Change execution method to save public's lives

A recent series of legal rulings has left Louisiana with the need to tweak its law that ultimately saves lives.

Rulings made concerning an Alabama law that permits hypoxia as a method of carrying out capital punishment, coupled with a U.S. Supreme Court declination to review them, said that particular method of execution is unconstitutional. This would rest on Eighth Amendment grounds as cruel and unusual punishment, as in the several instances where such a method has been used, including in Louisiana where the method was added into law in 2024 and carried out last year, the inmates appeared to struggle during the process.

This represents a temporary victory for capital punishment opponents, whose strategy in the face of the constitutionality of the general concept of the death penalty is to try to declare every specific method as unconstitutional. They do this despite the fact that social science research indicates that capital punishment when consistently applied saves innocent lives – or perhaps in spite of it for ideological reasons because they know if they can disrupt the consistency then the practice becomes ineffective and then they can use that to try to attack the conceptual constitutionality argument.

Until 2024, Louisiana permitted only lethal injections, but the anti-death penalty crowd has used political pressure to make suppliers hesitant to provide the necessary chemicals correctly concocted. As a result, lawmakers added both hypoxia and electrocution, which had been the method used until 1991, as legal methods.

The political problem behind injection remains, as well as recent efforts to try to have that declared unconstitutional on the basis of jury-rigged attempts in Alabama that didn’t go well that pushed that state towards hypoxia as a method. For Louisiana, that would leave just electrocution as a legal method, but the problem with that is the infrastructure for that no longer exists, and it’s uncertain how long and at what cost would be attached to resurrecting this method. As well, as part of their scorched earth campaign with methods, activists have been trying to impugn electrocution as well, even as court decisions decades ago have reaffirmed it doesn’t constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

So, to be on the safe side as well as to ensure consistent carrying out of capital sentences that provides the needed deterrent effect, Louisiana should expand its methods. The two most venerable methods, firing squads and hanging, have been unbreachable as constitutional methods, and thus should be added to law next session. Unfortunately, that would be a year away to come into effect, and with the politics behind injection, practicality for now attendant to electrocution, and legal uncertainty of hypoxia, it seems no executions will occur between now and then.

That will put lives at risk, so this amending should not be dragged out any longer than necessary, even as it is unpleasant to bring up in an election year. But lawmakers owe it to the innocent citizenry imperiled by delay to pursue this as quickly as possible.