Since 2021 American states have executed 148 convicted criminals. Of that number, according to data gathered from news reports by the Death Penalty Information Centre, an advocacy charity, 11 were botched, with many of the condemned left writhing in pain on gurneys for 30 minutes or more. Call it executive dysfunction. Of these, four did not succeed in bringing about death at all.
Because of her experience of sexual abuse, an hour before it was due to begin, a federal appeals court ruled the punishment should be delayed to consider arguments that Ms Pike, who was 18 at the time of the murder, should be spared. Ms Pike’s execution was controversial even before it failed. The Supreme Court then ruled, without giving its reasons, that the execution could go ahead. Since at least the time of Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, governments have sought cleaner, quicker and more reliable ways to kill criminals. Dissatisfied with hanging, in the late 19th century American states began to adopt the electric chair. In the 1970s, after the Supreme Court lifted its own short-lived moratorium on capital punishment, lethal injection became common. But death by intravenous poison is proving to be hardly more reliable than hanging or electrocution were. Yet these methods are prone to gruesome flubs, too. In June the Supreme Court blocked Alabama from using its gas chamber, after some condemned criminals spent minutes gasping for air.
In South Carolina last year all three members of a firing squad missed their target’s heart.
