The federal government will resume executing death-row inmates after nearly two decades without doing so, the Department of Justice announced on Thursday.
Attorney General William Barr directed the Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of five inmates convicted of murder and other crimes. The executions have been scheduled for December 2019 and January 2020.
The department also announced a new execution protocol, replacing the three-drug cocktail previously used in federal executions with the single drug, pentobarbital.
The last federal execution was carried out in 2003. There are 62 individuals on federal death row, according to a tracker maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center.
