department of Justice to issue a moratorium on federal executions, in defiance of his duty to faithfully execute the laws of the United States that provide for capital punishment,” Trump’s executive order states. “And on December 23, 2024, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 most vile and sadistic rapists, child molesters, and murderers on federal death row: remorseless criminals who brutalized young children, strangled and drowned their victims, and hunted strangers for sport.”

The Justice Department similarly argued Friday that the agency under Biden “imposed an indefinite moratorium on executions based on a deeply flawed analysis asserting that the existing federal practice of execution by lethal injection with pentobarbital could not be carried out without risking ‘unnecessary pain and suffering.’”

In the coming weeks, the agency plans to revise the Justice Manual to “return the Department to its historic approach to capital crimes, streamline the process for seeking death sentences, and ensure appropriate consultation with victims’ families.”