The Trump administration has reinstated the US government's power to order the death penalty for federal crimes - and has started by immediately scheduling five executions.
Those condemned to death have been convicted of murders and sex crimes, the Justice Department said, and are due to be executed by lethal injection using a single drug, pentobarbital, which replaces a three-drug cocktail previously used in federal executions.
It is the first time central government has been able to authorise capital punishment since 2003.
The five people due to be executed are:
- White supremacist Daniel Lewis Lee, who was convicted in Arkansas of murdering a family of three, including an eight-year-old girl;
- Lezmond Mitchell, who was found guilty in Arizona of stabbing a 63-year-old grandmother and forcing her young granddaughter to sit next to her lifeless body on a car journey before slitting the girl's throat;
- Welsey Ira Purkey, found guilty in Missouri in November 2003 of raping and killing a 16-year-old girl before dismembering and burning her body. He also used a claw hammer to kill an 80-year-old woman;
- Alfred Bourgeois, convicted in Texas in 2004, tortured and sexually molested his two-year-old daughter before beating her to death;
- Dustin Lee Honken, found guilty in Iowa in 2004 of murdering five people, including a single mother and her 10- and 6-year-old daughters.
