Until the past 18 months, death row inmates in the U.S. were executed with mostly one method in modern history: lethal injection.
Now, depending on where they're imprisoned, inmates have a virtual buffet of ways to die: firing squad, nitrogen gas, the electric chair and still, lethal injection. On top of that, Florida passed a law last month that could allow for just about any execution method imaginable, including stoning and beheading, according to one expert.
It's a unique situation globally. While many nations are secretive about unusual execution methods such as machine-gunning, hanging and beheading, the U.S. is among only four nations that have more than three official forms of execution available, according to a worldwide execution database kept by Cornell University. The others are Nigeria, Iran and Sudan, the database shows.
Of the 44 executions held in the U.S. since January 2024, seven have been conducted using a method other than lethal injection. That's 16%. Compare that to three years before that, when 100% of the 53 executions conducted were done by lethal injection, according to data tracked by the Death Penalty Information Center.
“It's a remarkable development,” Frank Baumgartner, a death penalty researcher and political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told USA TODAY. "Going back to these old methods is historically novel for the United States."
