reuters.com
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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.

  • x00z@lemmy.worldEnglish
    10·
    1 month ago

    The article has a little part for the reason the drugs are hard to come by:

    Pharmaceutical companies refuse to sell prison systems their drugs that can be used in executions, partly to comply with a European Union ban. U.S. prisons have had to seek out smaller, less-regulated compounding pharmacies ​willing to brew copies of those drugs.

    Some background from another article:

    Europe won’t allow the drugs to be exported because of its fierce hostility to capital punishment.

    The phenomenon started nine years ago when the EU banned the export of products used for execution, citing its goal to be the “leading institutional actor and largest donor to the fight against the death penalty.” But beefed up European rules mean the results are being most strongly felt in the United States now, with shortages becoming chronic and controversial executions making headlines.