As drugs used for lethal injection procedures become scarce or prohibited by their company for use in an execution, states are beginning to consider other alternatives to carry out the death penalty, the Associated Press reported.
In the past years, drug makers stopped selling their lethal chemicals to prisons because they do not want the drug associated with killing people, according to the AP.
With the drug shortages and increasing criticism of how well lethal injections work without causing pain, elected officials are beginning to seek other ways to carry out the death penalty through firing squads, gas chambers or electrocution, the AP reported.
"This isn't an attempt to time-warp back into the 1850s or the wild, wild West or anything like that," Rep. Rick Brattin, R-MO, said, according to the AP. "It's just that I foresee a problem, and I'm trying to come up with a solution that will be the most humane yet most economical for our state."
Brattin proposed firing squads as an option for the death penalty earlier this month along with another Wyoming lawmaker, the AP reported.
Sen. Bruce Burns, R- WYO, said death by a firing squad would be a much less expensive alternative compared to rebuilding the gas chamber for their one inmate on death row, the AP reported. Wyoming has not carried out an execution in 22 years.
The attorney general in Missouri and a state lawmaker have proposed to rebuild the gas chamber and a Virginia lawmaker is hoping to make electrocution an option only if the lethal drug combination is not available, according to the AP.
Brattin also said due to the recent death penalties carried out by lethal injection, there will likely be delays in executions as the matter gets held up in court, the AP reported.
Recently, Ohio inmate Dennis McGuire took 26 minutes to die by lethal injection as he gasped for air, according to the AP. On Jan. 9, another Oklahoma inmate named Michael Lee Wilson said he felt his entire body burning before dying by lethal injection.
"It's not fair for relatives of murder victims to wait years, even decades, to see justice served while lawmakers and judges debate execution methods," Brattin said, according to the AP.
Lethal injection became the popular choice for executions in the 1980s when powerful sedatives and heart-stopping drugs were believed to be more humane a killing than other execution methods currently being used, the AP reported.
Since 1999, the amount of executions has dropped from 98 to 39 last year, according to the AP. Some states still ban execution entirely, and the states that have kept execution active are finding it more difficult to find human and uncostly methods of dealing with inmates on death row.
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia all allow death by the electric chair as an alternative to lethal injection, the AP reported. Arizona, Missouri and Wyoming allow a gas-chamber option for executions.
Hanging is allowed as an option for inmates on death row in Delaware, New Hampshire and Washington state, but the last hanging was in Delaware in 1996, the AP reported.
Though it is being less used as a death penalty option in Utah, death by firing squad is still an option for inmates in the state, according to the AP.
