Guest Thinkers — June 18, 2010

The Firing Squad, Please

With the Ronnie Lee Gardner execution making news, Margot Sanger-Katz finds the (limited) research suggesting that the firing squad is actually a pretty good way to go.

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With the Ronnie Lee Gardner execution making news, Margot Sanger-Katz finds the (limited) research on death penalty methods suggesting that the firing squad is actually a pretty good way to go. “Shooting is simple and deadly.” “According to a 1993 study of the relative pain associated with different execution methods, gunshot gets the highest rank when compared with lethal gas, electrocution, hanging, stoning, and other popular methods.” Though China, the country that executes more prisoners per year than any other, switched preferrence from shooting to lethal injection in 2008, to make capital punishment “more humane,” Sanger-Katz reports.

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