Professor Deborah Denno was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor where she weighs in on Mississippi’s consideration of the firing squad as a death penalty alternative to lethal injection.
With its new bill, Mississippi instead looks set to follow in the footsteps of Utah, which brought back the firing squad in 2015. That return to traditional methods is likely to become more common, Fordham University law professor Deborah Denno previously suggested to The Christian Science Monitor.
“There’s a concession that there’s a problem with lethal injection so states are going back to methods that seemed barbaric at one point but, relative to lethal injection, maybe don’t look as bad anymore,” Professor Denno, whose work on the constitutionality of execution methods has been cited numerous times by Supreme Court justices, told the Monitor’s Patrik Jonsson.
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On balance, however, studies suggest that execution by firing squad, at least, is probably better than lethal injection, Denno indicated.
“People say firing squad is so brutal, but, at least as far as we know, it’s probably the most humane, it kills people the quickest, and it’s one we have expertise for,” she told the Monitor in 2015.
