Examining America’s 5 Methods of Execution

Capital Punishment: Examining America’s 5 Methods of Execution

As we examine capital punishment, let’s start with a specific case. In 2014, convicted rapist and murderer Clayton Lockett was stunned with a Taser and dragged from his cell to the execution room after refusing to go willingly. 

He was strapped to the padded gurney in the hospital-like room while a paramedic and doctor began working to find a suitable vein for his lethal injection.

 Due to his history of IV drug abuse, they had great difficulty doing so. After an hour and more than a dozen pokes, the staff hit Lockett’s femoral vein and the execution was set to begin.

The three stages of drugs were administered, but somewhere along the way, the IV line became dislodged and much of the lethal cocktail was shot into Lockett’s tissue rather than his vascular system.

 After a few minutes, he suddenly regained consciousness and started jerking and thrashing about. 

Unable to speak, he moaned in agony as prison officials and medical staff scrambled to find another vein to end Lockett’s suffering.

 Eventually, orders were even given to halt the execution. However, after more than an hour after the start of the execution process, they pronounced Lockett dead.

Whether or not you agree with Oklahoma, we can agree that this particular execution was a disaster. Certainly, the morality of capital punishment is a topic of considerable debate these days.

 However, putting aside the question of “if” for a moment, perhaps we need to think more carefully about “how”we execute our most heinous perpetrators of capital crimes. 

If we consider the amount of time an execution takes, the amount of suffering the condemned endures, and the likelihood and potential results of something going wrong, it is possible to examine the effectiveness and shortcomings of America’s five officially sanctioned execution methods. 

The condemned lays strapped to a padded gurney and injected with a series of three drugs. The first is typically a powerful barbiturate anesthetic that produces unconsciousness. 

Next, a muscle relaxant, such as pancuronium bromide, is given in a dose that should cause paralysis of all skeletal muscles, leading to suffocation. Finally, they inject potassium chloride to induce cardiac arrest. The typical time until death is five minutes. 

Putting it to use: All of the states currently employing the death penalty list lethal injection as the primary means of execution, but they also allow for the use of other methods upon request or in the absence of the proper drugs.

 Modern states prefer lethal injection since it seems to be the most humanitarian and nonviolent form of execution.

 In addition, if everything goes perfectly according to plan, lethal injection is probably the least painful way to die. That said, a 7.12% botch rate is markedly higher than any other method used in the U.S., and most of the victims of those 75 botches experienced long and agonizing deaths.

The condemned prisoner is strapped to a wooden chair and then fit with a leather cap with copper mesh on the inside that is buffered from the skin by a wet sponge. Officials attach similar electrodes to the legs. A power cable attached to the cap sends two long jolts of electricity through the body timed 15 seconds apart. There is then a five-minute pause before the doctor enters to assess the inmate and pronounce death.

The time until death ranges from two to 15 minutes.

Putting it to use: Botched electric chair executions are famously grizzly and include charred flesh, fires, screaming and writhing in pain. In fact, the first electric chair execution ever conducted didn’t go as planned; the prisoner bled profusely and survived the first jolt of electricity. One onlooker said, “They would have done better using an axe.” However, rates of botched electric chair executions are remarkably low. While botch rates are low, they are particularly gruesome, and it is somewhat unclear where the electric chair should rank as a means of execution. 

The condemned strapped to a chair in an airtight chamber. Underneath the chair sits a pail of sulfuric acid. Using a lever from outside the room, an officer drops sodium cyanide crystals into the pail, releasing hydrogen cyanide gas, which makes oxygen unusable to the body. After the inmate inhales deeply, unconciousness occurs within a few minutes, and the time until death is 10-18 minutes.

Putting it to use: Gas chamber executions have the second-highest rate of botches on our list. Multiple reports have emerged of inmates moaning and gasping as they suffocate. In one execution of a notoriously heinous perpetrator in Mississippi, witnesses saw him bang his head on a steel pole and heard him moan in pain for eight minutes before dying