Florida carries out its 26th execution in little more than 15 months

 The 14th Execution of 2026

Richard Knight from Florida was convicted of fatally stabbing his cousin’s girlfriend and the couple’s 4-year-old daughter was put to death on May 21, 2026, the seventh person executed by the state this year, reported The Associated Press.

Knight, 47, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. Knight was convicted of first-degree murder in the June 2002 killings of Odessia Stephens and the couple’s daughter, Hanessia Mullings.

When the death chamber curtain went up at the scheduled 6 p.m. execution time, Knight was already strapped down with arms extended and an IV line in place. Asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Knight said, “I want to give thanks to Yahweh, who is the most high.”

The execution began immediately afterward. Knight closed his eyes and barely moved as the drugs began flowing. After about 10 minutes, a medic was called in and Knight was declared dead.

Florida’s seventh execution of the year followed a record 19 executions in the state in 2025. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis oversaw more executions in a single year in 2025 than any other Florida governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. The previous record was eight in 2014. And all told, a total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025.

According to court records, Knight had been living in Coral Springs, near Fort Lauderdale, with his cousin, his cousin’s girlfriend and their daughter in 2000. Knight and Stephens frequently argued about Knight living there. One evening while Knight’s cousin was at work, Stephens told Knight he would have to move out the next morning. Knight became angry and stabbed Stephens multiple times and then attacked the young girl, the records show.

Hans Mullings, who was Stephen’s boyfriend and the father of the 4-year-old, told reporters after witnessing Thursday’s execution that his family still grieves the loss.

“The pain never leaves,” Mullings said. “We love them still, and we can’t stop loving them. We miss them a lot.”

Stephen’s sisters and mother didn’t attend the execution, but provided a statement exprssing closure.

“Words cannot express the profound sense of peace and finality we feel today,” it said. “While this does not fill the empty space in our hearts, the closing of this long, painful chapter allows us to fully focus on honoring the beautiful lives of Odessia and Hanessia.”

“Richard, may our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ grant you the mercy you failed to give our loved ones whom you so brutally took from us that night,” the statement added.

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Knight’s final appeal without comment.

That came shortly after the planned execution of a Tennessee inmate, Tony Carruthers, was called off. Tennessee officials said a team quickly established Carruthers’ main IV line for a lethal injection but couldn’t find a suitable vein for a backup line required under the state’s execution protocol. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee later announced the state would not try again for at least a year to execute Carruthers, who was convicted of killing three people.

Also this week, an Arizona prisoner convicted of killing another man by throwing gasoline at him and lighting a match was put to death Wednesday. Leroy Dean McGill, 63, received a lethal injection at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence for the death of Charles Perez, who was attacked at a north Phoenix apartment in 2002.

Florida, meanwhile, is preparing to conduct another execution on June 2. Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, was convicted of fatally beating of his girlfriend’s infant daughter in 1996. All Florida executions are by lethal injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, officials say.

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Arizona carries out its first execution of 2026

 The 13th Execution of 2026

An Arizona prisoner convicted of killing another man by throwing gasoline at him and lighting a match was put to death on May 20, 2026, the first of three executions planned this week around the U.S., reported The Associated Press.

Leroy Dean McGill, 63, was pronounced dead at 10:26 a.m. PDT following a lethal injection at the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence. McGill was convicted of murder in the death of Charles Perez, who was attacked with his girlfriend in a north Phoenix apartment on July 13, 2002.

It was the first lethal injection carried out this year in Arizona, and McGill didn’t appear to be resisting at any point during the procedure. After a lethal dose of pentobarbital began flowing, he began breathing heavily and made a snoring sound. And, about 21 minutes after the IV insertion process began, he was pronounced dead.

While the state was criticized for having difficulty in inserting IV lines during executions in 2022, it took just one attempt on each of McGill’s arms to successfully insert IVs.

“Today’s process went according to plan,” said John Barcello, deputy director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry. Barcello quoted McGill’s last words as: “I just want to thank everyone for being so accommodating and nice.”

Before the injection began, McGill looked at the witnesses, smiled and nodded. Media witness Josh Kelety from The Associated Press said he heard McGill at one point say: “I’m going home soon.”

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, whose office pressed for the execution to be carried out, said her thoughts were with the victims.

Media witness Sean Rice from Phoenix television station KPN said the execution was carried out smoothly.

“I didn’t see any issue at all finding a vein on either arm,” he said. Rice said he also observed a slight twitching on the right side of McGill’s head about four minutes before the inmate was pronounced dead.

Authorities said that in 2002 McGill threw gasoline at Perez and Perez’s girlfriend, Nova Banta, as they sat on a sofa in the apartment, setting them on fire. Perez and Banta had accused McGill of stealing a gun from the apartment before the attack. At the time, McGill was using methamphetamine and hadn’t slept in several days.

Banta survived, but Perez died.

Thirteen people have been executed so far this year in the United States.

At the Arizona trial, Banta testified that McGill had told her and Perez not to talk behind people’s backs. Before they could respond, McGill lit them on fire, authorities said.

Perez and Banta ran out of the apartment. Another man who lived in the apartment used a blanket to put out the flames on Banta, who suffered third-degree burns over three-quarters of her body. Perez died later at a hospital in extreme pain, prosecutors said.

Banta identified McGill as the attacker at trial.

Jurors deliberated for less than an hour before convicting McGill of murder in Perez’s death in October 2004. He also was convicted of attempted murder for attacking Banta, arson and endangerment of people who escaped without injuries when the fire forced them to flee the apartment and a nearby unit where flames spread.

McGill’s lawyers had argued for leniency by presenting evidence about abuse he suffered as a child as well as mental impairment and psychological immaturity. The jury ultimately returned the death sentence.

This spring, McGill’s lawyers made a last-ditch bid to get him resentenced, but a lower-court judge rejected it. The Arizona Supreme Court also declined a request from McGill’s lawyers to postpone the execution.

McGill, who declined an interview request from The Associated Press, waived his right to seek clemency.

Arizona last applied the death penalty in 2025, executing Richard Kenneth Djerf for the 1993 killings of four members of a Phoenix family and Aaron Gunches for the 2002 fatal shooting of his girlfriend’s ex-husband.

The state carried out three executions in 2022 following a nearly eight-year hiatus brought on by difficulties obtaining execution drugs and by criticism that a 2014 execution was botched. In that 2014 execution, Joseph Wood was injected with 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours, leading him to snort repeatedly and gasp hundreds of times before he died.

The state’s current execution protocol calls for administering two syringes of pentobarbital, a powerful sedative.

With McGill’s death, Arizona now has 108 prisoners on death row.

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Corruption by any other name is still corruption

Has there ever been an episode of presidential corruption so blatant and threatening to constitutional order? Certainly not in modern times, suggests The New York Times Editorial Board. President Trump’s Justice Department is using taxpayer money to create a $1.8 billion political slush fund. Ostensibly set up to compensate those who the department claims have “suffered weaponization and lawfare,” it will in fact reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.

The fund manages to combine three of Mr. Trump’s most alarming behaviors. One, it is an obvious form of corruption, coming from a president who has used his office to enrich himself, his family and his allies. Two, the fund continues his pattern of using the Justice Department as an enforcer to punish his perceived opponents and protect his friends and allies. Three, the fund is his latest attempt to rewrite history about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.

It is worth pausing to put the fund into the larger context of Mr. Trump’s political project: He is destroying pillars of American democracy to empower himself. He claims elections are legitimate only if he wins. He uses federal law enforcement to investigate and prosecute his perceived enemies. He purges his party of officials who defy him. He describes members of the other party and civil society as traitors and enemies. He incentivizes his supporters to break the law on his behalf and rewards them when they do. He directs his allies to change election rules to keep his party in power.

Mr. Trump’s project has not yet succeeded, at least not fully. Many Americans — in the judicial system, in Congress, in state governments and elsewhere — continue to stand up for democracy and oppose his autocratic ambitions. By now, though, nobody should have illusions about 

The fund’s existence is a story of political self-dealing. It is nominally the product of a flimsy personal lawsuit that Mr. Trump filed this year against the Internal Revenue Service, which he oversees, over the leaking of his tax returns during his first term. That lawsuit led to an absurd negotiation, in which the lawyers on one side worked for Mr. Trump the citizen and those on the other side worked for Mr. Trump the president.

Adding to absurdity, the government lawyers reported to Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, who previously worked as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer. A federal judge in Miami helping to oversee the case, Kathleen Williams, pointed out that the two sides were not adversaries, which called into question the process. Even Mr. Trump acknowledged the situation shortly after filing the suit by saying, “I am supposed to work out a settlement with myself.”

Yet the talks proceeded because Mr. Trump’s Justice Department was in charge. Unsurprisingly, they led to a deal that was extremely favorable to him.

In exchange for the president’s dropping the suit against the I.R.S., both he and his supporters will receive government handouts. For Mr. Trump, the handout comes in the form of permission to have cheated on his taxes. The government has granted him and his family immunity from ongoing audits of his tax payments. He has a long history of using questionable accounting maneuvers, and the audits could have cost him more than $100 million, experts have said. Now they will cost him nothing.

For his supporters, the handouts will come from the slush fund. The Justice Department will tap a permanent stream of revenue that Congress created in 1956, known as the Judgment Fund, to settle lawsuits against the federal government. As Paul Figley, a former Justice Department official, noted, the new fund appears to be both legal and at odds with Congress’s intent. “It’s horrible policy,” Mr. Figley told The Times.

The department has allocated $1.8 billion for what it calls, in an Orwellian flourish, an Anti-Weaponization Fund and invited applications from people who have been targeted for “political, personal or ideological reasons.” Mr. Blanche — who holds his position as acting attorney general largely because of his willingness to use federal power in service of Mr. Trump’s personal whims — will appoint a five-member board, with congressional leaders given input on one of the five. Mr. Trump can fire any of the members at any time.

To understand who is likely to receive payments, look at who has previously received settlements from the Justice Department. Michael Flynn, who was briefly Mr. Trump’s national security adviser in 2017, received $1.25 million, even though he pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents. The family of Ashli Babbitt, who participated in the Jan. 6 riot, and whom federal agents shot as she and others approached the House floor, received nearly $5 million, even though investigators cleared the shooters of wrongdoing. The Trump administration is paying off people who committed violence and crimes, as long as they are Trump allies.

The fund’s timeline is the giveaway of how Mr. Trump plans to use it. The Justice Department said the fund would stop processing claims on Dec. 15, 2028, weeks before the president is to leave office, ensuring the money is distributed while he still holds the power to fire anyone who objects. The window is precisely the window of Mr. Trump’s authority.

Even some of Mr. Trump’s usual defenders are unhappy. Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, meekly said that he was “not a big fan” of the fund. Brian Morrissey, the Treasury Department’s general counsel, resigned within hours of the announcement, seven months after the Senate had confirmed him.

Providing payoffs is only part of the point. Another, according to Mr. Blanche, is “ensuring this never happens again.” What, exactly, is “this”? The evenhanded enforcement of the law.

The Trump administration has already fired federal agents who did their duties by investigating the president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Mr. Trump has issued blanket clemency to more than 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters, some of whom may soon receive payments. His Justice Department secured an indictment of James Comey, the former F.B.I. director, on dubious charges as retribution for his role in the investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s Russia ties. The fund continues the effort to turn law enforcement into a tool of raw political power.

The fund also encourages future lawlessness on Mr. Trump’s behalf. It sends the message that he will use his power not only to shield people who break the law from accountability but also to shower benefits on them. Just as punishment is a deterrent, rewards are an incentive.

After President Richard Nixon’s abuses in the Watergate scandal, Congress and the executive branch built rules and traditions to ensure that federal agencies, especially the Justice Department, operated in the public interest, rather than that of the president. Mr. Trump has tried to break this system. Once he is gone, it will need to be rebuilt, and better than before. He has exposed and exploited its flaws and gaps. Unless they are filled, Mr. Trump’s corruption and perversion of justice risk becoming the norm.

In the meantime, Americans should be cleareyed about what the president is doing. He is taking their money and showering it on criminals.

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'Philadelphia Lawyer' a misnomer in criminal post-conviction realm

A Philadelphia Inquirer and ProPublica investigation found case after case in criminal post-conviction actions where court-appointed attorneys did minimal work to examine their clients’ claims and rejected what later turned out to be legitimate legal issues. The findings reveal that Philadelphia’s post-conviction system repeatedly delayed or denied justice for wrongfully convicted people who then spent years or decades behind bars.

The news organizations reviewed 250 of Philadelphia’s reversed convictions and sentences since 2018 in violent felony cases. Wagner was one of at least 50 people whose lawyers said there was no basis to challenge their cases, only for judges to later decide they deserved new trials or sentences. 

While in some cases the exonerating evidence did not emerge until years after the no-merit letter was filed, a majority were tossed out based on issues the PCRA lawyers overlooked or rejected. 

Three years of invoices appointed attorneys submitted to the court, covering 83 homicide PCRA cases in which the lawyers filed no-merit letters, show the extent of lawyers’ efforts.

Those attorneys did not arrange a single phone call with the client, contact the trial lawyer or obtain the police or prosecution case files about three-quarters of the time. Those case files have been a key source of evidence in overturned convictions since Philadelphia’s district attorney began making them available to lawyers six years ago.

Lawyers Did Little Before Declaring Cases Meritless

Homicide cases are the most serious ones a lawyer can handle. But many lawyers handling homicide Post Conviction Relief Act cases never spoke with their clients before rejecting their claims. Here’s how often they took basic steps in 83 cases.

Data is drawn from all invoices submitted in 2023, ’24 and ’25 for no-merit letters filed in a total of 83 homicide cases.

In some cases, records show the attorneys rejected their clients’ claims just days or weeks after being appointed and submitted filings with factual errors, including the wrong defendant’s name. They filed no-merit letters despite red flags, such as a client’s co-defendant having already been exonerated or a detective who locked the client up having been arrested for assaulting witnesses or tampering with evidence. 

Daniel Anders, the administrative judge who oversees Philadelphia’s court-appointed counsel system, did not respond to requests for comment. 

Judge Barbara McDermott, who oversaw many PCRA cases before recently retiring from Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas, defended the system and said it is working as intended. 

“We’re never going to be a perfect system, but within the system we’ve had we’ve done the best we can,” she said, adding that no-merit letters play an important role in shutting down pointless challenges. “At some point, there has to be finality to cases.”

In Pennsylvania, a person looking to challenge their conviction starts by filing a PCRA petition, often handwritten on a state-issued form. If it’s a person’s first PCRA, a judge will assign a lawyer to amend it. 

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CREATORS: Mangione Ruling Spurs Re-Examination of Exclusionary Rule

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
May 19, 2026

Why would material evidence in the possession of a murder suspect be inadmissible at trial?

Simple — the exclusionary rule. The recent decision by Judge Gregory Carro of the New York Supreme Court in the Luigi Mangione prosecution has spurred interest in what the exclusionary rule does and if it is still needed.

The rule was first established in federal court in 1914. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal law enforcement officers could not use evidence obtained in violation of a suspect's Fourth Amendment rights in federal criminal trials. Prior to 1914, law enforcement officers, although compelled by the U.S. Constitution not to violate an accused's rights, could nonetheless violate those rights with impunity.

The state version of the rule didn't come about for another 47 years. I wrote about the exclusionary rule for Creators in 2025, and it is worth reexamining. In 1957, Cleveland, Ohio, police officers went to the home of Dollree Mapp looking for a suspect in a criminal investigation. She refused to let the police in without a warrant.

The police left, and when they returned, they were armed with a "fake" warrant. Chicanery took the place of real police work. Instead of going to a judge to get a warrant, the police drew up their own. After entering Mapp's home, police conducted a search and confiscated obscene material, resulting in Mapp's arrest.

As a result of the police misconduct, the U.S. Supreme Court provided a remedy — the exclusion of illegally obtained evidence from admission in a criminal prosecution — resulting in a dismissal of the charges.

Many Supreme Court observers suggested that the Mapp decision would be detrimental to law enforcement. The courts would be inundated with challenges and the guilty would go free in droves. That never happened.

What the exclusionary rule accomplished was a higher standard of police training and, in turn, police work. Ironically, the late Justice Antonin Scalia cited "increasing professionalism of police" as a reason for the exclusionary rule's obsolescence.

Scalia's argument didn't make sense then and doesn't make sense today. Without the exclusionary rule, an individual's constitutional rights would be ignored. Law enforcement training would turn on a dime.

For now, the exclusionary rule is still around. Mangione's case is illustrative of why it is still needed. There was a nationwide manhunt for Mangione after the brazen assassination of insurance executive Brian Thompson on a New York City sidewalk. Mangione was recognized by a McDonald's Restaurant employee in Altoona, Pa.

The police were called and Mangione was detained after they arrived. Mangione had a backpack that was moved to a table approximately nine feet away. He was patted down for officer safety, both of which are appropriate under the Fourth Amendment.

However, the police went further and searched his backpack without obtaining a search warrant. They said they needed to make sure there was not a bomb in the bag. Prosecutors argued that the circumstances created an exception to the rule requiring a warrant. The court didn't buy it. Judge Carro ruled that the search of Mangione's bag at McDonald's violated his constitutional rights.

As a result, by way of the exclusionary rule, evidence including a gun magazine, a cellphone, a passport, a wallet and a computer chip, all found in the backpack, is not admissible at trial.

However, a second search of the bag at the police station revealed a gun linked to the crime and Mangione's manifesto attacking the insurance industry. The second search of the same bag without a search warrant is constitutionally permissible. The police may conduct a warrantless inventory search to record the suspect's belongings. As a result, the gun and manifesto are admissible at trial.

The exclusionary rule promotes integrity in the criminal justice system — even strong evidence of guilt, in a high-profile killing, cannot be used if police violate the Constitution to get that evidence.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book, "The Executioner's Toll," 2010, was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Texas reaches dubious milestone--the state's 600th execution since 1982

 The 12th Execution of 2026

A man who experts for both prosecutors and defense attorneys had said was intellectually disabled became the 600th person executed in Texas since 1982, put to death on May 14, 2026 for the killing of a 77-year-old retired college professor, according to The Associated Press.

Edward Busby Jr. was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m. following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay over his disabilities claims. The execution capped a series of last-minute legal efforts by Busby’s attorneys seeking to spare his life.

Busby was condemned for the suffocation death of Laura Lee Crane, a retired professor from Texas Christian University. Prosecutors said she was abducted from a grocery store parking lot in January 2004 and left to suffocate in the trunk of her car with duct tape wrapped heavily around her face, covering her mouth and nose.

The execution was the 600th in Texas since it resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1982. Busby also was the fourth person executed this year in Texas and the 12th nationwide. Earlier Thursday, Oklahoma executed Raymond Johnson for killing his ex-girlfriend and her 7-month-old daughter nearly 20 years ago.

When asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Busby repeatedly apologized and asked for forgiveness.

“I am so sorry for what happened,” he said while strapped to the death chamber gurney. “Miss Crane was a lovely woman. I never meant anything bad to happen to her.” He said he wished he could “take it all back” and added he had “no right to get in that car.”

“I’ll take the blame if that helps.”

He said he had surrendered his life to God and urged a sister, who was praying and watching through a window a short distance away, to find a church and “pick up your cross.”

“I’m here because this is the will of God,” he said before the injection got underway.

As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began flowing, he took a sharp breath, closed his eyes and gasped. Then he made snoring sounds that got progressively quieter. Within 40 seconds, all movement and sounds ceased. He was pronounced dead 38 minutes afterward.

Busby’s execution had been in doubt after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week issued a stay of execution to further review his claims of intellectual disability. But the Supreme Court overturned the stay Thursday at the request of the Texas Attorney General’s Office. The attorney general’s office had argued that similar appeals were previously rejected and were “meritless” and based on “conflicting evidence.”

Busby’s lawyers quickly sought another stay but it was denied by a lower court.

The Supreme Court in 2002 had barred the execution of intellectually disabled people. But it has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities.

Busby’s attorneys had argued against putting him to death because a defense expert as well as one hired by the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, both found he was intellectually disabled.

The district attorney’s office had previously recommended Busby’s sentence be reduced to life in prison. But the trial judge in Busby’s case disagreed with the findings of intellectual disability and in 2023 upheld the death sentence.

In a statement Wednesday, the district attorney’s office said it requested Thursday’s execution date because it believed that under current law Busy was not intellectually disabled.

Two other prior execution dates for Busby had been delayed by courts.

Prosecutors have said Busby and his co-defendant, Kathleen Latimer, abducted Crane in her car from a Fort Worth grocery store parking lot and later put in her vehicle’s trunk as they drove around. Prosecutors said she died in the trunk after suffocating from having 23 feet (7 meters) of duct tape wrapped over her entire face.

Busby was subsequently arrested in Oklahoma City driving Crane’s car and led authorities to her body in Oklahoma just north of the state line with Texas.

Latimer is in prison serving a life sentence for murder.

Bryan Mark Rigg, an author and historian who represented the Crane family as a witness to the execution, said they “neither support or oppose the death penalty. However, they are united in their respect for the rule of law.”

Rigg said as a child he was a student of Crane, who for decades helped children overcome learning disabilities and “was discarded in a field like a piece of trash.” He said the execution was not about vengeance but “accountability under the law and about remembering the life of an extraordinary educator.”

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Firing squads make a comeback, stripping away the 'veneer of medical theater'

 Maurice Chammah writing for The Marshall Project: 

There is no tidy way to kill someone. But for the last century, Americans have searched for a way to carry out the death penalty that minimizes suffering while lessening trauma for executioners and witnesses. Those efforts have gone so poorly that we’re returning to a visceral execution method from the past.

Last month, the Justice Department encouraged federal prison officials to consider execution by firing squad amid a nationwide struggle to secure lethal injection drugs. South Carolina has already used firing squads three times recently, placing hoods over the prisoner’s head and firing rifles at a red bull’s-eye placed over the heart. Four other states have authorized the method, and Idaho is renovating its execution chamber to accommodate firing squads.

This article was published in partnership with The New York Times.

There is no question that killing a person in this manner is brutal. Witnesses have described the crack of rifles and the eerie silence as blood spills from the condemned person’s chest. It is a testament to the brutality of our execution system that firing squads may also be more effective and reliable than lethal injection, which is the most widely used execution method. Dr. James Williams, an emergency room physician and a firearms expert who has testified about firing squad executions in courtrooms across the country, told me last year that “there is a lot of evidence that the near-instant loss of blood pressure means no blood gets to the brainstem, and there is a rapid loss of consciousness.”

Williams is largely opposed to capital punishment, and he believes in minimizing suffering for executions that do occur. He told me an even faster method would be to fire a bullet into the brainstem, leading to death in milliseconds. As horrifying as that sounds, it shows how much we’ve shrouded the inevitable violence of the death penalty with syringes and barbiturates. Autopsies have indicated that many prisoners who looked peaceful as they were dying were actually paralyzed and may have felt as if they were drowning.

Firing squad executions strip away the veneer of medical theater.

Some Americans point to the horrific nature of the crimes being punished in death penalty cases and say: The more violent the execution, the better. But support for capital punishment, which is legal in 27 states, has been declining for decades. Polling shows that just over half of Americans support it, down from 80 percent in 1994. There are many reasons for this drop, among them high-profile botched executions. A wave of bloody spectacles, in multiple states and at the federal level, would be a clearer test of how deep support for the death penalty actually runs.

Before the early 20th century, the United States did not have much trouble accepting the gruesome sights, sounds and smells of executions. At the country’s founding, the violence of firing squads was part of the point; deserters were executed this way during the Revolutionary War and Civil War to deter other soldiers from absconding. In 1936, around 20,000 people attended the country’s last public hanging, an event that newspapers later decried as a “carnival of sadism.”

Firing squads and hangings mostly disappeared in the early 20th century, as public officials moved executions behind closed doors. There was a concern that public executions looked too much like the lynchings they were supposed to supplant.

Firing squad and gas executions resurface in U.S.

While reporting for a book on the death penalty a few years ago, I learned that we turned away from more brutal methods like firing squads and hangings because of the country’s growing uneasiness about the death penalty itself.

Over time, lawmakers gave voice to the public’s collective queasiness as they tried to move away from lurid spectacles. “We’ve gone from stoning to crucifixion, to quartering, to burning people at the stake, to hanging,” a Texas state legislator, Ben Z. Grant, told his colleagues in a 1977 hearing. He worried that the latest method, the electric chair, had “become a circus sideshow.” Prison officials had to place masks on prisoners to spare witnesses from having to see their eyes pop out.

Grant proposed that Texas move to lethal injection — which had proven effective in veterinary medicine — as a more modern and humane method, and many states followed suit. But the effort to improve executions eventually had the opposite effect: In recent years, a significant number of people have convulsed on the death chamber gurney. (Firing squad executions are less likely to be botched, although last year South Carolina executioners missed a condemned man’s heart, according to a study of his autopsy.)

These botched lethal injections are an indirect consequence of wariness from the medical industry, as some doctors and nurses, citing ethical concerns, refuse to play a role in setting intravenous lines or administering drugs, leaving those with less training to do their best. Most drug companies have refused to let their products play a role in killing people, which has forced prison officials to turn to less reputable manufacturers and use more experimental drug cocktails.

During this period, some states abolished the death penalty and a few governors paused executions, often citing issues with lethal injection protocols. Many leaders also looked to more transparently harsh methods. Alabama started pumping nitrogen gas through face masks. Arizona refurbished a chamber to fill with cyanide gas, a method so similar to the gas chambers in Auschwitz that a Jewish community group sued the state, saying they were being asked “to subsidize and relive unnecessarily the same form of cruelty used in World War II atrocities.”

The firing squad was available all this time. The most logical explanations for avoiding it have to do with the upsetting visuals, the feeling that it’s old-fashioned and the possible effect on executioners. But people who participate in lethal injections routinely suffer psychologically in the long term. In 2022, Chiara Eisner at NPR interviewed over two dozen people who were involved in executions. Many were so affected by the experience that they suffered insomnia, anxiety and sui­ci­dal thoughts.

President Donald Trump oversaw 13 executions in his first term, all carried out by lethal injection. President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of most of the people on federal death row, so it’s not clear whether Trump will have anyone to execute this term.

But someday federal prison officials may train rifles on someone like Dylann Roof or Robert Bowers, both of whom committed high-profile mass shootings at places of worship. Americans will then finally have to decide what we can tolerate, after decades in which we have been able to pretend that we can kill people without a cost — to our executioners and to our own sense of ourselves.

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