As South Carolina plans to carry out the first firing squad execution in 15 years in the United States, Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno, death penalty expert and founding director of Fordham Law’s Neuroscience and Law Center, spoke with The Associated Press about the history of the unusual method to carry out the death penalty, currently only authorized in five states.
One of the reasons firing squads did not gain much use beyond Utah was that people viewed them as barbaric, according to Deborah Denno, a criminologist at Fordham School of Law.
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Denno urged policymakers to reconsider firing squads in a 2016 law review article. Among those who have expressed similar views is Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote in a 2017 dissent that “in addition to being near instant, death by shooting may also be comparatively painless.”
“Lethal injection has only gotten worse over the decades,” Denno told The Associated Press in an interview. “The firing squad really stands out as a relatively decent method of execution.”
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In the annals of executions in the U.S., she said, there have been just two botched firing squad executions: Wilkerson’s and that of Eliseo Mares in Utah in 1951. It’s not clear what happened in Mares’ case, but reports surfaced decades later that the executioners disliked him and intentionally missed his heart to prolong his suffering.
With greater oversight and expert shooters, those problems wouldn’t be repeated today, Denno said.
This interview was picked up by ABC News, MSN, U.S. News & World Report, AOL, WANE 15, and Denno was also quoted about firing squads in The Associated Press, USA Today, NBC News, The Mirror, The Post and Courier, and Straight Arrow News.