The federal government of the United States of America will resume executing death-row inmates according to the justice department.

Attorney General William Barr released a statement saying he has given the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) orders to schedule the death sentence of five inmates. Barr says the five charged death-row inmates had been convicted of heinous crimes involving murders or rapes of children or the elderly.

The scheduled executions will take place in the months of December 2019 and January 2020.

In a statement released to U.S. media outlets Barr said, “Under administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals.”

“The Justice Department upholds the rule of law – and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

Various rights groups in the country expressed their concern about the schedule of the executions. Casey Stubbs of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says scheduling the executions so close together raised “serious questions about the fairness for each of those cases”.

“We need time to consider and review cases and there’s just absolutely no basis for lumping cases together in this way and rushing forward,” Stubbs added to her statement.

When executions continue on as scheduled, it will mark the end of a 16-year hiatus since the execution of Louis Jones Jr. back in 2003. Jones was a 53-year-old Gulf war veteran who kidnapped, raped and murdered 19-year-old soldier Tracie Joy McBride.