Barr directs federal government to reinstate death penalty, schedule the execution of 5 death row inmates - CNN

After 16 years without an execution, Barr has directed the head of the Bureau of Prisons to execute "five death-row inmates convicted of murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our society — children and the elderly" in December and January, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.

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"The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system," Barr said in a statement.

The move represents a dramatic reversal after more than a decade-long hiatus in the federal use of capital punishment, as President Donald Trump has taken on the issue and called to "bring back the death penalty." The death penalty is legal in 29 states and the federal government, though there have been no federal executions in nearly two decades and the number of people facing state executions has been on the decline.

The debate over capital punishment has been longstanding, with advocates arguing it's a deterrent against serious crime and that justice is served for the victims or victims' families. Opponents, however, point to the racial disparities of death row inmates, the financial costs, and wrongful convictions.

At Barr's direction, the Bureau of Prisons has adopted the Federal Execution Protocol Addendum which "replaces the three-drug procedure previously used in federal executions with a single drug—pentobarbital," the Justice Department announced.

Thursday's announcement by DOJ to schedule the executions of five death row inmates follows an effort begun by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for the federal government to restart executions by lethal injection.

Sessions asked the Bureau of Prisons to determine a way to proceed. The directive from Sessions for the Bureau of Prisons to determine a way to resume the use of the death penalty was recently concluded after a thorough legal and procedural review, a Justice official said.

Barr's announcement is directing the federal government to use a new protocol — similar to what several states use — that has been under review for a number of years.

Barr has directed the executions to begin later this year, but legal challenges could delay executions. Legal experts question whether any execution will take place as soon as December.

"Saying that you are going to adopt a protocol is not the same thing as having a protocol properly adopted through the required administrative procedures," said Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that has been critical of how the penalty is administered. "You can't just say it and have it happen. There is a legal process for a protocol to go into effect and there is a legal process for challenging the protocol."

Dunham predicts that there will be opposition when the protocol is formally proposed.

Already in the District of Columbia there has been an ongoing lawsuit involving the federal lethal injection process. There will be a range of questions about how the federal government is obtaining the drug it intends to use.

The five federal inmates ordered to be executed are Daniel Lewis Lee for murdering a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl; Lezmond Mitchell for murdering a 63-year-old and her 9-year-old granddaughter; Wesley Ira Purkey for raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl; Alfred Bourgeois for torturing and killing his own 2-year-old daughter; Dustin Lee Honken, for shooting and killing five people, including two young girls.

A Federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman told CNN that per statute, the director of the BOP designates the date and time for an execution.

"BOP will continue with planning and administrative steps to ensure the execution is ready to commence on the designated date and time," spokeswoman, Nancy Ayers, said.

An official from the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where each man is scheduled to be executed in the coming months, deferred comment to BOP.

There are currently 62 inmates on federal death row, with about the same number of white and black federal death-row inmates, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Capital punishment is legal in 29 US states. There are about 2,600 death row inmates, with California detaining the most.

According to the center, of the five men named by Barr Thursday, three are white, one is black, and one is Native American.

Only three federal inmates have been executed in the United States since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988 after a 16-year moratorium.

Louis Jones, a Gulf War veteran, was the last federal inmate executed in March 2003 for the kidnapping and murder of 19-year-old Army Pvt. Tracie McBride.

CNN's David Shortell and Evan Perez contributed to this report.

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