The Trump Administration Is Bringing Back Federal Executions After 16 Years

The Trump administration plans to resume federal executions, reversing a 16-year de facto moratorium on the death penalty within the Department of Justice.

Attorney General William Barr instructed the Federal Bureau of Prisons on Thursday to schedule executions of five death-row inmates, who he said were convicted of “murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our society — children and the elderly." The federal government has carried out three executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1988: two in 2001 and one in 2003.

But it’s not clear whether the federal government has successfully obtained the drugs required to perform lethal injections in the midst of a nationwide shortage.