Do it or drop it

The death penalty

U.S. to Resume Executions of Death-Row Inmates

The federal government will resume executions of death-row inmates after a nearly two-decade hiatus, Attorney General William P. Barr said Thursday, countering a broad national shift away from the death penalty as public support for it has dwindled.

The announcement reverses what had been essentially a moratorium on the federal death penalty. 

Five men convicted of murdering children will be executed in December or January at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., Mr. Barr said, and additional executions will be scheduled later.

Prosecutors still seek the death penalty in some federal cases, including for Dylann S. Roof, an avowed white supremacist who gunned down nine African-American churchgoers in 2015, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber. 

But the federal government has only executed only three inmates since it reinstated the death penalty in 1988, including the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh, who was put to death in 2001, and Louis Jones Jr., who was executed in 2003 for the rape and murder of a female soldier.

“Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals,” Mr. Barr said in a statement. 

“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law — and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”