Federal executions to resume, posing a new test for lethal injection
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear four inmates’ challenge to the specifics of the lethal injection process, federal executions are expected to resume next week. In July 2019, Attorney General William Barr declared an end to a federal moratorium on executions that had been in effect since 2003.
The inmates alleged that the Justice Department’s execution instructions, which call for the use of a single dose of pentobarbital, a barbiturate that is normally used as a sedative, violates the Federal Death Penalty Act.
They claimed that the law requires federal executions to be carried out “in the manner prescribed by the state” in which the prisoner was convicted. Pentobarbital is not used in Arkansas, Iowa or Missouri, the pertinent states in their cases. They were hoping th...