The Justice Department is going forward with plans to resume federal executions for the first time in more than a decade.
Attorney General William Barr has instructed the Bureau of Prisons to proceed with three scheduled lethal injections in Indiana next week, resuming federal executions for the first time in more than 15 years, according to the Associated Press.
The move has been criticized by those who oppose the death penalty and those who feel that the coronavirus is too dangerous to bring people together for executions.
“Why would anybody who is concerned about public health and safety want to bring in people from all over the country for three separate execution in the span of five days to a virus hot spot?” Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonpartisan organization that collects information on capital punishment, asked.
Barr denied that the move is political, arguing that the government has an obligation to carry out death sentences imposed by courts and owes it to the families of victims.
“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,” Barr said about the decision to resume executions.
Officials also say that they will take coronavirus precautions, requiring family members of inmates and victims in attendance to wear masks and have their temperatures taken, although they do not plan on testing for the virus on site.
In late 2019, Gallup polling showed that a majority of the public supports life in prison instead of the death penalty for the first time in 34 years, while Pew polling in 2018 showed that the majority supported the death penalty.
