More than a third of execution attempts in 2022 were mishandled, capital punishment researchers said on Friday, describing the seven visibly botched executions that took place in three states as “shocking,” even as the total number of executions remained among the lowest in a generation (article available here).
In one of the most comprehensive annual examinations of the death penalty in the United States, the Death Penalty Information Center found that the number of executions this year, 18, remained significantly lower than even a decade ago, when more than twice as many death row prisoners were killed.
As public support for the death penalty has waned, the number of death sentences and executions has largely been in decline since the late 1990s; in 1999, 98 people were executed.
But of the 20 execution attempts this year, seven were “visibly problematic,” including two that were ultimately abandoned, the researchers wrote, adding that 2022 could thus be considered “the year of the botched execution.”
In Alabama, death chamber staff members cut open one man’s arm to insert an I.V. and, in two other attempted executions, were unable to insert I.V. lines before the men’s death warrants expired. The others were in Arizona and Texas, where officials struggled for some time before ultimately finding suitable veins.
Alabama’s governor called for a temporary moratorium last month in carrying out the death penalty while the state’s protocols were investigated.
This week, Oregon’s governor commuted the sentences of all 17 people on that state’s death row to life in prison without parole.
Of the 18 executions this year, Texas and Oklahoma each carried out five, followed by Arizona with three and Alabama with two. Oklahoma made headlines earlier in the year when the state announced that it would seek to execute 25 prisoners over a 29-month period.
In Tennessee, the governor halted all executions until next year after the state failed to properly test lethal injection drugs, a revelation that led to the halt of an execution about an hour before a prisoner was to be killed.
In South Carolina, where officials had searched for alternatives after problems finding lethal injection drugs, a judge stopped the state from moving forward with executions by firing squad or electric chair, deeming the methods cruel and unusual.