US Botched 35% of Death Penalty Executions in 2022, Watchdog Reveals

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 190 death row prisoners have been exonerated since 1973.

In its annual review of state-sponsored executions in the United States, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) said that seven of the 20 execution attempts – 35% – carried out in 2022 were botched to the point of being described as “visibly problematic.”

The most common issue was executioners having trouble finding a suitable vein to inject the lethal dose of drugs into. In some cases that led to an hourslong struggle and two execution attempts in Alabama were called off after executioners failed to secure a vein before the prisoners’ death warrants expired. Those two botched attempts followed an execution where it took three hours for the IV to be secured.

Alabama’s Republican Governor, Kay Ivey, has halted all executions in the state until a review of their practices can be carried out.

Lawyers for the prisoners and anti-death penalty advocates have called the extended and botched executions a form of torture.

“After 40 years, the states have proven themselves unable to carry out lethal injections without the risk that it will be botched,” said Robert Dunham, DPIC’s executive director. “The families of victims and prisoners, other execution witnesses, and corrections personnel should not be subjected to the trauma of an execution gone bad.”

The first lethal injection execution in the United States took place on December 7, 1982.

In May, an Arizona execution went awry. Executioners decided to slice into the groin of the condemned to reach a vein after they failed to secure a vein after 25 minutes of trying. The unauthorized procedure was described by local journalists as requiring “a fair amount of blood” to be wiped from the prisoner’s groin.

That execution was the first in the state since a botched execution in 2014 took two hours to perform.

A month later, Arizona executed Frank Atwood, who had to help the executioners kill him by advising them on how to find a suitable vein.

The DPIC blames a lack of transparency and accountability for the increase in botched executions.

In April of 2021, Arizona refurbished its gas chamber and spent more than $2,000 acquiring the ingredients for cyanide gas, the same chemical used by Nazis during the Holocaust.

The last gas chamber execution in the United States was in 1999 in Arizona. It took 18 minutes for Walter LaGrand, condemned for killing a teller during a botched bank robbery, to die. News reports from the time stated LaGrand choked and gagged for several agonizing minutes before succumbing to the cyanide gas. At the time, Arizona allowed prisoners to choose between lethal injection and the gas chamber as their execution method.

While the death penalty remains on the books in 27 states, it is becoming less popular over time. Only six states, Alabama, Arizona, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Missouri, and Texas, performed executions in 2022. Additionally, the 18 completed executions and the 22 death sentences handed out throughout the year are among the lowest since 1991.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Governor of Oregon, Kate Brown, recently commuted the death sentences of all 17 prisoners on death row in the state to life without parole.

And more prisoners on death row have proven their innocence, with Samuel Randolph in Pennsylvania and Marilyn Mulero in Illinois both being exonerated in 2022, proving that despite advances in forensic science, the risk of executing innocent prisoners is still significant.

According to a Gallup poll, 55% of Americans support the death penalty. That is up one point from 2021, when 54% supported capital punishment. 2021 marked a 50-year-low-point for support of the practice.