Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno, death penalty expert and founding director of Fordham Law’s Neuroscience and Law Center, is quoted at length in a USA Today article about firing squads.
Death by firing squad has been used as an execution method for nearly as long as firearms have existed, and it is still used by countries around the world, Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor, told USA TODAY. But in the U.S., firing squads have not been widely used since they were supplanted in popularity by another archaic method, hanging, in the mid-19th century, Denno said.
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In recent years, South Carolina became one of five states that have legalized firing squads as an execution method, most recently Idaho in 2023.
“It’s safe to say since 1858 we’ve never had this many states adopting firing squad as a method of execution, and that’s a pretty astonishing statistic,” Denno said.
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Firing squads weren’t common, even at the height of their popularity
It is believed the first execution carried out in colonial America was done by firing squad, Denno said. From 1608, when Captain George Kendall was killed, to 2002, at least 143 civilians have been executed by shooting, according to a database known as the Espy File.
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Idaho, Mississippi and Oklahoma also allow death by firing squad, though lethal injection remains the primary method, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But a bill working its way through the Idaho Legislature following the failed lethal injection of Thomas Creech could make firing squads the state’s primary form of capital punishment and others may follow suit, Denno said.
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Denno said at least one execution, which took place in Nevada in 1913, used a machine to pull the trigger instead of human executioners. Idaho Department of Correction spokesperson Sanda Kuzeta-Cerimagic said the agency is considering using “a remote-operated weapons system alongside traditional firing squad methods.”
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Should firing squads still be legal?
The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled last year that the state could execute death row inmates by firing squad, the electric chair or lethal injection, but two of the justices said they felt a firing squad was not legal, the New York Times reported.
Denno said death by firing squads meet the criteria for a constitutional method of execution set by the United States Supreme Court: It’s a well-known method, unlike nitrogen hypoxia. It’s readily available, unlike some drugs used for lethal injection. And it’s effective, meaning that no one has survived a botched execution by firing squad.
While Americans may not like it, particularly given the country’s public health crisis of gun violence, Denno believes it is “the least inhumane” and “most honest” form of capital punishment.
“If I were going to have to choose, I would choose firing squad. There’s no question about that,” Denno said. But at the same time, she added: “It is a barbaric method. It’s associated with war time, it’s associated with on the street killings, and it’s associated with how they kill in countries that we would not want to share an association with, and it is associated with interpersonal violence in this country.”
Read “SC inmate to die by firing squad. Is the ‘barbaric’ method making a comeback?” in USA Today.