April 24 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration plans to add firing squads, electrocution and gas asphyxiation as alternative methods of executing people convicted of the gravest federal crimes, it ?announced on Friday, noting difficulties in obtaining drugs for lethal injections.
The recommendation came in a Justice Department report fulfilling Trump’s promise to resume capital punishment at the federal level in ?his second term, although it will likely be several years before another federal execution can be scheduled.
Shortly before his first term ended in 2021, Trump, a Republican, resumed executions at the federal level after a 20-year gap, putting 13 federal prisoners to death with lethal injections in his final few months in office. There had been just three federal executions in the preceding 50 years.
Most executions in the U.S. are carried out by state governments.
Returning to the White House last year, Trump rescinded a moratorium on federal executions by his predecessor, former President Joe Biden.
Trump’s Justice Department is ?now seeking the death penalty against more than 40 defendants across the country, although none have yet gone to trial, each of which can take years.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, in his introduction ?to the 52-page report, wrote that the Biden administration’s moratorium had “undermined the federal death penalty and left victims, their families, their communities, and the Nation to bear ?the consequences.”
