Tennessee execution fails again

Christa Pike's execution by lethal injection failed in Tennessee last week, the second botched attempt in the state this year using the method.

Lawmakers call for alternatives

Tennessee Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said the state should abandon lethal injection for something far more reliable and predictable.

“If we're having this much trouble with this particular means of execution, we need to take it off the table and go to something that's far more reliable and predictable.”

Firing squad named as option

Tennessee lawmakers including Rep. Tim Burchett and House Speaker Cameron Sexton suggested firing squad as an alternative execution method.

Firing squad rarely used

Between nineteen seventy-six and twenty twenty-four, just three people were executed by firing squad in the U.S., all of them in Utah.

Trump approves military firing squad

President Trump approved the U.S. Army's first firing squad execution since World War II, for Nidal Hasan, a former Army major convicted of killing thirteen people at Fort Hood in two thousand nine.

Hasan execution scheduled

Nidal Hasan's execution is scheduled for December third at Fort Hood and will be livestreamed, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Federal firing squads authorised

Trump authorised the use of firing squads in federal executions in April, months before approving Hasan's execution.

South Carolina executes by firing squad

South Carolina put three people to death by firing squad last year, doubling the number of such executions in the entire U.S. over the prior half-century.

Idaho makes firing squad default

Idaho enacted a law this year establishing firing squad as the state's primary method for carrying out the death penalty, following a botched lethal injection execution in twenty twenty-four.

How firing squad works

A person is strapped to a chair with a hood over their head and a target on their heart. Three to five shooters with high-powered rifles fire at the target when signalled.

Five states allow firing squad

Firing squad executions are currently permitted in Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah. Idaho is the only state using it as the default method.

Lethal injection drug crisis

In nineteen seventy-seven, Oklahoma became the first state to authorise lethal injection. In twenty eleven, manufacturer Hospira stopped making sodium thiopental, forcing states to revise protocols.

Pike's failed execution details

Christa Pike was given two doses of pentobarbital in her failed execution. She complained her arms were burning as the drug was administered after several needles failed to access a vein.

Botched lethal injection rates

Research by Amherst College professor Austin Sarat found over seven percent of lethal injection executions between eighteen ninety and twenty ten were botched. Between twenty ten and twenty twenty, the rate was over eight percent.

Firing squad rarely fails

Out of thirty-four firing squad executions between eighteen ninety and twenty ten, Sarat found not one went significantly awry. However, one South Carolina execution in twenty twenty-four missed the heart.

Firing squad called brutal

Professor Sarat argues firing squads remain a brutal form of capital punishment abandoned because they fail to meet evolving standards of decency in society.

“It is a brutal way to kill someone, and its brutality is very obvious.”

Other methods being explored

The Department of Justice directed federal prisons to expand execution methods to include firing squads, gas asphyxiation, and electrocution. Alabama became the first state to use nitrogen gas in twenty twenty-four.

Death penalty overall declining

The death penalty is outlawed in twenty-three states. Ten others have not carried out an execution in the last decade. Sarat says the U.S. is on the road to abolition.

“The United States is on the road to abolition … The death penalty is dying.”