Attorney General Bill Barr has ordered the Bureau of Prisons to resume executing federal death row inmates, starting with five who will now be put to death starting in December.
The federal government has had an informal moratorium, an unofficial pause, on federal executions, given concerns over the methods used, The Washington Post reports. The last federal execution took place in 2003.
“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.
A 2014 study found one in 25 people sentenced to death are innocent.
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