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USA - Why Executions are Becoming “Crueler”
April 1, 2026: April 1, 2026 - USA. Why Executions are Becoming “Crueler”
In a February 2026 article published in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, Professor Deborah Denno charts how execution methods in the United States “have become crueler” over the past 50 years. Her article details execution procedures adopted across death penalty states from 1977 to 2025, analyzing their societal and cultural underpinnings, and exposing their “flaws, unscientific origins, and reliance on unqualified executioners.”
“Boyd asks for the barest form of mercy: to die by firing squad, which would kill him in seconds, rather than by a torturous suffocation lasting up to 4 minutes.”
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, commenting on Alabama’s plans for the execution of Anthony Boyd by nitrogen gas on October 23, 2025.
While states and courts claim to “move from one technique to the next to enhance greater humaneness,” Professor Denno argues that “history shows that such switches are primarily propelled by constitutional challenges to a state’s particular technique.” According to Professor Denno, “rendering a state’s execution method unconstitutional” could “in theory” threaten the very existence of the death penalty, explaining why states may “hold tight to a problematic method for decades.” She notes that the “embrace of turmoil of changing execution methods” has led two states — Florida and Tennessee — to allow “the use of any constitutional method” should their specified methods of execution not be available.
In her article, Professor Denno catalogues current methods of execution by state. As of the end of 2025, most states allow execution by lethal injection, but in fifteen states incarcerated individuals can choose between lethal injection or an alternative: electrocution, firing squad, or lethal gas, although not all states offer all methods.
Professor Denno also reviews how prominent methods of execution over the past 40 years fall into disuse: a method is deemed appropriate for a time; then inappropriate after cultural shifts or inaccessibility; a new method is introduced; and the cycle begins again. She observes that “while each method is barbaric and defunct in its own way, at one time, that method was part of a societal progression toward a seemingly more humane and effective procedure.”
An example of this is the transition from hanging to electrocution to lethal injection. Hanging was never deemed unconstitutional, but according to Professor Denno, “the revelations from Campbell and Rupe [2 cases that addressed the constitutionality of the practice and found its application could, in certain circumstances, be considered cruel and unusual in violation of the Eighth Amendment], impacted how hanging was perceived, both legally and societally.”
Hanging gave way to electrocution. The subsequent high botch rate of electrocutions, Professor Denno, explains, led to its eventual disuse. One example is the botched 1999 execution of Allen Davis. 9 states still specify electrocution as a possible method of execution. Between 1994 and 2000, there were 144 executions by electrocution in the modern death penalty era. Since then, there have been 19, the last being that of Nicholas Todd Sutton by Tennessee in 2020.
Electrocutions gave way to lethal injection, which Professor Denno notes “would become not only the most widely used execution method — eventually adopted by all death penalty states — but seemingly among the most problematic and botched[.]” As drug companies balked at playing a role in these executions and it has become harder to acquire the drugs needed, some states have chosen to execute people using a new and untested method: suffocation by nitrogen gas.
“Executions are becoming crueler, sloppier, and more reckless in society’s quest to continue the death penalty.”
Professor Denno
Professor Denno saves her harshest criticism for the recent adoption by some states of execution by nitrogen hypoxia. She notes that “unlike preceding methods, nitrogen hypoxia has no cultural mooring or socio-scientific foundation.” Nitrogen hypoxia has been used eight times in the last 2 years, in Alabama and Louisiana, and is an option for use in Arkansas. The method forces the prisoner to breathe pure nitrogen, depriving the brain and body of oxygen and causing death by suffocation. According to Professor Denno, nitrogen hypoxia “was not inherited from another country (like hanging), or part of an age of discovery (like electrocution), derived from a world war (like lethal gas), or even the product of a politician’s recommendation based on practices for humanely euthanizing animals (lethal injection).” Nitrogen hypoxia, she concludes, “is the result of states dangerously grasping for whatever may be in ‘the kitchen’ to shift from the shelter of incompetence they have created to perpetuate the death penalty’s existence.”
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/article-of-interest-new-academic-article-explains-why-executions-are-becoming-crueler (Source: Death Penalty Information Center, 01/04/2026)
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