A government study of federal execution procedures is ongoing.
That’s according to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, who spoke to NPR in a rare interview that aired Thursday.
Garland announced a moratorium on federal executions last summer, after the Trump administration executed 13 people in its final months in office.
“I have concerns about the changes that were made at the end of 2020, which led to the first executions in many, many years in the federal system,” Garland said.
“These included evaluation of the use of pentobarbital as the drug of execution and evaluation of changes that were made at the end of 2020 with respect to the procedures and the manner both of those are. It's an ongoing review,” he said.
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Garland also said he was concerned about the arbitrary nature of the death penalty’s application and its disparate impact on people of color.
But he didn’t say when to expect his department to complete the study.
President Joe Biden opposes capital punishment and promised before taking office that he would seek to abolish it.
But his attorney general continues to defend death sentences issued before Biden’s inauguration, including most recently for the Boston Marathon bomber.
All federal executions are carried out at a facility in Terre Haute.
