Ohio's lethal injection process is on trial today,
in the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Specifically, the court is deciding whether
the drug used to sedate prisoners during executions
is powerful enough to prevent inhumane suffering,
after a series of botched attempts.
Supplies of lethal injection drugs are also running low nationwide,
as pharmaceutical companies refuse
to sell their products to prisons.
Now, some states are considering
alternative forms of capital punishment.
But it's not exactly a new idea.
— We were on his left side.
And he was already strapped to the big black chair.
Had sandbags, big sandbags, around it.
A couple of straps on his arms.
He was wearing a navy blue jumpsuit,
which I thought was curious, at first.
Didn't realize until later that the navy blue
masked the blood that pooled.
So that's likely why it was chosen.
Warden Turley came in,
asked him if he had any last words,
and he said, "I do not, no."
A hood, a black hood, was placed over his face, and...
it wasn't 30 seconds later before it was "boom, boom!"
— On June 18th, 2010, Sheryl Worsley, a local journalist,
witnessed the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner,
convicted of robbery and multiple murders.
He was the last American to receive the death penalty,
by firing squad.
Ronnie's execution was national news.
For the 31 states where the death penalty is legal,
firing squads could be a substitute for lethal injection.
In 2010, Utah was one of two states with the firing squad
as a backup method of capital punishment.
This year, Alabama lawmakers have a bill
to follow in their footsteps,
and other Southern lawmakers are believed to be weighing alternatives,
as legal challenges to lethal injection continue.
— The execution felt violent,
it felt jarring,
but, at the same time, it felt clinical,
and professional, and clean.
And I know that sounds like an oxymoron,
but it truly felt... sterile.
— That's where the four bullets went in,
and it's dried blood and splatter that came out,
and his heart and lung material,
and everything that goes with it.
That's funny, to see that.
That just shows that it is really him.
— Ronnie Lee Gardner asked his brother, Randy,
not to witness his execution.
But in 2016, Randy obtained the photo records from that day.
It took him two months to pull out the pictures,
and actually look at what happened to his brother.
Randy says he copes through anti-death penalty activism.
He has been arrested for displaying the graphic images
of his brother's death at Utah's Capitol,
and for demonstrating in Washington D.C.
— How did it change you?
— I dreamed about it, having nightmares.
Him being executed, and his head being cut off, and him being shot.
And now that I've seen these pictures,
when I see how brutal it really was, you know,
it hurts my feelings.
You know, we felt like we were victims of a murder, really.
Of a state-sanctioned murder.
— You know, Ronnie Lee Gardner, his brother talks about the fact
that Ronnie Lee found God and he was changed.
Well, I'll tell you, everybody finds God before they die.
— Representative Paul Ray authored the bill
that brought the firing squad back as an option in Utah in 2015,
and has a bill on the floor right now
that adds violent sex trafficking as a capital offense.
— Would your guess be that firing squad is
the most humane way to carry out capital punishment?
— I think it is.
I mean, if you look at the other options,
hanging, electrocution, and lethal injection,
this is, obviously, the quickest,
most painless way to take somebody's life.
— In Utah, lethal injection is still the primary execution method.
Though they don't have the drugs on hand,
they hope to find them before the next executions.
Of the nine men on death row in Utah right now,
three say they prefer death by firing squad.
— Is it ever kind of crazy as a lawmaker
to be talking about what the best way is to take somebody's life?
— You know, it's it's a it's a big deal in Utah
if we take somebody's life,
and so, we wanted to make sure
that we were doing the things the right way,
and I think, by going back to what we've used, we know what works
and we've not had ever had a problem with it.
And these people that go to death row, they're monsters.
I mean, they're not there because they sang too loud in the choir on Sunday,
they're there because they killed somebody, and they're gonna continue to kill people.
So the only thing that we can do, is terminate them.
— Lethal injection was considered the most humane execution.
It was developed in 1977,
after a nine-year national moratorium on the death penalty.
In theory, it seemed like putting a horse to sleep.
In practice, correctional staff were poorly trained,
and that drug mixtures caused complications
and slow, painful deaths in many cases.
— Relative to lethal injection, a firing squad death is much quicker.
We've had lethal injections in this country
that have lasted over two hours,
because executioners have been trying to find a correct vein,
there have been problems with the drugs,
the inmate is simply not dying...
— For over 25 years, Fordham Law Professor Deborah Denno
has studied America's repeated attempts
to find humane ways to execute criminals.
— A firing squad sounds pretty grisly, frankly.
Does that make sense as a method for the 21st-century?
— There have only been two botches
of firing squad executions in a, say,
a sample of 144 civilian executions,
over the course of this country's history.
Both of those botches would not happen in the present day.
One was because the inmate was intoxicated,
and moving so much that the target got displaced.
In another case, the executioners
purposely shot in the side of the inmate's body,
because they wanted that inmate to suffer.
Again, we wouldn't see those kinds of incidences today.
— So when people say the firing squad is a more humane way to die...
— There is nothing more humane about it. They don't know.
You know, this is not humane to anybody.
It's not humane to Ronnie,
it's not humane to the people that do it.
It's—I mean, it's a terrible, terrible murder.