Will Florida use firing squads, hanging, nitrogen gas in executions? New law allows it

Yahoo

2 days ago

As Gov. Ron DeSantis ramps up the number of executions in one year in Florida — with five convicted murders already executed and two more scheduled to die in June — the state has added new options for methods of execution.
The Sunshine State has executed people by electrocution since 1924, and lethal injection was added in 2000. Among the 17 bills the governor signed on May 22 was one that opens the door to nitrogen gas. hangings, and firing squads.
House Bill 903, which called for sweeping changes in inmate lawsuits, mandatory minimum prison time, how inmates diagnosed with mental illness are treated and involuntary placement and treatment, among other things, also allows any form of execution, provided it was "not deemed unconstitutional," if electrocution or lethal injection is found to be unconstitutional or lethal injection rugs become unavailable.
The new law takes effect July 1.
In recent years, states have turned to other methods of executions after some pharmaceutical companies have balked at providing lethal injection drugs. Convicted murderer and rapist Jessie Hoffman was executed by nitrogen gas in Louisiana, and South Carolina brought back firing squads for two murderers this year.
Florida has also expanded the range of capital offenses.
In 2023, the state added child rape as a capital offense, in defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and made it easier to impose a death sentence by repealing a unanimous jury requirement. The same day DeSantis signed HB 903 he also signed HB 693, which adds aggravating factors for capital felonies if the victim was gathered with one or more persons for a school activity, religious activity, or public government meeting.
The change comes as DeSantis is on track to break the record for most Florida executions in one year. After President Donald Trump signed an executive order his first day in office directing U.S. attorneys to seek the death penalty for any conviction for which it is permitted, DeSantis responded with seven signed death warrants in three months.
That's the most death warrants by a Florida governor since 1984 and 2014 when those governors — the late U.S. Sen. Bob Graham and current U.S. Sen. Rick Scott — signed eight each.
About 100 death row inmates, including seven added to the list this year, are eligible for execution.
However, while many Republican leaders laud the governor's efforts, public support for the death penalty remains at a five-decade low at 53%, with a recent Gallup poll showing more than half of young U.S. adults ages 18 through 43 oppose it. The practice has come under increased criticism in recent years over the morality of the state ending human life and what critics call "horrific" and "barbaric" methods.
In February, Brad Keith Sigmon became the first inmate in South Carolina to be executed by firing squad in modern history and the first in the U.S. since 2010. Since 1977, only three other inmates have been killed by firing squad, all in Utah.
South Carolina shot another man to death in April: Mikal Mahdi, convicted of the 2004 killing of an off-duty public safety officer.
The bill from Rep. Berny Jacques, R-Seminole, allows the state to use any method of execution at all provided it has not been deemed unconstitutional if:
Electrocution or lethal injection are found to be unconstitutional, or
The acquisition of chemicals necessary for lethal injection becomes impossible or impractical
Several states have turned to using nitrogen gas as access to the drugs required for lethal injections has become limited. Some pharmaceutical companies have either stopped production or refused to provide them for executions. While the Florida bill doesn't include the words "firing squad," "hanging," or "nitrogen" anywhere in its text, any of them or other methods would be allowed under state law.
A similar Senate bill, SB 1604, specified that alternative methods may not be deemed unconstitutional or "cruel and unusual." That language does not appear in the bill that passed.
Other changes in the bill include:
Exempting challenges to prison disciplinary reports from requests for court costs and fees for indigent prisoners
Adding a one-year statute of limitations on petitions and tort actions filed by a prisoner
Adding requirements to certain federal civil actions filed by prisoners
Updating minimum sentences and allows courts to impose consecutive sentences for certain crimes
Allowing a warden to petition for an order compelling an inmate to submit to emergency surgical intervention or other services when the inmate is competent but refusing necessary treatment and is engaging in self-injurious behavior that threatens others
Allowing jail and prison personnel to install and use tracking devices and applications
Overhauling the Department of Corrections Mental Health Act and established procedures related to advance health care directives for inmates
Allowing the governor and cabinet to directly appoint commissioners to the Florida Commission on Offender Review committee rather than from a list compiled by a parole qualifications committee and removes a requirement that membership of the commission must include representation of minorities
Sigmon, sentenced to death for the 2001 beating deaths of his ex-girlfriend's parents, chose the firing squad over lethal injection or the electric chair. His attorney cited "prolonged and potentially torturous deaths" from the state's recent execution drug and fears of the electric chair, which would "burn and cook him alive."
He was strapped to a specially made metal chair with a hood over his head in the same room as the state's electric chair while three volunteer corrections staffers fired live rounds at him through an opening in a wall 15 feet away, according to several news media witnesses who spoke at a news conference afterward.
A white target with a red bullseye was placed over Sigmon's heart, after which his attorney read his last words, the warden ordered the execution and the team fired, the witnesses said.
"Brad's death was horrifying and violent," Gerald 'Bo' King, Sigmon's attorney and an execution witness, said in a statement. "It is unfathomable that, in 2025, South Carolina would execute one of its citizens in this bloody spectacle."
Under a nitrogen gas execution, the inmate is forced to breathe pure nitrogen, resulting in suffocation by ​'nitro­gen hypox­ia' as the inmate's brain and body are deprived of oxygen, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Execution by nitrogen gas was legal in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. Arkansas made it legal in March and the legislatures of Ohio and Nebraska reintroduced similar legislation this year.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall described nitrogen hypoxia as "textbook," "humane and effective." Chief District Judge Shelly Dick said witnesses to the state's four nitrogen executions described inmates' bodies "writhing" under their restraints, "vigorous convulsing and shaking for four minutes," heaving, spitting, and a "conscious struggling for life."
Five states — South Carolina, Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and Idaho — have legalized firing squads as an execution method. Idaho legalized them in 2023.
The last American inmate to be killed by firing squad before Sigmon was in 2010, when Utah executed Ronnie Lee Gardner for killing a man during a robbery. Before that, Gary Mark Gilmore in 1977 and John Albert Taylor in 1996 were both shot to death in Utah.
Florida has executed people for nearly 200 years. Benjamin Donica, the first known execution in the state, was hanged for murder in 1827.
Inmates convicted of capital crimes may be sentenced to death, although they may stay on death row for years as appeals work their way through the legal system. Execution dates are set by the governor, who signs the death warrants.
From 1924 until May 1964, the state of Florida has executed 196 people. There were no executions from May 1964 until May 1976.
In 1972, the United States Supreme Court struck down the death penalty but it was reinstated in 1976. Florida has carried out 111 executions since then.
There are two executions scheduled for June, barring any challenges.
Anthony F. Wainwright, who escaped from a North Carolina prison with another man and kidnapped, raped and killed a North Florida woman they abducted from a Winn-Dixie parking lot, is scheduled to be executed on June 10
Thomas Gudinas, convicted of the 1994 rape and murder of a woman near a downtown Orlando bar, has been scheduled for execution on June 24.
Before 1923, executions were usually performed by hanging. The Florida Legislature passed a law replacing that method with an electric chair, which was built by prison inmates. The first person electrocuted by the state was Frank Johnson in 1924, for shooting and killing a Jacksonville railroad engineer during a burglary.
Florida's current three-legged electric chair, nicknamed 'Old Sparky,' was built of oak by Florida Department of Corrections staff and installed at Florida State Prison in Raiford in 1999.
Legislation passed in 2000 allows for lethal injection as an alternative to the electric chair. The choice is left up to the inmate.
All executions, injection or electric chair, are carried out at the execution chamber located at Florida State Prison in Raiford. The executioner, a private citizen allowed to remain anonymous by state law, is paid $150 per execution.
As of Wednesday, April 2, there are currently 271 inmates on Florida's death row, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. It breaks down to:
White males: 162
Black males: 95
Other males: 13
White females: 0
Black females: 1
Other females: 0
Men on death row are housed at Florida State Prison and Union Correctional Institution in Raiford. Women are housed at Lowell Annex in Lowell.
Florida leads the nation in death row exonerations, with 30 prisoners found wrongfully incarcerated since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Contributing: Amanda Lee Myers, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Florida executions by nitrogen gas, noose, firing squad become legal