WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Attorney General William Barr has directed the first federal execution in 16 years.
- Then-President Barack Obama directed the department to conduct a review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs
- That review has been completed and AG Barr ordered the executions to be carried out using an updated protocol
- Dylann Roof, who killed nine black church members during a bible study session in 2015 at a South Carolina church, is on federal death row
Five inmates are set to be executed in December. They were previously convicted of murdering children.
In 2014, then-President Barack Obama directed the department to conduct a review of capital punishment and issues surrounding lethal injection drugs. That review has been completed, the department said, and it has cleared the way for executions to resume.
Barr ordered the executions to be carried out using an updated protocol that calls for a lethal dose of pentobarbital. There have been only three executions since the federal death penalty was restored in 1988 and only 37 overall from 1927 to 2003.
There are 61 people on the federal death row, according to Death Row USA, a quarterly report of the NAACP legal defense and educational fund. Some of the highest-profile inmates on federal death row include Dylann Roof, who killed nine black church members during a bible study session in 2015 at a South Carolina church, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who set off bombs near the Boston Marathon's finish line in 2013, killing three people and wounding more than 260.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
