Between 2021 and 2023, 100% of all US executions were carried out by lethal injection. In half last year, 16% were run in other ways as the state becomes creative.
The US expands how it runs
Most death row inmates faced one method of execution in modern history. Now there are many alternative ways to die.
Until the last 18 months, death row inmates in the United States were carried out with lethal injections, one of the main ways of modern history.
Currently, depending on where they are incarcerated, inmates have a virtual buffet of ways to die, including shooting squads, nitrogen gas, electric chairs, and even still fatal injections. In addition to that, Florida passed a law last month that could allow for almost any imaginable way of doing it, including stone shaking and beheading.
It’s a unique situation worldwide. While many countries keep secret about abnormal methods of performing such as machine guns, hanging and beheading, the United States is one of four countries that can utilize three or more official forms of execution, according to Cornell University’s global execution database. The others are Nigeria, Iran and Sudan, the database shows.
Seven of the 44 executions held in the United States have been executed since January 2024 using methods other than lethal injections. That’s 16%. Data tracked at the Death Penalty Center show that 100% of the 53 executions carried out were delivered by fatal injections compared to three years ago.
“It’s an incredible development,” Frank Baumgartner, a death penalty researcher and professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, told USA Today. “Bringing back to these old ways is historically novel for the United States.”
Here’s what you need to know about how the US currently performs and how they compare to other countries around the world:
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What other ways of doing it have led to an increase in?
With lethal injections becoming the latest default method in the United States, the challenges for their use remain constant, with some executions failing, making it difficult for the 23 states where fatal drugs are subject to aggressive death penalty.
It is also the more conservative Supreme Court that will drive the introduction of new methods of execution, three justices appointed in January, which restored federal execution, expanded the application of the death penalty, and signed a very execution order.
Experts agree that the new political landscape has explored other ways that could be difficult to free the nation and endure under a more free court.
This year, death warrants have resulted in executions at almost twice the rate of the past nine years (68% vs. 35%), with the court allowing a stay of about 11% compared to the previous 31%, according to Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Policy Project.
“This court is hostile to the challenges of how to execute,” said Dale Beich, who has represented death row inmates for 37 years and has taught death penalty courses at Arizona State University. “My sense is that the current political situation encourages several national leaders to move forward by bringing people to death and suggesting brutal and cruel ways of doing it from the past.”
Historically, methods of implementation have evolved to become more humane, at least at first glance, Baumgartner said.
Medieval people were attracted, boiled in oil in a quarter, crucified, owned, burned alive, the latter also existed in the United States in the 18th century.
The Wild West Days launchers and hangings then moved to the electric chairs, eventually giving way to the gas chambers, giving them a deadly injection in recent history.
“We’ve never retreated,” Baumgartner said. “It was always a new thing that promised to be more civilized in the various practices of previous generations… that is, it was like a human experiment, and there was no way to withstand that hype.”
Shooting Squad executes Brad Keith Sigmon in South Carolina
South Carolina shooting squad executed Brad Keith Sigmon in 2001 for the parents of his ex-girlfriend’s be-beat.
Fires a growing popularity squad
In South Carolina on April 11, the executioner placed his hood on Mikal Mahdi’s head and fired three guns at his chest. His lawyer, who witnessed the execution, called it a “wild bar,” and called it “a horrifying act that belongs to the darkest chapters of history, not a civilized society.”
Mahdi’s lawyers filed a complaint with the South Carolina Supreme Court, alleging that the enforcement failed as forensic pathologists discovered that only two of the three rounds had collided with Mahdi. The bullets prolonged his suffering, and they say he struck “an unbearable conscious pain and suffering” for up to a minute.
State officials maintain this method as constitutional.
Mahdi’s was his second execution by firing a squad in the US this year, following Brad Keith Sigmon’s in South Carolina in March.
These executions were the only fourth and fifth in US history that marked the first by firing squads in the US since 2010. (The others were in Utah in 1977 and 1996.
In addition to South Carolina, four states have legalized shooting forces as methods of execution in Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and Idaho.
Idaho, which approved the shooting squad in 2023, plans to make the shooting squad the state’s default method next year.
Using Nitrogen Gas Spreads
In January 2024, Alabama made history when it carried out its first execution with nitrogen gas in the United States, tying a mask on the face of inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith, robbing him of oxygen until he suffocated.
Since then, the state has been using a new controversial method for three other inmates, and is about to use it again next week despite objections from some of the Jewish community who claim to listen to Nazi gas chambers during the Holocaust.
“Gus is rooted solely in the shared hatred of the human race of “others” who enabled systematic murder of six million Jews,” wrote Stephen Cooper, a lawyer-turned-death penalty abolitionist who is part of today’s Montgomery advertiser.
Louisiana became the second state to use the method when he executed Jesse Hoffman in March, and Arkansas became the fifth state to approve the method when Gov. Sarah Huckabee signed a law allowing its use.
Ohio and Nebraska legislatures introduced similar laws this year amid concerns that they violated constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishments that even death row inmates.
The witnesses’ accounts for all four Alabama executions describe “suffering that includes several minutes of conscious fear, shaking, gasping, and other evidence of distress.” Witnesses say that the prisoner “squiggles” under restraint, “spraying violently and shaking for four minutes,” and “spitting, spitting, consciously struggling,” she wrote.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall defends the method as “constitutional and effective,” while Louisiana Attorney General Liz Maryll argues that witness statements from news media members are unreliable.
An Ohio official told lawmakers in response to concerns, considering that nitrogen gas executions could be extremely painful, according to a report by the Ohio Capital Journal.
“The constitution does not guarantee a painless death,” said Lou Tobin, executive director of the Ohio State Bar Association of Prosecutors’ Bar, the Journal reported. “We don’t want to cause unnecessary pain to them, but whatever they experience as part of their execution pales in comparison to the pain and suffering they inflict on their victims.”
Nitrogen Hypoxia: What to Know About Problems
Alabama is set to execute prisoner Kenneth Smith due to nitrogen hypoxia. Here’s what you know about how to do it:
The new Florida law concerns death penalty observers
Meanwhile, new Florida laws worry about death penalty observers.
“They’re the ones who are based in Washington, D.C.,” said Robin Maher, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center.
The law, House Bill 903, allows executions using “methods that are not considered unconstitutional” when fatal injections become “impossible or unrealistic.” The U.S. Supreme Court has never found it unconstitutional. In other words, the new law says “basically going anything.”
“That’s surprising for a number of reasons,” she said. “I don’t think Americans are comfortable sitting in the idea that other countries were using the methods they used in the past.
Desantis’ press has not responded to USA Today’s request to clarify the intent of the law and how the state wants to implement it.
Amanda Lee Myers is a senior crime reporter. Follow her on x at @amandaleusat
