Why the US is bringing back firing squads

Warning: this story contains upsetting descriptions of executions

America's use of the death penalty is under the spotlight once again after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the military would livestream the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan.

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

His execution would be the first time the US Army had used a firing squad since 1945, a method that several states already authorise to put people to death.

And it comes on the heels of the botched death by lethal injection of Christa Pike - a woman convicted of murdering her classmate.

Pike was taken to hospital and then discharged to prison 10 days later, after making a recovery from the failed attempt, her lawyers said.

Amid rising concerns over botched executions - and renewed federal support for the death penalty - the US has introduced both new and old forms of execution like firing squads, the electric chair and the gas chamber.

The vast majority of executions in the US have been lethal injections since they were first introduced in Texas in 1982. The Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit think tank that does not take a stance on the death penalty, says that there have been 64 botched executions over the past 50 years - including 51 botched lethal injections - out of a total of 1,683 executions.

The difficulty of carrying out these executions, and the uproar over what some perceive as inhumane treatment, has led officials to consider alternative methods of putting people to death. But medical experts and those who study executions say every method the US uses to put people to death can result in severe pain, especially when botched.

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

Several medical groups - including the national associations for doctors and nurses - also ban their members from participating in executions. The American Medical Association, which represents doctors in the US, states they are "a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so" and that participating in any way in executions is antithetical to their oath.

Lethal injection, which was first used in Texas in 1982, is now the most common way people are executed across the US, with many states making it their default method.

Dr Joel Zivot, a professor of anaesthesiology and surgery based in Atlanta, Georgia, said states turned to lethal injection because it appeared from the outside to be a more peaceful means of execution.

"That was a myth," he said.

Dr Zivot said that sometimes the injection of the drugs can cause pulmonary edema, when a person's lungs fill with fluid, which can give people the painful sensation of drowning.

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

Other times, people have medical conditions, like Pike - who suffered from thrombocytosis and other medical problems her lawyers warned about - that can complicate the execution and make it more painful.

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

There are a host of reasons why so many lethal injections have been botched, but some of the same factors persist, said Maher.

"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.

Most of the time, little information is available to the public about the people administering the lethal injection, as the states do not usually share what training they have had.

"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.

Drugs for lethal injections are also hard to obtain because many pharmaceutical companies do not want to sell the medications to prisons for that use, since they were developed for life-saving purposes.

In light of many of these challenges, some states have turned to executing people with a new and controversial method: nitrogen gas.

Alabama and Louisiana are the first states to have carried out executions with nitrogen gas, though three other states - Arkansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma - also allow for it.

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

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

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

Dr Zivot said people who breathe in the gas sometimes get seizures. Alabama has executed seven people using 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.

While some states have explored new methods, others have reauthorised some of the earliest ways US officials used to put people to death.

As of this year, nine states have approved execution by electric chair, with South Carolina using it as their default method.

Electrocution "has a horrible history of botched executions", Maher said, and errors with these executions is one of the reasons why states introduced lethal injections in the first place.

In 1997, Pedro Medina's head caught fire as he was put to death 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.

A method once used as punishment in the military and in times of war, firing squad executions have also proven susceptible 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 hit his liver and other organs.

In July, Idaho became the first state to use a firing squad as its primary method of execution after it ran into issues with lethal injections. Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah and South Carolina also authorise this execution method.

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

Hanging was the main method of execution in the US until the 1890s, and several Asian countries including Japan and Singapore still use this method. 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 proponent of the death penalty - brought back the federal death penalty when he returned to office in 2025, after Joe Biden's administration put 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 methods of execution since Trump began expressing enthusiasm for the death penalty.

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

Asked by reporters whether Pike's failed lethal injection should spur changes to the death penalty, Trump did not directly answer the question, adding that the execution method "shouldn't be very difficult".