Deborah Denno comments to the Associated Press about a condemned Utah inmate’s decision to die in a barrage of bullets fired by five unnamed marksmen, which some experts argue it is more humane than all other execution methods.
“Lethal injection, which has the veneer of medical acceptability, has far greater risks of cruelty to a condemned person,” said Fordham University Law School professor Deborah Denno, who has written extensively on the constitutional questions that surround execution methods.
A court challenge of lethal injection in Kentucky essentially halted executions nationwide in 2007 as the U.S. Supreme Court grappled with whether a three-drug cocktail was more painful than just a single barbiturate.
The court upheld Kentucky’s use of the three drugs in 2008, clearing the way for capital punishment to resume, Denno said.
The firing squad has not been similarly challenged, and by all accounts, Utah’s executions by firing squad were carried out without problems, Denno said.
“Even Gary Gilmore’s father said it was a dignified execution,” she said.
The entire Associated Press story ran in various newspapers across the country.