Lethal injection, nitrogen, firing squads: How US states carry out executions

The unprecedented botched execution of a woman in Tennessee has reignited the debate over execution methods in the United States — which varies from lethal injection to firing squads. Methods used in the US Methods vary by state. States carry out the vast majority of executions, while federal executions are rare. Lethal injection, authorised in 28 states and at the federal level, remains by far the most common execution method since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976. Of the 47 executions carried out in 2025, 39 were by lethal injection. Five others were by nitrogen inhalation, a method first used anywhere in the world in the southern state of Alabama in 2024 and likened by UN experts to a form of “torture.” Three were by firing squad in South Carolina, marking the first use of that method in the United States since 2010. But some states have struggled to obtain the necessary drugs from pharmaceutical companies reluctant to be associated with capital punishment. This was the case, for example, in South Carolina, Utah and Indiana, which resumed executions in 2024 after suspending them for more than a decade for this reason. In terms of frequency, electrocution and gas inhalation are, respectively, most common, each authorised in nine states, followed by firing squads, a method provided for in five states. A litany of botched executions No execution method is immune to the risk of spectacular failure. In Alabama in 1983, John Evans’s leg caught fire after the first electric shock, while smoke rose from his hood and the smell of burning flesh began to fill the room. It took three shocks in all before the condemned man’s heart stopped beating. In the northern state of Ohio in 2009, Romell Broom endured two hours of attempts by three members of the state’s execution team, who stuck needles into his arms, hands and legs 18 times in an effort to administer the lethal injection. The first condemned prisoner to survive an execution attempt in the U