美国国家公共电台 NPR States Find Other Execution Methods After Difficulties With Lethal Injection

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The state of Arkansas has a death penalty problem. The state is rushing to execute death row inmates 1 at an unprecedented 2 pace this month before its supply of lethal 3 drugs expires. The expiration 4 date is important because it's getting a lot harder for states to obtain lethal injection drugs. And as a result, executions are actually down nationwide, as NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE 5: Death penalty laws are on the books in 31 states but only 5 carried out executions last year. Lethal injection methods are under increasing legal scrutiny 6. And pharmacies 7 don't want to provide the deadly drug combinations for the purpose of putting prisoners to death. Mississippi hasn't executed anyone since 2012.

ANDY GIPSON: I'll admit it is more and more difficult to carry out the sentence of the death penalty.

ELLIOTT: Republican Andy Gipson is the chairman of the Mississippi House Judiciary Committee. He says for the last six years, lawmakers have had to tweak the state's death penalty statute 8 to keep it constitutional.

GIPSON: It has been a huge problem year after year after year. So we modify the formula. We try to see if we come up with another suitable formula of injection that will be humane 9, and then another lawsuit 10 gets filed to say we can't do that either.

ELLIOTT: So this year, Mississippi came up with a backup plan. Should its lethal injection protocol 11 not stand, it will turn to a hierarchy 12 of old-school execution methods - the gas chamber 13, the electric chair or a firing squad 14. Utah also allows for the firing squad. And Alabama, Florida and Tennessee have brought back the electric chair.

States are coming up with these alternatives to deal with what the Death Penalty Information Center deems a de facto moratorium 15 on executions in some places. The group opposes capital punishment and has documented a steep drop in the numbers of both executions and death sentences.

Executive Director Robert Dunham says two-thirds of the states either don't have the death penalty or haven't executed anyone in more than a decade.

ROBERT DUNHAM: Executions have been concentrated in a small number of southern states. The rest of the country is largely not carrying out executions, if they do, they're doing so rarely.

ELLIOTT: Seven states have abolished the death penalty in the last 15 years but public support remains 16. For instance, after the Nebraska legislature repealed 17 capital punishment in 2015, voters reinstated it last year. Dunham says courts have allowed for more convictions to be reviewed, and the result has been fewer death sentences carried out.

DUNHAM: The single most likely outcome of a capital case once somebody is sentenced to death is not that they will be executed, it's that their conviction or death sentence will be overturned.

ELLIOTT: That fact has led some officials to rethink capital punishment. Newly elected prosecutors 18 in Denver and Orlando have said they won't seek death sentences. The decision has sparked controversy 19 in Florida.

UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Over loudspeaker) Florida stands with State Attorney Ayala.

ELLIOTT: Death penalty opponents rallied at the Capitol last week in support of Orlando State Attorney Aramis Ayala. Governor Rick Scott has removed her from handling 22 murder cases because of her refusal to seek the death penalty.

ARAMIS AYALA: It is a response to a broken system.

ELLIOTT: When she took office, Ayala says, Florida's death penalty was unconstitutional and existing sentences were under review.

AYALA: I'm looking at cases from 1970. I'm looking at cases that existed when I was 2 years old, and families have been waiting on death sentences since then. And I had to look at a open case in my office and say, am I going to throw this case into that pile of chaos 20?

ELLIOTT: As that plays out in Florida, Arkansas is making preparations to execute eight inmates in a 10-day stretch later this month before its lethal injection drugs expire, a pace never seen in the U.S. since the Supreme 21 Court reinstated the death penalty in the 1970s. Debbie Elliott, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF SUFJAN STEVENS SONG, "SISTER")