Gas chambers and death by firing squad may return to US as lethal injection drug supplies run low

THE US state of Mississippi is considering bringing back death by firing squad, electrocution and even the GAS CHAMBER.

A bill put before the state legislature would make the execution methods available to prison governors in case a court blocks the use of lethal injection drugs.

Mississippi - with 47 lags on death row - has not executed anyone since 2012 because the drugs it previously used are no longer available.

Along with other states it has tried to acquire other drugs to use instead but has faced legal challenges over whether the execution would be safe and humane.

Andy Gipson, Republican chairman of the Mississippi House judiciary committee, blasted "liberal, left-wing radicals" for challenging executions in court.

He said the new bill drawn up in response would mean the state has other options available so the death penalty can continue to be carried out.

Some of its death row prisoners have been there for decades.

Mr Gipson, who is also an attorney and Baptist pastor, said: "I have a constituent whose daughter was raped and killed by a serial killer over 25 years ago and that person's still waiting for the death penalty. The family is still waiting for justice."

He admitted he did not know when asked by a Democrat member about the "the time of suffering" an inmate would experience before dying by electrocution, gas chamber or firing squad.

State governor Phil Bryant "generally favours the efficient administration of the death penalty in Mississippi" and would review any execution bill before deciding whether to sign it, his spokesman said.

But opponents vowed all the alternative methods would also be challenged in court.

Of the 33 US states with the death penalty, all have lethal injection as the primary method of execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

But manufacturers have stopped selling prisons and law enforcement bodies the chemicals needed for the three-stage process in which the prisoner is put to sleep painlessly before his heart is stopped by a powerful drug.

In some cases authorities have tried to buy the drugs illegally through third parties but they have been intercepted by federal agents.

States have also experimented with different drugs, leading to a series of botched executions and a raft of legal challenges claiming the method violates a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Currently only Oklahoma and Utah have firing squad as an option.

Eight states have electrocution as an option, five have the gas chamber and three have hanging.

The last prisoner put to death in the electric chair was Robert Gleason, 42, who chose the gruesome method over lethal injection in Virginia in January 2013.

He was already serving life for murder when he strangled two inmates to death and vowed to keep killing until he was executed.

He said in Gaelic as he was strapped to the chair: "Kiss my a**, put me on the highway to Jackson and call my Irish buddies."

The last to die by firing squad was double-killer Ronnie Lee Gardner, 49, in Utah in June 2010.

Journalists were invited to observe his death as hooded Gardner was strapped to a chair with a three-inch white cloth pinned over his heart as a target. He was hit by four .30 calibre rifle bullets.

The last to die by gas chamber in the US was bank robber Walter LaGrand, 37, in Arizona in 1999.

He was only the 11th killed by that method since the death penalty was reinstated in the US in 1976.

Gas chambers were introduced early last century as supposedly more humane than the electric chair or hanging.

In 1994 a federal judge ruled it breached the eighth amendment, and shortly before LaGrand's execution an appeals court issued a stay that would have outlawed lethal gas for ever.

But the US Supreme court overturned the ban and the method remains legal as a back-up in Arizona, California, Maryland, Missouri and Wyoming.

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