DOJ Readopts Firing Squads, Electrocution, and Gas for Federal Executions

On April 24, 2026, the Justice Department announced it was expanding the methods available for federal executions. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche instructed the Bureau of Prisons to modify its execution protocol to include:

• Firing squads — never before used in federal executions
• Electrocution
• Nitrogen gas asphyxiation — the method pioneered by Alabama in 2024, where the first prisoner to undergo it, Kenneth Smith, convulsed for several minutes on the gurney

The DOJ also reinstated single-drug pentobarbital lethal injections — the protocol used for 13 executions during Trump's first term, which Biden had removed over concerns about unnecessary pain and suffering.

The stated rationale

The DOJ said the expansion would "help ensure the Department is prepared to carry out lawful executions even if a specific drug is unavailable." The logic: if you can't get the drugs to kill someone by injection, you should be able to shoot them, electrocute them, or gas them instead.

The broader push

The execution method expansion is part of a larger package announced the same day:

• Streamlined internal processes to expedite death penalty cases
• New DOJ report calling for expanded use of federal capital punishment
• A clear directive to increase the pace of executions

During Trump's first term, 13 federal executions were carried out in his final six months — more than in the previous 56 years combined. The Biden administration imposed a moratorium. This announcement signals the intent to resume and accelerate.

Context

Currently only five states allow firing squads: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. The federal government adding itself to that list is a deliberate escalation — an embrace of execution methods that most of the developed world abandoned decades ago.

This announcement came on the same day the DOJ dropped its evidence-free criminal probe into Fed Chair Jerome Powell. The contrast is instructive: the Justice Department can't find evidence to prosecute a central banker whose rates the president doesn't like, but it's expanding the ways the government can kill people.