A judge blocked the scheduled executions of four federal inmates, freezing the Trump administration’s effort to resume the death penalty in a federal system that saw its last execution more than a decade and a half ago, Politico reports. The order Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan halts executions that U.S. officials planned to carry out starting next month. Another execution on the calendar for December was halted last month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. In July, Attorney General William Barr announced plans to resume executions at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, In. He suggested the practice had been allowed to languish and said it would deliver justice in cases involving what he called the “worst criminals.”
Barr announced a new federal death penalty protocol that would use a single drug, pentobarbital, in lieu of a three-drug “cocktail” employed in the most recent federal executions. Death row prisoners joined a long-dormant legal challenge to the previous method and asked Chutkan to block their execution under the new protocol. Chutkan said the inmates appeared likely to prevail on their arguments that the new protocol violates longstanding federal law because the procedures vary from state law. A 1994 law says federal executions shall be carried out “in the manner prescribed by the law of the State in which the sentence is imposed.” Chutkan said, “There is no statute that gives the [Bureau of Prisons] or DOJ the authority to establish a single implementation procedure for all federal executions.” Chutkan added.