Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the head Bureau of Prisons to withdraw the federal government’s current execution drug protocol, leaving the federal government with no drug protocol in place to carry out executions, reports Chris Geidner in his “Law Dork” blog. The current drug protocol, the use of pentobarbital in a single-drug lethal injection, was last used to carry out executions in the first Trump administration. Though statutes authorizing executions and federal rules regarding it remain intact, Garland’s action would force additional steps on the incoming Trump administration before it could carry out any executions, Geidner writes.
The decision is the result of a multi-year review ordered in 2021, after Garland issued a moratorium on federal executions. The review concluded that there is “significant uncertainty” surrounding the use of pentobarbital that justifies withdrawing the protocol authorizing it. “[T]he review concluded that there is significant uncertainty about whether the use of pentobarbital as a single-drug lethal injection for execution treats individuals humanely and avoids unnecessary pain and suffering,” Garland wrote Wednesday in a letter to the director of the Bureau of Prisons. Writing that “it cannot be said with reasonable confidence” that the pentobarbital protocol protects “the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States" and ensures that those facing execution are treated “fairly and humanely,” the attorney general concluded “that protocol should be rescinded, and not reinstated unless and until that uncertainty is resolved.“ The move to rescind the execution drug protocol comes a few weeks after President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of all but three men on the federal death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
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