US schedules first federal inmate executions since 2003

The US Justice Department has scheduled the executions of four federal inmates for the first time since 2003 after months of legal challenges.

Attorney General William Barr has ordered the executions to begin in July of the men on death-row, who were all convicted of killing children.

The inmates had accused the government of trying to hasten their execution and of not following proper methods.

Mr Barr on Monday said they had “received full and fair proceedings”.

“The American people, acting through Congress and Presidents of both political parties, have long instructed that defendants convicted of the most heinous crimes should be subject to a sentence of death,” Mr Barr said.

“We owe it to the victims of these horrific crimes, and to the families left behind, to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

Last July, Mr Barr directed the Bureau of Prisons to revise the government’s execution protocol to use a single drug in order to resume the federal death penalty.

Executions were scheduled for last December, but the inmates issued legal challenges.

After an initial injunction last year from a district judge that stayed the scheduled executions, an appeals court reversed the order in April, ending a nearly two-decade hiatus on capital punishment for federal inmates.

Source: bbc.com

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