Trump DOJ Announces It’s Bringing Back Firing Squads

The Department of Justice announced Friday that it will resurrect federal firing squads as part of an effort to implement Donald Trump’s day-one executive order to revamp capital punishment.Trump’s order, signed in January 2025, demanded the attorney general pursue the death penalty on “all crimes of a severity demanding its use,” including murder of a law enforcement officer or any capital crime committed by an undocumented immigrant.Under former President Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland had paused federal executions. Trump became furious when, before leaving the White House, Biden pardoned 37 prisoners on death row. The Republican kicked off his second term in office with a bloodthirsty decree for more death.The January order made no mention of firing squads. Still, the DOJ said in its Friday announcement it had directed the Bureau of Prisons to “expand the execution protocol to include additional manners of execution such as the firing squad.”Some view firing squads as more humane than lethal injection, which do not have a 100 percent success rate and sometimes require multiple doses. However, execution by firing squad can also result in prisoners slowly bleeding to death if they are not immediately killed by the bullet.In March 2025, the Supreme Court allowed South Carolina to carry out the country’s first execution by firing squad in 15 years. Since 1608, at least 144 prisoners have been executed by firing squads in America, most of them in Utah, according to the Associated Press. Firing squads have not gained much traction outside of Utah because they are considered to be barbaric. Currently only five states—Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah—allow the use of firing squads in certain circumstances.