Judge Blocks All Scheduled Federal Executions

A judge has just blocked the scheduled executions of four federal death row inmates, effectively thwarting the Trump administration’s efforts to resume imposing the death penalty in a federal system that saw its last execution more than a decade and a half ago.

According to Politico, the order was issued Wednesday night by U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan to halt four executions that U.S. officials planned to carry out starting next month, beginning on December 9th. Another scheduled execution was also on the calendar for December but was blocked last month by the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

Back In July, Attorney General William Barr announced plans to resume executions at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. He announced a new federal death penalty protocol that would use a single drug, pentobarbital, instead of the three-drug “cocktail” used previously in the most recent federal executions.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

In the wake of the Attorney General’s announcement, a group of death row prisoners joined a long legal challenge to that previous method. It asked the judge to block their executions under this new protocol until their legal challenges were fully adjudicated.

Attorneys for the Justice Department argued that the use of lethal injection was sufficiently similar regardless of the drugs used or other details of the execution protocol. Still, Judge Chutkan ruled that the law likely requires federal authorities to adopt the same drugs or drug methods and a similar process. She said the death row inmates appeared likely to prevail on their arguments that the new protocol violates longstanding federal law because the procedures to be used vary on the state law level.

A 1994 federal statute says federal executions shall be carried out “in the manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence is imposed.”

By granting the injunction, Judge Chutkan noted that permitting the executions would’ve deprived these inmates of their ability to pursue their legal challenges.