A total of six people have now been executed federally since the country's Justice Department began enforcing the death penalty again.

Under Trump, twice as many people have been executed federally as under all his predecessors in total since 1963.

Vialva was sentenced to death 20 years ago for the murder of two white, Christian spouses in 1999. He was pronounced dead at 6:46 p.m. local time on Thursday, after receiving a lethal poison injection at the federal prison system's execution site in Terre Haute, Indiana.

A total of 56 prisoners are being held in federal death cells in the United States.

Of them, 46 percent are black, despite the fact that blacks make up only 13 percent of the country's population.

Most executions in the United States are carried out by the states.