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The Justice Department is bringing back the use of firing squads and lethal injection using pentobarbital as it seeks to expedite and expand federal death penalty convictions and executions. No federal executions have been carried out since 2020, when the first Trump administration broke with over a decade of precedent and executed 13 people on death row. The second Trump administration is now pursuing the death penalty in dozens more cases across the country. Renowned anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean says Trump’s push to restart federal executions is entirely unsurprising. “His first instinct almost always seems to be demonize someone as an enemy and then kill them and destroy them.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

Death by firing squad. In its efforts to ramp up and expedite federal executions, the Justice Department announced Friday it’s reimplementing lethal injections and authorized the use of firing squads to kill condemned federal prisoners. It’s also planning to impose new restrictions on the ability of death row prisoners to seek clemency or pardons, along with a regulation designed to cut years off the federal appeals process for state death penalty cases. Five states already allow execution by firing squad: Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah.

At the Vatican, Pope Leo reiterated the Catholic Church’s opposition to capital punishment in a prerecorded video shared with DePaul University to mark the 15th anniversary of Illinois’s abolition of the death penalty.

Palestinian Prisoners Live on Hope. Israel’s Death Penalty Aims to Destroy It.

POPE LEO XIV: We affirm that the dignity of the person is not lost even after various serious crimes are committed. Furthermore, effective systems of detention can be and have been developed that protect citizens, while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. This is why Pope Francis and my recent predecessors repeatedly insisted that the common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment. Consequently, the church teaches that the death penalty is inadmissible, because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.

POPE LEO XIV: We affirm that the dignity of the person is not lost even after various serious crimes are committed. Furthermore, effective systems of detention can be and have been developed that protect citizens, while at the same time do not completely deprive those who are guilty of the possibility of redemption. This is why Pope Francis and my recent predecessors repeatedly insisted that the common good can be safeguarded and the requirements of justice can be met without recourse to capital punishment. Consequently, the church teaches that the death penalty is inadmissible, because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person.

AMY GOODMAN: That video of Pope Leo was sent to DePaul University for a conference on the death penalty. It was Sister Helen Prejean who extended the invitation to the pope’s office for that statement, one of the world’s most well-known anti-death penalty advocates and also author of numerous books, including Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty. A graphic edition of the book was published in November. Sister Helen Prejean is joining us from Chicago, where that conference is taking place at DePaul.

Welcome to Democracy Now! In these few minutes, Sister Prejean, can you respond to the Trump administration reinstituting death by firing squad?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Firing squad and the electric chair and gas, anything to get executions going, he has now done. I’m not at all surprised that he’s done this. When we look at his record and his way of approaching social problems, his first instinct almost always seems to be demonize someone as an enemy and then kill them and destroy them. And the death penalty writ large is Iran, it’s Gaza, and it’s solving all the problems by using violence. We have to remember that in his first term, Trump, in the last six months of his first term, he designated that 13 people were to be executed. And Bill Barr, his attorney general, went in, gave the orders, and they were. I knew some of them and the lawyers who were trying to save their life. But this, when you look at it, it epitomizes trying to solve social problems, all social problems, by designating an enemy and killing the enemy. And you can see that in Trump’s rhetoric about political people he considers enemies. He starts going after anybody even who disagrees with him. And he uses violent language about “This is treasonous. They ought to be shot.” So it’s typical of him.

But I also see it in the culture of the Deep South, the ex-slave states, that are doing all the executions now. I mean, DeSantis in Florida had, last year, killed 20 people, and has already executed six and is lining up more to be killed. But it’s when you look at the total sweep in the United States, most states, either in law or in practice, are not executing people. But the Deep South still is, and they get the rhetoric from Trump.

But I see progress being made. But the whole key, Amy, is to educate the citizens. I mean, even juries now in Texas, when they know they have the option of a life sentence or death, are not giving out death sentences. But we look at these pockets, and I see the reason for it. As I understand it, it’s the way the Supreme Court set up the death penalty in the Gregg decision of ’76, when they allowed huge discretionary power to prosecutors and to executives to carry out death or not. And so, these decisions for death are left in the hands of individuals. And Trump, being president, is one of them. And so they’re using violence like there’s no tomorrow right now. These are sad, hard times.

AMY GOODMAN: Sister Helen Prejean, you have the Trump administration announcing plans to add firing squads, electrocution and gas asphyxiation to its arsenal of methods to execute federal prisoners on death row. It also noted the obstacles to obtaining drugs for lethal injections. In this last minute —

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: — what you are calling for now at DePaul, in Chicago, where Pope Leo is from?

SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: Yeah. Well, the pope responded readily to the invitation. We were celebrating the 15th anniversary of Illinois abolishing the death penalty. Governor Pat Quinn, who signed the abolition order into law, was there. So it was to hold up a beacon of light, of hope in the dark times. And so, the pope’s very clear. I mean, it was 1,500 years of dialogue in the Catholic Church to reach a position in the catechism of official teaching that no matter how terrible a crime, we can never turn over to governments that absolute power over human life, that they can decide to kill their citizens. And so —

AMY GOODMAN: Sister Helen Prejean, we have to leave it there, but we’re going to do Part 2 and post it online at democracynow.org. Sister Helen Prejean is one of the world’s most well-known anti-death penalty activists. She’s the author of the best-selling book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty.

That does it for our show. I’ll be in Canada tomorrow night at the Hot Docs Film Festival, then in Brookline, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., and in Baltimore. Check democracynow.org, for Steal This Story, Please! I’m Amy Goodman.

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Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on more than 1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

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