Faced with drug shortage, some states look to firing squads

A Nazi spy about to be shot by firing squad during World War II

A shortage of a drug commonly used in executions has prompted lawmakers in at least two states to call for the return of firing squads.

Missouri state Rep. Rick Brattin, a Republican representing Harrisonville, introduced legislation Friday (.pdf) that would add five-person firing squads as an alternative to the state's current method of capital punishment, lethal injection.

Brattin cited the prolonged death Thursday of Dennis McGuire in Ohio as evidence that alternative methods were needed after manufacturers of pentobarbitol, the drug most commonly used in lethal injections, began withdrawing it from use in executions on ethical grounds.

Read the rest here.

Longtime readers of the blog know my view of capital punishment. I think it's usefulness, which is almost nonexistent, is outweighed by its many flaws. But that aside, I have also long held that if we are going to do it, this is one area where low tech is almost certainly better and more humane. Americans are by and large contradictory when it comes to the death penalty. Most still favor it, though those numbers are dropping rapidly. But it seems that when it comes down to the mechanics of killing another human being we are a little squeamish. We have been forever trying to find a new more technologically advanced way to kill other people without creating a mess or appearing too violent.

Unfortunately all of our innovations have failed to reliably shorten the process of making someone who is alive, dead, and or they appear to be positively barbaric as in the case of the electric chair. And what's with this obsession over lethal injection? There are just way too many documented cases of it taking over half an hour to kill the inmate using that method.

A lot of the problem stems from the fact that unlike European countries that had paid and professionally trained executioners, we never went for that. Consequently if you were sentenced to be hanged in the old West, it could be almost anyone who ended up with the job of seeing you into the hereafter. Predictably, this lead to botched hangings which in turn gave that method of execution a bad reputation. But the reputation was not deserved.

In Britain, which did have professional executioners on the civil service list who were required to be trained and apprenticed in their craft, a hanging typically took less than a minute from the time the executioner entered the condemned man's cell. He was pinioned and frog marched into an adjoining room where the gallows was kept, a hood was popped over his head followed by the noose and then the trap was released.

No reading of the death sentence, no hymn singing or pious sermons and no last words. Likewise a bullet to the back of the head is hard to beat for speed, simplicity and conclusive results. For those who just have to some level of tech involved, the French method also seems pretty quick and effective. So why don't we adopt one of these methods?

It has nothing to do with the condemned man, it is the sensibilities of the witnesses and guards who have to watch. Hanging, no matter how fast, is a violent act aimed at breaking a man's neck. Shooting and mechanical decapitation are also pretty violent, not to mention gory.

So my guess is that all of this talk is going nowhere.