THE U.S. Justice Department last week reinstated a two-decades-long dormant policy allowing the federal government’s use of capital punishment and immediately scheduled the executions for five federal death-row inmates.

“Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the president,” Attorney General William Barr said in a statement.

The last federal execution took place in 2003. Since then, protracted litigation over the drugs historically used in lethal injection executions prevented the government from continuing the practice, according to Justice Department officials.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called for increasing the use of the death penalty for drug traffickers and mass shooters, a request the department has since laid the groundwork to carry out.

There are currently 62 federal inmates on death row, including Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who planted a deadly bomb at the Boston Marathon in 2013.

Of those 62, 41.9 percent are black, 43.6 percent are white, 11.3 percent are Latino, and Asians and Native Americans each make up 1.6 percent of the federal death row population, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The Justice Department said it has scheduled executions for five federal inmates who have been convicted of horrific murders and sex crimes, with more planned in the future.

All five will be executed by lethal injection using a single drug: pentobarbital.

The federal inmates include Daniel Lewis Lee, a white supremacist who was convicted in Arkansas for murdering a family of three, including an 8-year-old girl. Lee will be the first one to be executed, with the date set for Dec. 9, 2019.

(SD-Agencies)

The Justice Department said all five executions will take place at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.

“Each of these inmates has exhausted their appellate and post-conviction remedies,” the department added