Donald Trump's final days in the White House will oversee a rush of federal executions before he leaves.
Five lethal injections are scheduled before President-elect Joe Biden's January 20 inauguration.
The move breaks a 130-year-old precedent of pausing executions amid a change of Governments.
If all five are completed, it would make Trump America’s most prolific executioner leader in more than a century.
He will have overseen the federal executions of 13 death row inmates since July of this year.
The five executions began this week, starting with Brandon Bernard.
The 40-year-old was executed last night by lethal injection for his 2000 conviction in the 1999 kidnapping and killing of youth ministers Todd and Stacie Bagley on a military reservation in Texas.
Reality star Kim Kardashian West was asking her millions of followers to help her stop the execution.
"Brandon Bernard, a 40-year-old father is going to be executed by our federal government. Having gotten to know Brandon, I am heartbroken about this execution," Kardashian West tweeted.
"I'm calling on Donald Trump to grant Brandon a commutation and allow him to live out his sentence in prison.”
Tonight, 56-year-old Alfred Bourgeois is scheduled to die.
Both men scheduled were to be put to death at a penitentiary in Terre Haute,
Indiana.
Convicted killer Lisa Montgomery, 52, is the only woman of the five and is scheduled to die on January 12 at the all-male prison - the only federal facility that currently conducts executions.
Despite facing fierce opposition Attorney General William Barr has defended the executions saying his justice department is simply upholding existing law.
