Attorney General Bill Barr just announced that the federal government will resume capital punishment. In a statement, Barr said, “Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President.”
Immediately on the agenda are plans to move forward with executions of five death row inmates. Foxnews.com discusses each of the five inmates who will be scheduled to be executed beginning December 2019. Amongst them are a white supremacist who killed a family of three, a man who raped and dismembered a 16-year-old girl and a man who tortured, sexually molested and beat to death his two-and-a-half-year-old daughter.
According to Fox News “The Justice Department said each of the inmates has exhausted appeal efforts and will be executed at the U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute, Indiana.” The five executions scheduled will “be the first in the federal prison system since 2003.”
In 2014, then-President Barack Obama “directed the department to conduct a review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs. That review resulted in what effectively was a freeze on executions” but now the “department says the Bureau of Prisons has completed the review and the executions can continue.”
In Barr’s statement he made sure to address the issue as nonpartisan saying “Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding. 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.”
