USA | Will executions by firing squad force people to face the barbarity of the death penalty?

I watched 7 men get killed while working as a reporter.

Their deaths happened at the execution chamber at Florida State Prison near Starke. From 2006 until 2010, I witnessed most of the executions held there.

Sadly, I had to look up my old stories to figure out the exact number that I had seen. Most of the deaths blended into one another, other than a botched execution that led to an 18-month halt in the state holding executions.

The mundane nature of the proceedings was the point. Florida held some pretty awful executions to witness when the state used an electric chair, known as Old Sparky. Flames shot out of two different prisoner's heads, before the use of the chair was ended.

The lethal injection process was designed to be less dramatic. In most cases, it just looks like someone getting drugs for an operation and losing consciousness — except for the execution of Ángel Díaz in 2006, which was botched so badly that he writhed in pain and took 30 minutes to die.

Ángel Díaz was convicted of the 1979 murder of a nightclub manager. He died by lethal injection on Dec.13, 2006, in an execution that was botched by the state. Díaz maintained his innocence until his death.

The state made changes to the procedure before resuming executions, but other problems have surfaced with lethal injections. Pharmaceutical companies blocked their drugs from being used in executions, causing some states to turn to alternative methods.

Earlier this month, South Carolina approved allowing a firing squad to be an execution option if lethal injection drugs are unavailable. Even though I oppose the death penalty, I find value in the idea of using firing squads for states continuing to hold executions. Maybe that way, death penalty supporters will be forced to face the barbarity of the act.

Or maybe not. Executions were long a public spectacle no matter how brutal. The last public execution in the U.S. was a hanging in Kentucky in 1936, which attracted more than 20,000 onlookers.

A new book I just finished, “Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty” by Maurice Chammah, connects our country’s dark history of racially motivated lynchings with the death penalty. Black people are over-represented on death row — in fact, while death sentences have decreased in recent years, an even larger proportion of those sentences are now being given to people of color.

The book focuses on Texas, which executes far more people than any other state. Florida ranks 4th, conducting 99 executions since 1976. But Florida leads the country in death-sentence exonerations, with 30 people freed from death row due to wrongful convictions over that period.

The possibility of executing an innocent person should be enough to do away with the death penalty. Or the expense: The Palm Beach Post estimated in 2000 that the death penalty costs Florida taxpayers about $50 million a year more than sentencing all 1st-degree murderers to life in prison.

Yet, while states are slowly getting rid of the death penalty, executions seem entrenched where it remains. Hopefully South Carolina’s shift to a firing squad marks a turning point.

While watching inmates get injected with chemicals is designed to be unmemorable, seeing someone shot to death by the state should be hard to forget.

Source: gainesville.com, Nathan Crabbe, Opinion Editor, May 27, 2021

🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Israel builds execution chamber for Palestinians convicted of murder

In March, the Knesset approved legislation that calls for the execution of Palestinians convicted by a military court of killing Israelis Israeli authorities are preparing a prison wing—replete with an execution chamber—designated specifically for Palestinian prisoners convicted of murder, Israel’s i24NEWS channel reported Tuesday. The move comes after the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) approved legislation in March that calls for the execution of Palestinian prisoners convicted by a military court of murdering Israelis.

Florida executes William Frances Silvia

Florida executed its 13th death row prisoner of the year Tuesday evening amid the state’s aggressive use of the death penalty championed by Governor Ron DeSantis. William Frances Silvia, 61, who was convicted of fatally shooting his estranged wife and injuring his mother-in-law in 2006, was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. after receiving the lethal three-drug injection at Florida State Prison. At 6 p.m. Tuesday, Silvia was already strapped to a gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain to the death chamber went up. He remained relatively motionless with his eyes and mouth open throughout most of the execution while a priest sat at his feet and prayed.

Spared execution eight times, oldest inmate in US dies at 101 after 76 years behind bars

Francis Clifford Smith was given his last meal eight times. But after being spared execution each time, he went on to be regarded as the longest-serving prisoner in the US before dying in June at 101 years old. Convicted of murder in 1950 when he was 25, he always maintained his innocence, those who knew him told the BBC. Andrius Banevicius, the public information officer for Connecticut's Department of Correction, recounted how Smith used to feed the birds while in Osborn Prison, earning him the nickname The Birdman of Osborn.

Tennessee | The doctor who helps put prisoners to death

Dr. Mark Fowler assisted in the failed execution of a Tennessee prisoner. Physicians are meant to heal patients—why is he working in the death chamber? Mark Fowler, a physician with 25 years’ experience, stepped beneath the bright lights and approached the middle-aged man lying on a gurney. Around him, people in medical gowns prepared needles and sterile tubing. It had all the appearances of a hospital setting. Fowler had been called in to help establish an IV line through which the 57-year-old man, Tony Carruthers, would be injected with pharmaceutical drugs. The team had struggled to find a vein, so Fowler was summoned to set a central line—an intravenous catheter inserted into the major vein below the collarbone.

Cartoons about Capital Punishment

More cartoons about capital punishment HERE

Alabama is trying a death penalty bait-and-switch

For a decade, Alabama death row inmate Jeffrey Lee has been clear that he does not want to be executed by lethal injection . But that is what awaits him on September 17 . He faces that prospect because the state has been enjoined from using nitrogen hypoxia , the alternative execution method he preferred, to put him to death. Having failed to show that its nitrogen hypoxia protocol is constitutionally acceptable, Alabama wants a do-over to force Lee to die by lethal injection as a result of its own failure. It should not get one. Alabama should only be able to put Lee to death if it can fix nitrogen hypoxia’s constitutional defects.

Alabama executes Jeremy Williams

Tennessee and Oklahoma have put inmates to death within 30 minutes of each other, and Alabama followed suit hours later as U.S. states executed three men in one day. Tennessee and Oklahoma put inmates to death within 30 minutes of each other Thursday, and Alabama followed suit hours later as U.S. states executed three men by lethal injection in one day for the first time since 2010. The Tennessee man was executed for killing a maid at a motel in 1985, and the Oklahoma man for killing his girlfriend in 2003. In Alabama, a man was put to death Thursday evening for killing a 5-year-old girl he had paid her mother to abuse.

Oklahoma executes Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez

Oklahoma has carried out 1 of 3 executions set for the same day in the United States in another sign of the resurgence of the death penalty in the country. Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 13, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He was put to death by lethal injection for the murder of his common-law wife in 2003 at their Oklahoma City home. He admitted to police he shot her twice during an argument. Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, did not fight for his life, stunning his attorneys in July when he told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that he didn't want clemency. "It's time for me to pay for what I did," he said.

Tennessee executes Darrell Hines

The state has spent millions of dollars over decades to execute a seriously ill man who was already incarcerated. The state of Tennessee executed death row inmate Darrell Hines Thursday morning, according to an advocacy group. No formal announcement of the execution has been issued by state leaders yet. The execution was slated for 10 a.m. Thursday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. [DPN update] Hines was pronounced dead at 10:43 a.m. CDT. His last meal was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw, corn, fries, biscuits, a chicken sandwich, chocolate chip cake, and sweet tea.

The 'Black Widow' shakes Iran: 10 death sentences for a serial killer who killed 12 men

Kolthum Akbari, an Iranian woman widely dubbed the “Black Widow,” was convicted of serial murders of elderly men she married, often temporarily. Official accounts generally center on 11 murders (plus one attempted murder), though Akbari herself gave varying figures and investigations suggested she had many more marriages. The sentencing occurred primarily in September 2025 in Mazandaran Province, with ongoing reporting and updates into 2026. The 56- to 59-year-old killer confessed to killing at least 11 elderly men after temporarily or officially marrying them; Iranian authorities have linked her to additional marriages and possible further victims.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog