U.S. reinstates death penalty, AG William Barr orders execution of 5 federal inmates

Donald Trump's U.S. Department of Justice today announced big death penalty news.

DoJ is reinstating death penalty at federal level, ordering the prompt killing of 5 federal death row inmates, and changing its lethal injection procedure from 3 drugs, the old standard method for killing prisoners, to the single drug Pentobarbital.

The 3-to-1 drug change mirrors moves made by multiple U.S. states which have struggled to acquire the multiple-drug cocktail for their state level executions.

"The last federal execution was in 2003, per the Bureau of Prisons," notes Buzzfeed's Zoe Tillman. "There have been 37 federal executions from 1927 to 2003."

DOJ announced that the federal government is going to resume capital punishment, and AG Bill Bar has directed the Bureau of Prisons to schedule executions for five death-row inmates pic.twitter.com/7usR1jX2IG

- Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) July 25, 2019

The fed govt rarely seeks death sentences and almost never carries them out (https://t.co/iSjuWeNzTA).

Fed govt has won 2 high profile death sentences recently - Boston bomber + Charleston gunman. The Bureau of Prisons lacked execution drugs at the time https://t.co/P9mXk4LkFE https://t.co/M1uF9YKIvl

- Mark Berman (@markberman) July 25, 2019