Bureau of prisons can resume executions, says barr

US Attorney General William Barr announced on Thursday that the federal government will resume executing death-row inmates, a practice halted since 2003.

The death sentence is rare in federal cases, with only three executions total having taken place since 1988. At the state level, the death penalty has been made illegal in 21 jurisdictions, and President Obama ordered a federal moratorium after a botched execution in the state of Oklahoma in 2014.

Barr’s order will end that moratorium, with the main change being a switch from the three-drug cocktail formerly used in lethal injections to a single drug called pentobarbital.

There are currently 61 inmates on federal death row, including notables such as Dylann Roof, the South Carolina church shooter, and Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber.

Currently, Barr has ordered five executions scheduled, all for inmates who were convicted of murdering children. The first will take place in December.

Many Democrats and Republicans are opposed to the death penalty and worry about wrongful convictions, especially in light of President Trump’s record on the matter.

In 1989, Trump took out ads in New York City papers calling for the return of the death penalty in the case of the Central Park Five, five teenagers accused of rape who were all later acquitted after another man confessed.