The U.S. Department of Justice announced on April 24 that it will be bringing back firing squads, electrocution, pentobarbital injections, and gas chambers as permissible methods of execution for federal death row inmates, along with measures to speed up death penalty cases.
“Today, the Department of Justice acted to restore its solemn duty to seek, obtain, and implement lawful capital sentences,” a DOJ memo said, “clearing the way for the Department to carry out executions once death-sentenced inmates have exhausted their appeals.”
The Justice Department listed several steps it will take, including instructing the Federal Bureau of Prisons to readopt the single-shot pentobarbital injection protocol used during the first Trump Administration, streamlining internal processes, and allowing “additional manners of execution.”
The move is in response to a day-one executive order from President Donald Trump instructing the Attorney General to prioritize seeking death sentences, particularly in cases involving slain law enforcement officers or capital crimes committed by undocumented immigrants; to investigate whether 37 death row inmates whose sentences were commuted by former President Joe Biden could be charged with state capital crimes; and to strengthen the death penalty even to the point of overruling Supreme Court precedents.
The memo referred to a just-released, 48-page report, “Restoring and Strengthening the Federal Death Penalty,” which details how Biden and his attorney general, Merrick Garland, backed the country away from federal executions and explained how the DOJ would “return to President Trump’s law-and-order agenda,” according to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
“The Supreme Court has never rejected a method of execution as unconstitutional,” the report said. It also cited increasing difficulties for states with capital punishment to acquire the lethal injection drugs they are currently using.
Florida’s own lethal injection policies have come under scrutiny as Gov. Ron DeSantis dramatically increases the frequency of executions. Anti-death-penalty advocates and inmate attorneys say that documents released in 2025 include incidents of the state using the wrong or expired chemicals or insufficient dosages and subjecting inmates to cruel and unusual suffering during executions, a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Florida Supreme Court has steadfastly refused subsequent requests for the release of any more execution records.
Public support for the death penalty remains at a five-decade low of 52%, with a 2025 Gallup poll showing more than half of young U.S. adults ages 18 through 43 opposing it. The practice has come under increased criticism in recent years over the morality of the state ending human life and what critics call horrific and barbaric methods.
Will Florida use firing squads?
While this is a federal policy change, it was met with approval by at least one state official. After Fox News posted on X about the DOJ report, Governor Ron DeSantis’ chief of staff, Jason Weida, shared it with the statement, “Bravo. Would love to see this in Florida.”
While no announcements of changes to Florida’s execution protocol have been made, the state has already laid the groundwork.
Last year, DeSantis signed a bill (HB 903) into law that made sweeping changes in the state’s corrections polices. Among other things, it allowed any form of execution that was “not deemed unconstitutional.”
While it doesn’t use the words “firing squad” or “nitrogen,” it allows for their use if either electrocution or lethal injection is found to be unconstitutional or if the state cannot acquire the drugs needed for lethal injection – an increasing problem for states with capital punishment.
In 2012, a Florida House bill explicitly calling for firing squads to replace the lethal injection option was filed but died in committee.
How does execution by firing squad work?
Five states currently allow for the firing squad as a method of execution. In March 2025, Idaho adopted it as its primary method of execution, the DOJ report said.
In 2025, Brad Keith Sigmon became the first inmate in South Carolina to be executed by firing squad in modern history and the first in the U.S. since 2010. Sigmon, sentenced to death for the 2001 beating deaths of his ex-girlfriend’s parents, chose the firing squad over lethal injection or the electric chair.
He was strapped to a specially made metal chair with a hood over his head in the same room as the state’s electric chair while three volunteer corrections staffers fired live rounds at him through an opening in a wall 15 feet away, according to several news media witnesses who spoke at a news conference afterward.
A white target with a red bullseye was placed over Sigmon’s heart, after which his attorney read his last words, the warden ordered the execution, and the team fired, the witnesses said.
“Brad’s death was horrifying and violent,” Gerald “Bo” King, Sigmon’s attorney and an execution witness, said in a statement. “It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle.”
The DOJ’s report stated that numerous inmates have requested a firing squad over the uncertainties of the lethal injection.
Which states allow execution by firing squad in the US?
Five states — South Carolina, Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and Idaho — have legalized firing squads as an execution method. Idaho legalized them in 2023.
The last American inmate to be killed by firing squad before Sigmon was in 2010, when Utah executed Ronnie Lee Gardner for killing a man during a robbery.
Before that, Gary Mark Gilmore in 1977 and John Albert Taylor in 1996 were both shot to death in Utah.
Does Florida execute inmates?
Florida has executed people for nearly 200 years. Benjamin Donica, the first known execution in the state, was hanged for murder in 1827.
Inmates convicted of capital crimes may be sentenced to death, although they may stay on death row for years as appeals work their way through the legal system. Execution dates are set by the governor, who signs the death warrants.
How many death row inmates has Florida executed?
From 1924 until May 1964, the state of Florida executed 196 people. There were no executions from May 1964 until May 1976.
In 1972, the United States Supreme Court struck down the death penalty, but it was reinstated in 1976.
Florida has carried out 130 executions since then, 24 of them since last January under DeSantis’ newly accelerated schedule of death warrants.
Last year, Florida executed 19 men, the most in a single year in modern times.
How does Florida execute death row inmates?
Before 1923, executions were usually performed by hanging. The Florida Legislature passed a law replacing that method with an electric chair, which was built by prison inmates. The first person electrocuted by the state was Frank Johnson in 1924, for shooting and killing a Jacksonville railroad engineer during a burglary.
Florida’s current three-legged electric chair, nicknamed “Old Sparky,” was built of oak by Florida Department of Corrections staff and installed at Florida State Prison in Raiford in 1999.
Legislation passed in 2000 allows for lethal injection as an alternative to the electric chair. The choice is left up to the inmate.
All executions, injection or electric chair, are carried out at the execution chamber located at Florida State Prison in Raiford. The executioner, a private citizen allowed to remain anonymous by state law, is paid $150 per execution.
How many people are on death row in Florida?
As of Friday, April 24, there are currently 246 inmates on Florida’s death row, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. It breaks down to:
Men on death row are housed at Florida State Prison and Union Correctional Institution in Raiford. Women are housed at Lowell Annex in Lowell.
Florida leads the nation in death row exonerations, with 30 prisoners found wrongfully incarcerated since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
C. A. Bridges is a journalist for the USA TODAY Network-Florida’s service journalism Connect team. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday day by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: US authorizes firing squads for federal executions. Is Florida next?
Reporting by C. A. Bridges, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Tallahassee Democrat
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