The Donald Trump administration is rushing to make
a series of regulatory changes at the federal level before President-elect Joe Biden takes over from the Csasa Blanca on January 20
, ProPublica reported Wednesday.
One such change, proposed by the Department of Justice, would allow some federal inmates sentenced to death to be executed by means other than lethal injection.
The default method for federal executions is lethal injection, unless a judge explicitly orders otherwise.
But many states with the death penalty allow executions to be carried out by other means, such
as electrocution, a firing squad and nitrogen hypoxia
.
Tennessee, for example, executed a prisoner sentenced to death by electrocution in December.
[United States carries out first federal execution in 17 years]
Although lethal injection was initially presented as a more humane and less violent method of execution than the electric chair or firing squad,
certain lethal injection drugs - or problems administering them - have led to complications,
and some failed injections resulting in deaths painful.
Eight federal death row inmates have been executed since the Department of Justice resumed federal executions in July, and
five more federal executions have been scheduled during the transition period.
In July, Daniel Lewis Lee, convicted of murdering an Arkansas family in 1996, became the first federal inmate to be executed in 17 years.
Most recently, Orlando Hall was executed on November 20 for the 1994 kidnapping, rape and murder of a Texas teenager.
Ruth Friedman, director of the Federal Capital Habeas Project, who represented the first man to be executed by the Trump Administration, called the rule a "great abuse of power."
In an interview with The New York Times, he criticized the department's decision to eradicate some judicial controls such as the requirement that a government lawyer present to the court, among other matters, the date and place of the execution, a provision that authorities consider redundant.
Execution chamber of an Ohio prison, in a file image.Getty Images / Getty Images
[The United States carries out the second federal execution this week]
Friedman also said that, more worrying than the proposal, it
was the government's intention to execute the prisoners so shortly before the start of Biden
, who has voiced his opposition to capital punishment.
The proposed rule change stated that
"death by shooting and death by electrocution do not violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments"
according to the prevailing precedent of the Supreme Court.
He also cited the court cases
Bucklew v.
Precythe
and
Glossip v.
Gross,
in which death row inmates said the states' use of lethal injections violated the Eighth Amendment, to no avail.
According to authorities, the proposed rule "ensures that the Department of Justice is authorized to use the widest range of forms of human execution permitted by law."
[This is what those sentenced to death eat before their execution]
However, ProPublica reported
that the change may not apply to any execution
.
All remaining federal executions scheduled before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20 are expected to be carried out by lethal injection.
Biden opposes the use of the death penalty and has indicated that his Administration will not seek the execution of federal prisoners sentenced to death.
Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Center for Information on the Death Penalty, hopes that the new rule would likely result in fewer legal challenges and less complicated executions, but that it would quickly become useless when the new government that does not seek to execute starts. to inmates.
"It tells us more about the current administration's interest in killing prisoners, than about any real need for rehabilitation," he
said in an interview with The New York Times.
With information from Propublica, Mic and The New York Times
