A moratorium has been put on all federal executions in the U.S. pending a review of policies, according to a memo from the office of Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“Serious concerns have been raised about the continued use of the death penalty across the country, including arbitrariness in its application, disparate impact on people of color, and the troubling number of exonerations in capital and other serious cases,” said the July 1 memorandum.
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Going forward, the Attorney General’s office will review the federal execution protocol addendum, the manner of execution regulations and the justice manual provisions. The moratorium on executions will be in place at least until these reviews are completed.
The Department of Justice made a series of changes in the past two years – when Donald Trump was president and William Barr was attorney general – to policies and procedures regarding executions, said the memo. Along with the changes came the first federal executions in almost two decades.
Former attorney general Eric Holder initiated a similar review of federal executions in 2014 while President Joe Biden was serving as vice president under Barack Obama.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, 50 executions have been carried out since 1927, including 13 in 2020. There were no executions in the 1970s through the 1990s and none from 2010 to 2019.
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“As the President has made clear, he has significant concerns about the death penalty and how it is implemented, and he believes the Department of Justice should return to its prior practice of not carrying out executions,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement, according to CNN.
Garland’s directive impacts the 46 inmates currently on federal death row, but not the 2,500 others on state death row, said the outlet. The directive will also include a review of changes to regulations made in 2020 under Barr that expanded methods of execution beyond lethal injection.
“The Department of Justice must insure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” said Garland’s July 1 memo.