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1 1 (October 23, 2019)

handle is hein.crs/govbbnm0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional _______ SResearch Service nformrng the IegiAative debate since 1914 Federal Capital Punishment: Recent Developments October 23, 2019 In July 2019, Attorney General William Barr instructed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to take action to resume executions of inmates sentenced to death for violating federal law, ending an effective years-long moratorium. At the Attorney General's direction, BOP's then-Acting Director scheduled five federal inmates for execution in December 2019 and January 2020. A new addendum to BOP's execution protocol will govern the executions. That addendum provides for injection of a single drug, pentobarbital sodium, as the lethal agent. The BOP protocol previously called for application of a three-drug sequence, but the scarcity of the drugs involved and a review initiated by the previous Administration (as well as ongoing legal challenges) forestalled federal executions under the three-drug protocol after 2003. The resumption of federal executions could affect extant litigation challenging BOP's execution protocol. In particular, at least one of the inmates scheduled to be executed previously sued the federal government, alleging that the execution protocol calling for three-drug lethal injection violated the Constitution and statutory requirements for agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). That lawsuit has been on hold since 2013, but BOP's recent actions have prompted a flurry of activity in the suit and related challenges to the federal execution protocol. Congress has also responded: in August, a Subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to the Acting Director of BOP and the Attorney General seeking documents and information regarding the decision to resume executions, and bills have been introduced in both the House and Senate that would prohibit imposition of the death penalty for any violation of federal law. In light of these developments, this Sidebar provides a brief overview of the federal death penalty and some of the legal issues arising from BOP's recent actions as they relate to Congress. Overview of Federal Capital Punishment The death penalty is contemplated in the text of the Constitution and has been available as a punishment for certain violations of federal law for most of the nation's history. However, several Supreme Court decisions from the 1970s recognized that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment places important limitations on imposition of the death penalty, and aspects of those cases are now reflected in federal law. First, in a splintered decision in Furman v. Georgia, a plurality of the Court concluded that the death penalty was being administered in an arbitrary manner. Furman resulted in a Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10357 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

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