Six U.S. Execution Methods and the Disastrous Quest for Humaneness

Abstract

This chapter examines the history and current status of the United States' six execution methods: hanging, firing squad, electrocution, lethal gas, lethal injection, and nitrogen hypoxia. While lethal injection remains the most common technique, inmates have continuously challenged injection's experimental and scientifically dubious procedures on the grounds they are inhumane and unconstitutional. Indeed, this country's ongoing transition from one technique to another—then back again—abounds with legislative, judicial, and correctional evidence detailing why each method failed so appreciably to become more civilized than the method superseded. This chapter concludes that every execution state's desire to ensure the death penalty's survival at any cost propels each execution method's celebrated introduction and disastrous perpetuation.