Methods of Execution

A recent law review arti­cle crit­i­cizes the U.S. Supreme Court’s use of its ​‘shad­ow dock­et’ in cap­i­tal cas­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly in recent years. The Capital Shadow Docket and the Death of Judicial Restraint, by Professor Jenny-Brooke Condon, explains that the Court ​“invokes judi­cial restraint to jus­ti­fy its refusal to sec­ond-guess the cru­el­ty of chal­lenged exe­cu­tion meth­ods or when Justices cite fed­er­al­ism-based ratio­nales for refus­ing to delay state enforce­ment of a death sen­tences … And yet on the Supreme Court’s shad­ow dock­et, the Court’s death penal­ty jurispru­dence is any­thing but restrained.” 

Bills to alter the state’s method of exe­cu­tion and to make the exe­cu­tion process more trans­par­ent failed in Tennessee’s leg­is­la­ture this year as its ses­sion con­clud­ed. In an effort to facil­i­tate exe­cu­tions bogged down by the state’s prob­lems with lethal injec­tion, a bill was pro­posed to give pris­on­ers the option of the fir­ing squad for their exe­cu­tion. Following an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into Tennessee’s lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols, Governor Bill Lee ® had sus­pend­ed exe­cu­tions on January 5, 2023.

In the lat­est episode of Discussions with DPIC, Anne Holsinger, Managing Director of DPIC, inter­views Ron McAndrew (pic­tured), a for­mer Florida Prison Warden who wit­nessed exe­cu­tions using elec­tro­cu­tion and lethal injec­tion in Florida and Texas. He offers reflec­tions on the neg­a­tive impact that exe­cu­tions have on the fam­i­lies of both the vic­tim and the con­demned, the cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers, and on himself.

Idaho will become the fifth state to autho­rize the fir­ing squad as a method of exe­cu­tion and may become the first state to manda­to­ri­ly impose it on a death row pris­on­er since 1976. Idaho’s Governor Brad Little signed HB 186 into law on March 24, 2023, and it goes into effect on July 1. The law gives the direc­tor of the Idaho Department of Correction up to five days after a death war­rant is issued to deter­mine if lethal injec­tion is avail­able. If it is declared unavail­able, the exe­cu­tion will…

On January 26, South Carolina’s Supreme Court ordered the state to turn over infor­ma­tion about its attempts to obtain lethal injec­tion drugs, as part of a suit chal­leng­ing aspects of the state’s meth­ods of execution.

The South Carolina Supreme Court will hear argu­ment one month soon­er on the state’s appeal of a tri­al court rul­ing that declared two of its statu­to­ri­ly meth­ods of exe­cu­tion — death by elec­tric chair and fir­ing squad — unconstitutional.

A fed­er­al dis­trict court issued an order on September 19, 2022 to halt the sched­uled September 22, 2022 exe­cu­tion of Alabama death-row pris­on­er Alan Miller ​“by any method oth­er than nitro­gen hypox­ia,” lead­ing to a series of last-minute appeals by Alabama pros­e­cu­tors and an after-hours exe­cu­tion-night rul­ing by the U.S. Supreme Court to let the exe­cu­tion go for­ward. Alabama sub­se­quent­ly called off the exe­cu­tion when it became appar­ent more than two hours lat­er that exe­cu­tion per­son­nel would be unable to suc­cess­ful­ly set an IV line before the mid­night expi­ra­tion of Miller’s…

Alabama pros­e­cu­tors have told a fed­er­al judge that the state will not exe­cute death-row pris­on­er Alan Miller by nitro­gen hypox­ia on September 22, 2022, three days after sug­gest­ing there was a ​“very good chance” it would be ready to attempt the first-ever exe­cu­tion by that method.

A South Carolina tri­al court has issued an injunc­tion pre­vent­ing the state from car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions using a fir­ing squad or the elec­tric chair, rul­ing that those meth­ods vio­late the state’s con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion against ​“cru­el, unusu­al, and cor­po­ral punishments.”

A deci­sion on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of South Carolina​’s new­ly adopt­ed exe­cu­tion meth­ods now rests in the hands a tri­al court judge after lawyers for death-row pris­on­ers and the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) pre­sent­ed four days of con­flict­ing expert tes­ti­mo­ny about the amount of pain suf­fered dur­ing fir­ing squad and elec­tric chair executions.