Will firing squad executions continue to be used in carrying out death sentences nationwide? Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno, death penalty expert and founding director of Fordham Law’s Neuroscience and Law Center, shares her opinion with The Post and Courier.
At the same time, capital punishment researchers emphasize that executions have risen and fallen throughout the nation’s history, as a result of socio-cultural factors.
Within the last century, executions spiked in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, when people were suffering economically, said Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law school professor. Since 1999, she said, executions nationwide have been on a downward trajectory for reasons that include lower public support for capital punishment and challenges related to the lethal injection method.
Denno, who has been studying American executions going back to 17th century colonial times, believes the rise in numbers this year is temporary.
“I think it’s a fluke,” she said, “and things will fall back or continue to fall back in the other direction.”
She also noted that the majority of this year’s executions come from just a handful of states. Besides Florida, Texas and South Carolina, only three other states have so far conducted more than one execution: Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee.