Alabama inmate James Barber is scheduled to be put to death Thursday night, in the first execution scheduled in the state after a months-long pause following a series of botched executions nationwide and increased scrutiny over the use of lethal injection — the most widely used death penalty method in the country.
Several states have faced various problems with the execution method, including in Alabama and Arizona, where executions have been called off because of difficulties inserting IVs into veins, issues with the lethal chemicals or needles becoming disengaged.
Since Texas became the first state to use lethal injection in 1982, U.S. states and the federal government have put about 1572 prisoners to death “by some version of the method,” according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Although proponents have endorsed the method as a painless and more humane way to carry out executions, some experts have said lethal injection is the most botched of execution methods.
Capital punishment has also been in decline nationwide since at least the beginning of the 21st century, according to a February analysis from Eastern Kentucky University.
“For the eighth consecutive year, fewer than 30 people were executed and fewer than 50 people were sentenced to death,” the Death Penalty Information Center said in its 2022 report. “… The five-year average of executions, 18.6 per year, is the lowest in more than 30 years, a 74% decline over the course of one decade.”
Death penalty in decline
In recent decades, use of the death penalty has gradually decreased in the United States as more states have abolished the procedure or have cut back on executions, according to the Pew Research Center.
Currently, 23 states do not authorize capital punishment. Of the states with the death penalty, 15 have not executed anyone in the last five years and 13 states, in addition to the U.S. military, have not carried out an execution in the last decade, the Eastern Kentucky University analysis said.
There are several reasons for the decline, including states pausing executions during the COVID-19 pandemic, a decrease in death penalty practices and the availability of lethal injection drugs, according to former Death Penalty Information Center Deputy Director Ngozi Ndulue.
“But, we’ve seen that even in places that have access to drugs, we’re just still seeing less, and that is kind of overall because the death penalty is being used less. We’ve had less than 50 sentences for the last 8 years and less than 30 executions,” Ndulue previously told the Mississippi Clarion Ledger, part of the USA TODAY Network.
Ndulue added that many pharmaceutical companies do not want to provide drugs for lethal injections. And for companies that do provide them, officials often withhold information on the drugs from the public.
A 2018 Death Penalty Information Center report found that “states have used secrecy laws to conceal evidence that they have broken state and federal laws, deliberately induced contract breaches, lied to or misled legitimate drug suppliers,” among other actions to obtain execution drugs.
Botched executions
The Death Penalty Information Center has called 2022 “the year of the botched execution.” Protocol errors halted executions in a number of states in 2022, including Alabama, Tennessee, Idaho and South Carolina.
Last year, 72% of executions had “evidence of a significant impairment”, the center noted, and half of those executed spent at least 20 years on death row, which violated international human rights norms.
Barber was the first person to be executed following Alabama’s months-long moratorium after prison staff strapped a prisoner to a death chamber gurney in November, despite a court order blocking the execution, and jabbed him repeatedly with needles in his hands, arms, neck and collarbone region while holding his head, according to a court filing by Kenneth Eugene Smith’s attorneys.
In 2018, Doyle Lee Hamm was punctured at least 11 times in his lower legs and groin before the Alabama Department of Corrections called off the execution attempt after failing to find a usable vein for the lethal injection.
His attorneys argued in court that Hamm’s veins were too damaged for injection access due to past drug use and lymphatic cancer treatment. However, the lethal injection attempt was carried out and called off when Hamm began to bleed from his groin.
Three days after the attempt, a doctor examined Hamm and found lymph nodes in his right groin were infected, and he was at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Upcoming executions
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 54 executions are currently scheduled for 2023 across the US.
The next execution is scheduled Thursday in Alabama. Barber is the first person to be put to death after the state paused executions for an internal review after a series of botched lethal injections.
The center noted in its 2022 report that executions are heavily concentrated in a few jurisdictions. Currently, Oklahoma has the most executions scheduled at 15, followed by Texas at 13 and Ohio at 12, which means nearly three quarters of the country’s scheduled executions are in three states.
According to the center, two states have executions scheduled for next year, and Ohio is the only state to have executions scheduled from now through at least 2026.
Contributing: Jimmy Jenkins, Arizona Republic; Wicker Perlis, Mississippi Clarion Ledger; Associated Press
USA TODAY
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