ST. LOUIS (AP) — With lethal-injection drugs in short
supply and new questions looming about their effectiveness, lawmakers in
some death penalty states are considering bringing back relics of a
more gruesome past: firing squads, electrocutions and gas chambers.
Most
states abandoned those execution methods more than a generation ago in a
bid to make capital punishment more palatable to the public and to a
judicial system worried about inflicting cruel and unusual punishments
that violate the Constitution.
But to some elected officials, the
drug shortages and recent legal challenges are beginning to make lethal
injection seem too vulnerable to complications.
"This isn’t an
attempt to time-warp back into the 1850s or the wild, wild West or
anything like that," said Missouri state Rep. Rick Brattin, who this
month proposed making firing squads an option for executions. "It’s just
that I foresee a problem, and I’m trying to come up with a solution
that will be the most humane yet most economical for our state."
Brattin,
a Republican, said questions about the injection drugs are sure to end
up in court, delaying executions and forcing states to examine
alternatives. It’s not fair, he said, for relatives of murder victims to
wait years, even decades, to see justice served while lawmakers and
judges debate execution methods.
Like Brattin, a Wyoming lawmaker
this month offered a bill allowing the firing squad. Missouri’s attorney
general and a state lawmaker have raised the notion of rebuilding the
state’s gas chamber. And a Virginia lawmaker wants to make electrocution
an option if lethal-injection drugs are not available.
If
adopted, those measures could return states to the more harrowing
imagery of previous decades, when inmates were hanged, electrocuted or
shot to death by marksmen.
States began moving to lethal injection
in the 1980s in the belief that powerful sedatives and heart-stopping
drugs would replace the violent spectacles with a more clinical affair
while limiting, if not eliminating, an inmate’s pain.
The total
number of U.S. executions has declined — from a peak of 98 in 1999 to 39
last year. Some states have turned away from the death penalty
entirely. Many have cases tied up in court. And those that carry on with
executions find them increasingly difficult to conduct because of the
scarcity of drugs and doubts about how well they work.
European drug makers have stopped selling the lethal chemicals to prisons because they do not want their
products used to kill.
At
least two recent executions are also raising concerns about the drugs’
effectiveness. Last week, Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire took 26 minutes to
die by injection, gasping repeatedly as he lay on a gurney with his
mouth opening and closing. And on Jan. 9, Oklahoma inmate Michael Lee
Wilson’s final words were, "I feel my whole body burning."
Missouri
threw out its three-drug lethal injection procedure after it could no
longer obtain the drugs. State officials altered the method in 2012 to
use propofol, which was found in the system of pop star Michael Jackson
after he died of an overdose in 2009.
The anti-death penalty
European Union threatened to impose export limits on propofol if it were
used in an execution, jeopardizing the supply of a common anesthetic
needed by hospitals across the nation. In October, Gov. Jay Nixon stayed
the execution of serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin and ordered the
Missouri Department of Corrections to find a new drug.
Days later,
the state announced it had switched to a form of pentobarbital made by a
compounding pharmacy. Like other states, Missouri has refused to
divulge where the drug comes from or who makes it.
Missouri has
carried out two executions using pentobarbital — Franklin in November
and Allen Nicklasson in December. Neither inmate showed outward signs of
suffering, but the secrecy of the process resulted in a lawsuit and a
legislative inquiry.
Michael Campbell, assistant professor of
criminal justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, said some
lawmakers simply don’t believe convicted murderers deserve any mercy.
"Many
of these politicians are trying to tap into a more populist theme that
those who do terrible things deserve to have terrible things happen to
them," Campbell said.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the
Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C., cautioned that
there could be a backlash.
"These ideas would jeopardize the death
penalty because, I think, the public reaction would be revulsion, at
least from many quarters," Dieter said.
Some states already
provide alternatives to lethal injection. Condemned prisoners may choose
the electric chair in eight states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida,
Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. An inmate
named Robert Gleason Jr. was the most recent to die by electrocution, in
Virginia in January 2013.
Missouri and Wyoming allow for
gas-chamber executions, and Arizona does if the crime occurred before
Nov. 23, 1992, and the inmate chooses that option instead of lethal
injection. Missouri no longer has a gas chamber, but Attorney General
Chris Koster, a Democrat, and Missouri state Sen. Kurt Schaefer, a
Republican, last year suggested possibility rebuilding one. So far,
there is no bill to do so.
Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington
state still allow inmates to choose hanging. The last hanging in the
U.S. was Billy Bailey in Delaware in 1996. Two prisoners in Washington
state have chosen to be hanged since the 1990s — Westley Allan Dodd in
1993 and Charles Rodman Campbell in 1994.
In recent years, there
have been three civilian firing squad executions in the U.S., all in
Utah. Gary Gilmore uttered his famous final words, "Let’s do it," on
Jan. 17, 1977, before his execution, which ended a 10-year unofficial
moratorium on the death penalty across the country.
Convicted killers John Albert Taylor in 1996 and Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010 were also put to death by
firing squad.
Utah is phasing out its use, but the firing squad remains an option there for inmates sentenced prior to
May 3, 2004.
Oklahoma maintains the firing squad as an option, but only if lethal injection and electrocution are
deemed unconstitutional.
In
Wyoming, Republican state Sen. Bruce Burns said death by firing squad
would be far less expensive than building a gas chamber. Wyoming has
only one inmate on death row, 68-year-old convicted killer Dale Wayne
Eaton. The state has not executed anyone in 22 years.
Jackson
Miller, a Republican in the Virginia House of Delegates, is sponsoring a
bill that would allow for electrocution if lethal injection drugs are
not available.
Miller said he would prefer that the state have
easy access to the drugs needed for lethal injections. "But I also
believe that the process of the justice system needs to be fulfilled."
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