Death row inmates in Florida may be poised to face execution by hanging, firing squads, or other rarely used execution methods under a state bill currently awaiting Governor DeSantis’s signature. 

The bill, passed by the Florida legislature last week, seeks to ensure that the Sunshine State can still follow through on executions even if the chemicals required for lethal injections — the state’s typical method — are unavailable or if the tactic becomes “impractical.” The measure would greatly expand the state’s authorized death penalty options to include any that have not been “deemed unconstitutional nor cruel and unusual.”

The catch? The Supreme Court has never found a method of execution to be unconstitutional, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. 

The bill, then, paves the way for Florida death row inmates — who, under current state law, are limited to execution by lethal injection or, more rarely, electric chair — to be executed via more controversial tactics, like the gas chamber, firing squad, hanging, or even never-before-used methods. 

“We’re actually injecting another option for the death penalty,” the bill’s sponsor, Jonathan Martin, a Republican state senator, said on the senate floor. “We don’t have to look at only the options that are currently out there being used by other states. There could be other options out there.” 

Not everyone is on board, however. “The bill as passed is extremely broad and could lead to Florida using virtually any other method,”  the executive director of Floridians Against the Death Penalty, Maria DeLiberato, told the Floridian.

The measure is just one of four bills currently sitting on Mr. DeSantis’s desk that seek to broaden the state’s use of the death penalty. Two of them introduce new aggravating factors that increase the likelihood of a convict being served a death sentence for a capital crime, such as whether the crime was committed against a foreign or domestic head of state or if a capital crime was committed during certain public gatherings. 

The fourth bill would allow the death penalty for certain non-homicide crimes involving human trafficking. However, that measure challenges a precedent set by the Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana, which said that a death penalty in cases of child rape violated the Eighth Amendment’s restriction on cruel and unusual punishment within the justice system. 

The pieces of legislation are expected to be signed into law by Mr. DeSantis, given his recent efforts to amp up the state’s use of capital punishment. Since 2023, the Sunshine State has executed nine people. 

The bills come as legal questions about lethal injection’s effectiveness, as well as crucial drug shortages, have shaken up the death penalty landscape. Some states have been considering bringing back execution methods outlawed last century over concerns about their potentially cruel nature. 

Execution by firing squad started up again in March after a 15-year nationwide hiatus when a South Carolina death row inmate opted for the more archaic method due to his concerns over the state’s other available methods — lethal injection and electric chair. While his execution appeared to go smoothly, South Carolina ran into some trouble in April when it staged its second death by firing squad that lawyers are now calling “botched.” 

Attorneys for Mikal Mahdi, who was executed on April 11 for murdering a police officer and two other individuals during a multistate crime spree, claim that the state’s three-person firing squad only managed to strike the convict with two bullets, both of which largely missed his heart, leaving him to suffer long enough to qualify as cruel and unusual punishment. An autopsy commissioned by the state showed that Mahdi sustained only two bullet wounds and neither punctured his heart directly. 

“The causes of this botch are unknown,” Mahdi’s lawyers wrote in their complaint. “Did one member of the execution team miss Mr. Mahdi entirely? Did they not fire at all? How did the two who did shoot Mr. Mahdi miss his heart?”

Under South Carolina protocol, three volunteer shooters fire at the convict’s heart using  .308-caliber rounds that break apart and spread on impact to destroy as much of the heart as possible. In other states, like Utah, one of the shooters will be given a blank so that the identity of the shooter who fires the fatal shot remains unknown. 

While some criticize the firing squad method as barbaric, others view it as a more humane option given that the prisoners are usually killed instantaneously — though, as evident in South Carolina, that’s not always the case. Beyond South Carolina and Utah, execution by firing squad is also legal in Idaho, Oklahoma, and Mississippi. In March, Idaho’s governor made it the state’s primary execution method. 

Other states have turned to developing new methods. Last year, Alabama became the first state to carry out an execution via nitrogen gas, in which the convict inhales pure nitrogen through a mask until suffocation. Since then, the state has executed three people using nitrogen gas.