Why the US is bringing back firing squads

Why the US is bringing back firing squads

America’s death penalty is back in the spotlight after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military would livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan.

The former military psychiatrist killed 13 unarmed US soldiers at the Fort Hood military base in Texas in 2009.

If carried out, his execution would be the first time the US Army has used a firing squad since 1945, a method already authorised by several states for carrying out death sentences.

The announcement also follows the botched lethal-injection execution of Christa Pike, a woman convicted of murdering her classmate.

Pike was taken to hospital and then returned to prison 10 days later after recovering from the failed attempt, her lawyers said.

With concerns growing over failed executions — and with renewed federal backing for the death penalty — the US has been turning to both newer and older execution methods, including firing squads, the electric chair and the gas chamber.

Since lethal injection was introduced in Texas in 1982, it has become the overwhelming method of execution in the US. The Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit think tank that does not oppose or support the death penalty, says there have been 64 botched executions over the past 50 years — including 51 botched lethal injections — out of 1,683 executions in total.

The difficulty of carrying out executions, along with outrage over what some see as inhumane treatment, has pushed officials to look at other ways of putting people to death. But medical experts and researchers who study executions say every method used in the US can cause severe pain, especially when it goes wrong.

"We always have the possibility that there's going to be a mistake made when human beings are involved in executions," said Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Several medical organisations — including national associations for doctors and nurses — also prohibit their members from taking part in executions. The American Medical Association, which represents doctors in the US, says they are "a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so" and that involvement in executions in any form goes against their oath.

Lethal injection, first used in Texas in 1982, is now the most common execution method in the US, and many states have made it their default.

Dr Joel Zivot, a professor of anaesthesiology and surgery in Atlanta, Georgia, said states adopted lethal injection because it seemed from the outside to be a gentler way to execute someone.

"That was a myth," he said.

Dr Zivot said the drugs can sometimes cause pulmonary edema, when the lungs fill with fluid and create the painful sensation of drowning.

"It's a terrifying way to die - to drown," he said.

In other cases, people have medical conditions, like Pike — who had thrombocytosis and other health problems her lawyers had warned about — that can make the execution more complicated and more painful.

During Pike’s failed execution, "she could be heard crying, whimpering, and breathing loudly throughout the procedure", her lawyers said.

There are many reasons lethal injections have gone wrong so often, but some of the same problems continue, Maher said.

"Oftentimes, the executions go wrong because training of staff is inadequate, because drugs are degraded or expired or improperly stored, or because states are experimenting with different combinations of drugs that have never been used before," she said.

In many cases, the public is given little information about the people carrying out the lethal injection, because states usually do not disclose what training they have received.

"We have discovered that in many instances, and unfortunately subsequent to a botched execution, that the cause was the inadequate experience and training of the execution staff," Maher said.

Lethal-injection drugs are also difficult to obtain because many pharmaceutical companies do not want to sell medicines to prisons for that purpose, since the drugs were developed to save lives.

Because of these difficulties, some states have turned to a newer and controversial execution method: nitrogen gas.

Alabama and Louisiana are the first states to have carried out executions using nitrogen gas, although Arkansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma also allow it.

Two years ago, Alabama used nitrogen gas to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith after a botched attempt to execute him by lethal injection in 2022.

During the 25-minute execution, Smith thrashed violently on the gurney as he was given the gas, a witness told the BBC at the time.

The method works by forcing a prisoner to breathe pure nitrogen gas until they suffocate.

Dr Zivot said people who inhale the gas sometimes have seizures. Alabama has executed seven people with nitrogen gas since introducing the method in January 2024.

"Each time it was a horror show of struggling, of moving, of seizing," Dr Zivot said.

At San Quentin prison in California, officials used a gas chamber to execute some people until 1993.

While some states have tried new methods, others have brought back some of the earliest ways US officials used to execute people.

This year, nine states have approved execution by electric chair, with South Carolina using it as its default method.

Maher said electrocution "has a horrible history of botched executions", and mistakes with it were one reason states introduced lethal injection in the first place.

In 1997, Pedro Medina’s head caught fire as he was executed in an electric chair in Florida.

"A solid flame covered his whole head, from one side to the other. I had the impression of somebody being burned alive," his attorney Mike Minerva said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Firing squads, once used as punishment in the military and during wartime, have also shown themselves to be vulnerable to human error.

Mikahl Mahdi was executed by a three-person firing squad last year after admitting to killing an off-duty police officer in 2004. But his lawyers say his death was prolonged because the bullets missed his heart and instead struck his liver and other organs.

In July, Idaho became the first state to use a firing squad as its primary execution method after encountering problems with lethal injections. Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah and South Carolina also authorise the method.

Alonzo Lunsford, a former US Army sergeant who survived being shot seven times by Hasan in the Fort Hood attack, told the BBC that a firing squad would be a "befitting" way to end his life because lethal injection and a gas chamber would be "doing him a favour".

Hanging was the main execution method in the US until the 1890s, and several Asian countries including Japan and Singapore still use it. But in the US, no states authorise hanging because of its "terrible" history, Maher said.

"Hanging has such a terrible association with racial violence and lynching in the states," she said. "So that is why there's no state that's using hanging or has authorised that method to be used."

Trump — a supporter of the death penalty — restored the federal death penalty when he returned to office in 2025, after Joe Biden’s administration imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021.

"Capital punishment is an essential tool for deterring and punishing those who would commit the most heinous crimes and acts of lethal violence against American citizens," his office wrote in an executive order.

Maher said there has been "quite a bit of activity" in state legislatures to approve and reauthorise other execution methods since Trump began voicing support for the death penalty.

Trump has called for the death penalty to be expanded to cover large-scale drug dealers, human traffickers and people who kill police officers. Over the past 50 years, all prisoners sentenced to death were convicted of murder, although capital punishment was also used for rape convictions before that.

When reporters asked whether Pike’s failed lethal injection should lead to changes in the death penalty, Trump did not answer directly, saying only that the execution method "shouldn't be very difficult".