Forms of execution

SIGNIFICANCE: As the legality of capital punishment in the United States drew increasing criticism during the twentieth century that continued into the twenty-first century, technological innovations were sought in order to carry out executions in more humane and dignified manners.

Executions were once conducted in public and in ways intended to be both brutal and disrespectful of the accused. Burnings, crucifixions, and dismemberments sought not only death but also the total annihilation of the condemned through the destruction of the body. Societies of the past two centuries have shown increasing concern for the dignity of the individual, extending this concern even to those convicted of heinous crimes.

Where capital punishment remains a part of the legal system, the state has faced the issue of how to take a convict’s life in a way that is different from—and morally superior to—the crime for which the prisoner stands condemned. Resolution of this question has involved searching for a method of execution that inflicts a minimum of physical pain upon the condemned and that respects human dignity by avoiding spectacle and disfigurement of the body. This concern also extends to execution team members who perform the act of terminating a life and to the community at large, in whose name the execution will be carried out. Critics charge that this has been a futile pursuit and that the only way human dignity can be honored is by eliminating capital punishment altogether.

Hanging and Firing Squads

Death by the hangman’s noose was the dominant form of execution in colonial America, and it remained the most common method used until the turn of the twentieth century. Hangings could be conducted at the local level of government. At first, they were elaborately staged public events. The execution process included a ritualized procession from the jail to the nearby gallows, speeches by local officials, and a sermon on the depravity of human nature and the wages of sin from the local clergy. The condemned was offered a chance to make a public statement, with the expectation of a demonstration of contrition, although not all prisoners performed according to script.

Finally, the condemned would be hooded and the noose affixed to the neck. A trap door was sprung from beneath the prisoner, causing him them drop until their fall was arrested by the rope. Death came through the severance of the spinal cord and was thought to be fast and painless. However, all executions involve some risk of error. Calculating the proper drop of the prisoner turned out to be an imperfect science, and botched executions were common. Too short a drop produced a slow death by strangulation, with its accompanying struggle, while too long a drop resulted in decapitation of the prisoner. Largely for this reason, states began to remove hangings from public view, and by the late nineteenth century, they were more often carried out behind prison walls by a centralized and professional state bureaucracy. In 2024, hanging was legal only in New Hampshire, and then ony as a secondary opition.

Death by shooting has played a minor role in American executions because of its inevitable disfigurement of the body and the significant possibility of botched executions. As of 2024, five states—Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah—allowed death by firing squad, but only if the use of lethal injection cannot be carried out due to other forms of execution being declared unconstitutional or lethal-injection drugs being unavailable. Only three state-sanctioned executions between 1977 and 2024 were by firing squad.

Twentieth-Century Innovations and Twenty-First Century Executions

The possibility of botched executions and a growing public discomfort with capital punishment in general led states to seek more technologically advanced methods of execution that promised to be fast, painless, and reliable. They turned to electricity and chemistry.

New York carried out the first electrocution in 1890, and the electric chair was soon found throughout the United States. Prisoners were strapped to wooden chairs, and current was passed through their bodies in sufficient quantities to cause death by cardiac arrest. This technology was expensive and required expertise in the new science of electricity, resulting in the further centralization of executions. Later conducted indoors, usually at night, deep within state penitentiaries and at the hands of a professional bureaucracy, the public in whose name executions were carried out was by now insulated from the process. The few witnesses permitted by officials continued to report gruesome errors, however, and it became apparent that electrocutions did not guarantee a speedy and painless death as had been promised. Some states had continued to authorize electrocution as a secondary method by 2024.

Nevada, in 1921, became the first state to employ lethal gas. The condemned was secured to a seat inside a small, airtight chamber. Pellets of sodium cyanide were dropped into a small container of sulfuric acid, producing cyanide gas. The gas blocked the ability of the body to absorb oxygen, producing unconsciousness followed by death from asphyxiation. Even when carried out properly, prisoners were frequently observed to struggle, sometimes violently, as they reacted to the gas. This method never spread beyond a small number of western and southern states. Twelve executions between 1977 and 2024 were by lethal gas.

Lethal injection, the primary mode of execution as of 2024, dates from 1982, when Texas carried out the first lethal injection. Its apparent effectiveness in delivering a humane execution resulted in its rapid spread. The condemned is strapped to a gurney, and deadly chemicals are injected intravenously. Sodium thiopental, a fast-acting sedative, is typically administered first, followed by pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscles and causes the collapse of the lungs. Finally, potassium chloride is administered to stop the prisoner’s heart. Death comes within minutes, and the convict does not struggle, whether because of the loss of consciousness or because of paralysis. The procedure is clinical, even to the point of applying alcohol to the prisoner’s skin before inserting the needle, to avoid infection.

However, beginning in 2011, Hospira, the only manufacturer in the country approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make sodium thiopental, stopped producing the anesthetic following a warning regarding contamination. While some correctional facilities resorted to buying the drug from overseas and other local buyers who had managed to get their hands on a supply by various means, others were forced to experiment with alternative drugs in order to continue performing executions. Some states, such as Oklahoma, settled for administering pentobarbital, made by the company Lundbeck, instead. Though it proved to be a suitable substitute, Lundbeck eventually issued distribution controls to prevent middlemen from selling the pentobarbital to prisons due to pressure from activist groups against the death penalty. Other states had begun using the sedative midazolam, reporting that it was effective despite claims from some experts that the drug could not guarantee the state necessary to be free from pain. The concern over the use of this drug escalated after the highly publicized botched execution in Oklahoma of convict Clayton Lockett in 2014, during which the prisoner was in visible agony and took a longer amount of time to die. Several executions had been delayed on account of the struggle to adjust to the shortage of sodium thiopental, and other executions involving experimental cocktails had also been botched, furthering the debate and concerns around the procedure. In March 2015, as a backup option, the state of Utah passed a bill reinstating the firing squad as a means of execution.

By the early 2020s, because the availability of the lethal injection drugs typically used for executions remained inconsistent, some states had voted to legally allow asphyxiation through the use of nitrogen gas as an alternative option. In 2018, Alabama became the third state to authorize this execution option, preceded by Mississippi and Oklahoma. In January 2024, Alabama became the first state to use nitrogen gas to execute a prisoner. In 2020, it was announced that the state of Oklahoma, which had instituted a moratorium on executions beginning in 2015, would be resuming them once more after adjusting protocols and acquiring what was deemed a suitable supply of lethal injection drugs.

Whether death by injection is, in fact, painless has been hotly contested, as observers have no way of knowing. Critics charge that the process is meant to cloak the killing of the prisoner in the trappings of medicine—to anesthetize a society no longer comfortable with state-sanctioned homicide—yet risks silent suffering by the condemned. It has not escaped their notice that several states that employ lethal injection to execute prisoners forbid the use of pancuronium bromide by veterinarians to euthanize pets.

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