from the justice department. a new directive from attorney general bill barr to reinstate executions of federal death penalties. prisoners for the first time in nearly two decades, pete williams joins me, pete, why now? reporter: well, attorney general barr says it s time to restore the death penalty for the state of victims and their families, under both attorneys general have approved seeking the death penalty, no execution have been carried out in the federal system since 2003 for a couple of reasons. one is court fights over the lethal injection protocol, whether it s constitutional. whether it causes unnecessary suffering and then concern about that protocol. you remember president obama in 2014 ordered a review of the lethal injection system after that notoriously botched execution in oklahoma using two relatively untested drugs. so to get around that problem, attorney general barr has directed the bureau of prisons to use, to scrap that three
problems with this drug, with midazolam. but the supreme court has weighed in specifically on the use of this drug and said it s okay to use midazolam as part of a lethal injection protocol. because of the supreme court s ruling there, that a settled matter? is that part of this case essentially no longer litigatable? no. that supreme court case that you re referring to, that was a very limited case with a highly differential legal review. so what the court is doing there is looking at the determinations made by the trial court and reviewing them under this highly deaf renchal stand differential standard to determine whether or not the findings that the trial court made based on the evidence before it, whether those findings were reasonable. so another court with a different set of evidence, different facts could reach different conclusions. and that s exactly what we just saw happen in ohio. with a more complete record, the court there said midazolam does
raises all sorts of practical and logistical questions, let alone the sort of ethical morass that it s hard to think through on something like this. but the company that makes this drug says it shouldn t be used for this purpose. other states, including oklahoma, which i highlighted earlier, have had a lot of problems with this drug, with midazolam. but the supreme court has weighed in specifically on the use of this drug and said it s okay to use midazolam as part of a lethal injection protocol. because of the supreme court s ruling there, that a settled matter? is that part of this case essentially no longer litigatable? no. that supreme court case that you re referring to, that was a very limited case with a highly differential legal review. so what the court is doing there is looking at the determinations made by the trial court and reviewing them under this highly differential standard to
that it s hard to think through on something like this. but the company that makes this drug says it shouldn t be used for this purpose. other states, including oklahoma, which i highlighted eaier, havead a lot of problems with this drug, with midazolam. but the supreme court has weighed in specifically on the use of this drug and said it s okay to use midazolam as part of a lethal injection protocol. because of the supreme court s ruling there, that a settled matter? is that part of this case essentially no longer litigatable? no. that supreme court case that you re referring to, that was a very limited case with a highly differential legal review. so what the court is doing there is looking at the determinations made by the trial court and reviewing them under this highly differential standard to determine whether or not the findings that the trial court made based on the evidence before it, whether those findings were reasonable.