An Historical Look at Nitrogen Gas, the Electric Chair, and the Firing Squad as Execution Alternatives

With lethal injec­tion in admin­is­tra­tive cri­sis and fac­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges, some states are look­ing towards abo­li­tion and oth­ers towards alter­na­tive meth­ods of exe­cu­tion.

In an arti­cle for The Marshall Project, reporters Maurice Chammah, Andrew Cohen, and Eli Hager explore the his­to­ries of nitro­gen gas, elec­tro­cu­tion, and the fir­ing squad — dif­fer­ent meth­ods of exe­cu­tion three states have recent­ly adopt­ed as alter­na­tives to lethal injec­tion in the event lethal injec­tion is declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al or exe­cu­tion drugs become unavail­able. The arti­cle notes the sim­i­lar­i­ties between promis­es made by pro­po­nents of each method that their method would be the most effi­cient, pain­less, and humane exe­cu­tion pro­ce­dure, and dis­cuss­es the ambiva­lence engen­dered by each execution method. 

The arti­cle reports that experts have crit­i­cized the man­ner in which Oklahoma researched and adopt­ed its nitro­gen gas alter­na­tive as ​“cav­a­lier.” ​“What Oklahoma is doing is not a sci­en­tif­ic endeav­or,” Emory University anes­the­si­ol­o­gist Joel Zivot is quot­ed as say­ing. ​“It’s non­sense, empirically.” 

Highlighting the his­tor­i­cal con­text of the elec­tric chair in light of Tennessee​’s deci­sion to rein­tro­duce elec­tro­cu­tion, the arti­cle chron­i­cles the ori­gins of the method and con­trasts Thomas Edison’s promise that the elec­tric chair would be pain­less and effi­cient with sto­ries of botched electrocutions. 

Finally, the arti­cle turns to the fir­ing squad, which it quotes Utah Gov. Gary Herbert as call­ing ​“a lit­tle bit grue­some,” even as he approved the law that brought it back as an option in his state. It recounts the unique his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ship between Utah’s use of the fir­ing squad and some forms of Mormon the­ol­o­gy. Finally, it con­trasts the effi­cien­cy of the fir­ing squad with the vis­cer­al respons­es it pro­duces: in the words of Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9^th Circuit, ​“We mask the most vio­lent act that soci­ety can inflict on one of its mem­bers with such an anti­sep­tic veneer. Isn’t death by fir­ing squad, with muti­la­tion and blood­shed, more honest?”