§3596 Implementation of a Sentence of Death

Summary

When someone is sentenced to death under federal law, the Attorney General must hold them until all appeals and sentence reviews are finished and then give them to a United States marshal. The marshal must carry out the sentence using the death-penalty law of the state where the sentence was imposed. If that state has no law for carrying out executions, the court must pick another state whose law does. A woman cannot be executed while she is pregnant. A person who is mentally retarded, or who because of a mental disability cannot understand the death penalty and why it was imposed, must not be executed.