| Execution by firing squad is today a rare event in the United States; it is an authorized punishment in just five states. |
| One of them, Idaho, will make the firing squad the state’s primary execution method starting July 1, 2026. In Utah and South Carolina, death row inmates can choose it if they don’t wish to be executed by electrocution or lethal injection. The firing squad is also available in Mississippi and Oklahoma if those states cannot get the drugs needed for lethal injection. |
| The New York Timesreports that over the course of American history, “more than 140 American inmates have been executed by shooting since 1608, though it is not clear how many involved firing squads. Of those, 40 were in Utah, more than any other state.” |
| But in the past half-century, only six people have been put to death that way. During that same period, there have been more than 1,450 lethal injections. |
| The latest example took place on Friday, November 14, when South Carolina executed Stephen Bryant for the murders of three people in 2004. Bryant once scrawled “catch me if u can” on a wall using one of his victims’ blood. |
| Bryant chose to die by the firing squad. But that doesn’t make it any more acceptable. |
| It is a brutal way to die, mimicking the kind of gun violence that has long played too large a role in American life. As attorney David Weiss, who witnessed South Carolina’s last use of the firing squad, put it, that execution was a “horrifying act that belongs in the darkest chapters of history, not in a civilized society.” |
| To put Weiss’s remark in context, recall that “The firing squad is an execution method with a long and violent history around the world. It has been used… as a tool of terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.” |
| In this country, the firing squad was used in the first recorded execution in the American colonies when Captain George Kendall was executed in 1608, after being convicted of spying for Spain. Professor Deborah Denno notes that “Prior to 1789, there were thirty firing squad executions recorded, most in Louisiana and California. Along with hanging, the firing squad is this country’s oldest method of execution.” |
| Since then, it has been used to “punish mutinies and desertion in armies…[and] as frontier justice in America’s Old West.” Denno observes that “Early accounts of firing squad executions noted that the squad was comprised of five volunteer marksmen, yet only four would receive rifles with live rounds. A fifth rifle would contain a blank so that no single member of the squad would experience personal guilt for the killing.” |
| “While the term 'firing squad,’” the historian Mark Smith suggests, “can be found in U.S. newspapers before the Civil War, the phrase was usually used to describe a different custom, akin to a salute, when guns were fired into the air to honor an individual of note after death. |
| The heyday of the firing squad was also the heyday of racial conflict in this country, when it was used during the Civil War. |
| It was the method of choice to punish deserters in both Northern and Southern armies. The New York Timesquotes Smith, who says that those executions “were often done at a crossroads, some kind of field, some kind of public, open space—and that was the intention because they were largely directed against deserters.” |
| They “were typically shot simultaneously by three or more fellow soldiers—one of whom might have been issued blanks, rather than live rounds…to blur the lines of responsibility for the death.” |
| But, even in its heyday, the firing squad was not used all that much. |
| Thomas P. Lowry and Lewis Laska report that “of the 26,015 Union soldiers tried for desertion, approximately 1,243 of them, or 4.8%, were sentenced to die by firing squad; 12.4% of Confederate soldiers tried for desertion in the Army of Northern Virginia were sentenced to death by this method.” |
| Moreover, Professor Smith argues that “Civil War firing squads were not always immediately effective. For example, according to an 1864 report of a firing squad execution published in the Vicksburg Herald, one soldier from the 49th Regiment Colored Infantry 'had to be dispatched by pistol, immediate death not resulting from the wounds by the muskets.’” |
| He adds that “Witnesses could also find the spectacle difficult to watch. According to the Louisville Daily Journal in 1863, 'The scene was now becoming painful to the spectators, and many turned away, not wishing to witness more of the awful ceremony.’ Sometimes soldiers charged with firing the deadly rounds deliberately missed their target, the burden of killing in this fashion proving too much.” |
| Commentators like Angela Davis have argued that the firing squad was also used as a kind of “violence that kept white supremacy in place.” The return of the firing squad brings with it that problematic history. |
| Its return does not mean that the death penalty is thriving. Quite the opposite. Its return shatters the illusion that we can find some method to kill people that would be humane and easy to witness. |
| The experience in South Carolina provides further evidence of this fact. |
| In March, Brad Sigmon became the first of that state’s death row inmates to die after being shot. |
| One of Sigmon’s attorneys, who witnessed his execution, called it “horrifying and violent.” The firing squad, he added, “shattered his bones and destroyed his heart.” |
| The next month, South Carolina executed Mikal Mahdi by a three-person firing squad. But, as NPR reported, “an autopsy revealed two wounds on his chest, not three. None of the bullets hit his heart directly, as is supposed to happen during the execution. Instead, the wounds caused damage to his liver and other internal organs and allowed his heart to keep beating.” |
| “Pathologists,” NPR continued, “say the injuries likely caused the prisoner pain and suffering while he was still conscious.” |
| That brings us back to Stephen Bryant. What happened to him was no less gruesome than what happened to Sigmon or Mahadi, though this time the marksman seemed to have hit their target. |
| Witnesses say that Bryant was strapped to a chair, helpless and unable to move. He made no final statement. |
| He was shot at close range. When the gunshots hit him, the target over his heart flew off several feet in front of him, and blood spread across his chest. Within a few minutes, he was pronounced dead. |
| Shooting someone, the way Bryant was shot, has an eerie resemblance to the kind of cold-blooded killing that Bryant himself carried out. One we call murder, the other justice. |
| But no matter what label we put on it, death by firing squad is still the kind of senseless, cold-blooded killing that lessens us all. As Professor Corrina Lain rightly observes, “The firing squad shows what the death penalty is, which is the state shedding blood in your name.” |
Have friends who like law? Forward this email. 
Like Verdict for legal discussions on Facebook. 
Follow @verdictjustia for news and updates on Twitter. 
