In July 2019, the U.S. Attorney General announced that the federal government would “resume capital punishment” by scheduling the execution of five federal prisoners on death row. While the executions were originally scheduled for December 2019 and January 2020, a legal battle delayed the execution process. These long litigation periods are quite common, with the average prisoner being held on death row for 20 years and 3 months before execution is carried out.

However, a recent Supreme Court ruling has cleared the way for federal executions to resume. Before this, only three federal executions had been carried out over the last five decades.

This article walks through the support and opposition of a death penalty, or capital punishment, at the federal level.