WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th April, 2020) The US Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Trump administration's plan to resume Federal executions by means of lethal injection does not violate federal law, according to a court filing on Tuesday.
"Each member of the panel takes a different view of what the FDPA [Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994] requires," the court wrote. "Because two of us believe that the district court misconstrued the FDPA, we vacate the preliminary injunctions."
In July 2019, US Attorney General William Barr announced that the United States would resume federal executions for the first time in 16 years and said that five death sentences would be carried out beginning on December 9.
In November 2019, District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a court order delaying the executions after four of the federal prisoners due to be executed petitioned the court for an injunction.
The US federal government had scheduled five executions for December and January for inmates Daniel Lee, Lezmond Mitchell, Wesley Purkey, Alfred Bourgeois and Dustin Honken. Purkey was not among the four prisoners who petitioned the court for the injunction.
Though several individual US states regularly carry out the death penalty, the US federal government has not executed a prisoner since 2003.
