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What Death Row Looks Like in America
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- The US legal system is a killing machine. For nearly four centuries, it’s perfected the art of state-sanctioned death. Each new method promised progress - but every one ends
- in blood. America has never stopped refining how it kills. But which one is the worst way to die? On today’s episode of The Infographics Show, we’re looking at every way the
- U.S. executes its prisoners. First against the wall - the firing squad. Or fusilading, if you’re feeling fancy. So, how does it work?
- The details have changed over time, but today it goes like this: you’re led into the execution chamber and strapped to a chair with a removable
- covering. You’ll have a hood placed over your head, and a paper target pinned to your chest. Three marksmen enter the chamber with rifles. There’s no sound,
- no countdown. Just silence - until they fire in unison. You’ll bleed out within minutes. In some cases, one or more rifles are loaded with blanks or wax bullets. This creates what’s
- known as a “diffusion of responsibility” - none of the executioners knows who fired the fatal shot, and no one has to bear the full weight of taking a life in the line of duty.
- It may seem pretty alien today, but the firing squad was one of the most common methods of execution. At least 145 civilians have been executed by firing squad in the United
- States - not counting the countless soldiers shot during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. The first known firing squad execution in America took place in Jamestown, Virginia, back in 1608.
- That’s when Captain George Kendall was shot for mutiny. In the centuries that followed, execution by firing squad became a common punishment within the military for desertion.
- The killings were designed to be a public spectacle, striking fear into the other soldiers and stopping them from breaking rank. According to some historians, roughly 185 soldiers
- were executed by firing squad during the Civil War - a reminder of how popular it had been. After 1860, almost all of the executions by firing squad happened in Utah. In 1913,
- Nevada couldn’t find enough volunteers for a firing squad - so they built a machine to do it, rigged to fire three rifles at once. A series of botched executions turned public
- opinion against the firing squad - the most infamous in 1877, when Wallace Wilkerson was shot multiple times but left to die slowly after his executioners missed their mark.
- It took fifteen minutes of agony for him to die. Recent history was made in March of 2025 with the execution of Brad Sigmon,
- a man convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a baseball bat. His South Carolina execution by firing squad ended the U.S.’s 15-year hiatus from using this method,
- drawing reporters from major news outlets across the country. Jeffrey Collins from The Associated Press described how the hood was placed over Sigmon’s head. A black shade was opened,
- where three prison-system volunteer shooters were waiting. After a two minute wait, a crack rang out. Sigmon’s body jerked, his chest rose and fell three times and then
- nothing. A prison doctor stepped forward, examined him, and declared him dead. All things considered, it seems pretty painless, right?
- There’s an irony to death by firing squad. On a visceral level, shooting someone strapped to a chair feels brutal,
- gory, and primitive - far crueler than some of the other methods we’ll cover today. And yet, for the person being executed, it’s often one of the quickest and least painful ways to die.
- Supporters point to that efficiency as proof it’s the most humane option. But we’d be lying if we said the firing squad was some bouquet of roses that just happens to shoot you
- to death. Even more recent than Brad Sigmon was the 2025 execution of spree killer Mikal Mahdi - and that one didn’t go nearly as smoothly. Like Sigmon, Mahdi was shot in the bullseye target
- placed over his heart. He cried out in pain from the shots, and over the next 45 seconds, he groaned in pain as he bled out. It took another 80 seconds for him to breathe his final breath.
- If the prison system truly wanted these deaths to be as humane as possible, the executioners would aim for the head - a single shot that would end life instantly,
- though it would be a lot messier. But that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. American culture has deep taboos about preserving the face for open-casket
- funerals - a case of putting the comfort of the audience over the mercy of the condemned. But if you’re looking for the perfect middle ground - painful for the condemned, and deeply
- uncomfortable for everyone watching - you’re going to love our next All-American method of execution. The electric chair. Old Sparky. The Green Mile. Riding the Lightning.
- This one is such an institution that even its nicknames are pretty iconic. Deaths like Wallace Wilkerson’s opened a market for a supposedly more ‘humane’ method - mechanical,
- impersonal, and merciful in theory. Instead of men pulling triggers, the job would be reduced to flipping a switch and waiting for the system to do its work.
- It works like this: electrodes are attached to the head and legs of the inmate. The inmate’s body effectively becomes a human transistor, conducting a powerful electrical current for around two
- minutes - making it a longer ordeal than death by firing squad, even in the best-case scenario. In earlier versions of the machine, a metal skullcap was placed on the inmate’s head
- instead of electrodes, with a saline solution added to improve conductivity. This also has a modern equivalent - a conductive gel called Electro-Crème, applied beneath the electrodes. It
- was once believed that death came from the brain being cooked inside the skull. But as early as 1899, it was established that the real cause was heart failure from the massive electrical current.
- New York State was the first state to commission and institute the electric chair as a kinder method of execution. After a string of accidental electrocutions caused
- by careless wiring, dentist Alfred P. Southwick and doctor George E. Fell began testing the earliest version of the machine - by zapping hundreds of stray dogs.
- It sounds strange that a dentist would help dream this up - until you learn the earliest prototype was just a dentist’s chair.
- Inventor Thomas Edison was also a huge proponent of execution via electrocution, and he rode hard for Alternating Current as the perfect method of doing it. Was this
- because it was the best method? Not really. It was because Edison’s competitors in the electricity business used Alternating Current, and he used Direct Current.
- He wanted to paint Alternating Current as too dangerous for commercial use. However, the electric chair actually got off to a way rougher start than the firing squad - the
- first actual execution using this method being a traumatic experience for all involved. This was the 1890 execution of William Kemmler in New York, an intellectually disabled man who
- was about to go down in history for his precedent-setting and horrific death. When it was decided that he was going to be executed by this newfangled murder chair,
- Kemmler’s legal team campaigned against it. They felt it would constitute cruel and unusual punishment, which is forbidden under the US Constitution.
- But this appeal fell on deaf ears, seemingly because everyone was just really eager to see what would happen. The Supreme Court argued that only something
- that caused a painful and lingering death could count as cruel and unusual punishment. Hold that in your mind, it’s gonna be relevant in a moment.
- Kemmler was strapped into the chair like it was the world’s most depressing ride at Disneyland. His last words before the hood was thrown over his head and the switch was flipped were,
- “Do it properly, I’m in no hurry.” He was given a 17 second jolt of high-intensity electricity. When technicians approached the body, Kemmler started groaning in pain. He wasn’t dead,
- and everyone began to panic. One person from the crowd started screaming, “Turn the current back on, turn the current back on!” So they did, at max intensity, and hoped for the best.
- After 2 minutes of frying Kemmler, the stench of his burning flesh started to waft across the execution chamber, enveloping everyone in the audience.
- Some witnesses fainted from how awful the whole thing was. Others had severe attacks of nausea and started being sick, making the situation even worse.
- New York newspapers were ruthless in the aftermath, describing the incident as a, quote, “historic bungle”, and “disgusting, sickening, and inhuman.” Between 1973 and 2013,
- there were 158 executions by electric chair, and there have been several more since then. Ten of those have been botched nightmares like what happened to the unfortunate William Kemmler.
- Nine years later, Martha Place would achieve the dubious honor of being the first woman ever executed by the electric chair - a real win for the burgeoning feminist movement in
- the quest for gender equality. For a while, submitting to the electric chair was the only option for execution in Nebraska, before this was shot down in 2008 as unconstitutional.
- US Supreme Court Associate Justice William Brennan once gave an incredibly, evocative description of what an electric chair execution is like to witness. He said
- the body would undergo drastic and sometimes horrific changes. Prisoners would often vomit and drool. Their skin would turn bright red and stretch as the current surged through
- them. On some occasions, the condemned would catch fire due to the intense temperatures. To this day, the electric chair is still an option in seven states,
- including Alabama, South Carolina, and Florida. It’s clear that the US has been through plenty of methods of execution over its
- relatively brief history. From the three active ones discussed, to plenty that aren’t used anymore. The last execution by gas chamber was in 2024,
- when Alabama man, Kenneth Eugene Smith, was killed by nitrogen hypoxia. The last hanging was in 1996, and nowadays, New Hampshire is the only state that has it as an available execution option.
- But the horrors of all of these pale compared to just how grim it is to die by lethal injection. Over 1,400 people have been executed by lethal injection since 1976. The majority of those
- have been in Texas, where this method to kill 593 inmates. Everything is bigger in Texas, including body counts. The lethal injection has been, by a wide margin, the most popular form of execution
- since it was first introduced in 1977. This is partly because it’s a lot more cost effective than any of the other methods, while also being less visibly gory than hanging or decapitation.
- So, how does it actually kill you? It’s actually a three step process, involving the careful administration
- of different types of drugs. First, the sedative. In most cases, this is midazolam, a controversial sedative that’s sparked backlash. One prisoner, Thomas D Arthur of Alabama,
- explicitly requested to be sent off to the firing squad rather than die like that. Of course, this appeal was denied, and he was executed by lethal injection.
- In Arkansas, the drug is administered by two different IV sites, to prevent “vein failure” from making the death more drawn-out and painful. After all, it’s already going to
- be painful enough even if nothing goes wrong. A vein failure is what made the death of Clayton Lockett in 2014 extra painful. He thrashed and writhed for 43 minutes before he met the reaper.
- After the sedative, you get the paralytic, which will paralyze the muscles and keep the victim immobilized. Given that some victims have woken up mid-execution,
- this is a pretty necessary procedure. Vecuronium Bromide is Arkansas’ drug of choice when it comes to making sure inmates remain physically frozen right before they inject the death juice.
- That’s because, when the victims are fully subdued by the sedative and the paralytic, it’s time for an unhealthy dose of potassium chloride to the veins. This will,
- in an ideal scenario, stop the heart quickly - but with lethal injections there have been a very large number of unideal scenarios. Because even if literally everything goes right, there’s
- a very good reason to believe that the process is still exceptionally painful and unpleasant. One upsetting fact is that the deadly drugs are often
- administered by volunteers with little to no medical knowledge - doctors would be violating their Hippocratic Oath if they got involved. For that same reason,
- most chemists and pharmacologists are reluctant to offer advice on the ideal chemical combination for a painless and efficient death. It may hurt their reputation if they operate domestically,
- and might get them in legal trouble if they’re consulting internationally. More on that soon.
- Autopsies on the bodies of people who’ve died by lethal injection have revealed some extremely disturbing results. Multiple doctors found evidence of pulmonary edema - fluid in the
- lungs and airways. The lungs of people executed by lethal injection were nearly twice as heavy than normal - a sign that the chemical cocktail flooded their airways with blood and plasma.
- In other words, many likely drowned in their own blood, fully conscious but completely paralyzed. And on top of the outright cruelty and brutality of the methods,
- there have been some unique practical issues for lethal injections. For example, in 2011, one of the major companies producing the paralytic used in most lethal injection
- executions moved their home base to Italy - a country where capital punishment is illegal. Italian law dictated that the drug could only be shipped to the US if it wasn’t being used
- in executions, which left US executioners desperately scrambling for a solution. They were able to find a pharmacist in England, but that door closed a year later in 2011 - that’s
- when the UK government made the export of drugs for use in capital punishment illegal. Currently, lethal injection is still the most popular method of execution,
- but innovation always finds a way. It’s exciting to imagine what kind of advanced methods the US government might devise to kill prisoners in the next generation.
- We’ve seen every way the U.S. carries out executions, but what’s it like for the person who has to do it? Watch What Is It Like To Be A Death Row Executioner
- to step inside the mind of the one holding the switch. Or click on this video instead.