US to bring back gas, electric chairs and firing squads for federal executions

The department said it is “readopting the lethal injection protocol utilized during the first Trump Administration,” expanding it to include “additional manners of execution,” and “streamlining internal processes to expedite death penalty cases.”

After returning to office last January, Trump said he would direct the DOJ to “vigorously pursue” the death penalty to protect Americans from “violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.”

The Justice Department said the new policy clears the way for executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals. AP reported that this is the first time the federal government has explicitly allowed firing squads, although a 2020 rule already permitted the use of any execution method legal in the sentencing state.

The decision reverses the approach taken by former President Joe Biden, whose administration paused federal executions. In December 2024, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 people on federal death row, converting them to life without parole and leaving only three federal inmates still facing execution.

US public support for the death penalty remains divided, with Gallup reporting only a slim majority of 52% in favor in late 2025, down from a peak of 80% in 1994, while a record-low share believes the punishment is applied fairly.

The United States is currently the only country in the Americas that actively carries out executions, while more than two-thirds of the world’s countries have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice.

Russia retains the death penalty in law but has observed a moratorium on executions since 1996. A recent poll found that nearly half of Russians now favor bringing it back, but lawmakers have argued that doing so would be legally impossible because the ban was imposed by the Constitutional Court, whose decisions cannot be overturned.