Overview

• The United States carried out its first firing-squad execution in 15 years this year, only the fourth use of the method since capital punishment resumed.
• Coverage links renewed interest in older methods to repeated breakdowns during lethal injections, with accounts of prolonged deaths and failed IV attempts.
• Author Gianna Toboni details an Alabama electrocution in 1983 in which John Louis Evans endured multiple jolts before his body caught fire and his heart stopped.
• The book also recounts a 1994 North Carolina gas execution of David Lawson, describing the prisoner screaming and thrashing as cyanide filled the chamber.
• Recent examples include Clayton Lockett’s 2014 execution in Oklahoma that lasted 43 minutes after a groin line attempt and Idaho’s 2024 halt of Thomas Creech’s execution after an hour of failed vein searches, later cited by Bryan Kohberger’s legal team.