Earlier in July, for the first time in 17 years, the US federal government began carrying out executions - putting three men convicted of murder to death in a single week after the Supreme Court green lighted a new lethal injection protocol. The next federal execution is scheduled to take place in late August.
"Attorney General William P. Barr today directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to schedule the executions of two federal death-row inmates who were each convicted of murder," the release said on Friday.
The two inmates include William Emmett LeCroy, who raped and murdered Joann Lee Tiesler, a 30-year-old nurse, in 2001. He is scheduled to be executed on 22 September.
Christopher Andre Vialva, who murdered youth ministers Todd and Stacie Bagley in 1999, is scheduled to be executed on 24 September.
The Washington Times reported that these two executions scheduled for September would make it the most death-row inmates the federal government has put to death in one year since 1938.
Although several states still use capital punishment, inmates on death row in federal penitentiaries spent decades in limbo until Barr ended a de facto moratorium on executions of federal inmates.
More than 60 federal prisoners are awaiting execution, according to media reports. They include Dylann Roof, the gunman who massacred nine worshippers at a church service in the state of California in 2015.
