The return of the firing squad in Trump’s America

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07Today, the return of the firing squad.

0:17Apologies in all of this, I have this all the time, the need to describe events that are very brutal and extremely distressing. This is Ed Pilkington, the chief reporter of Guardian US. But this is how it works. A prisoner who has been sitting for several days in a cell next to the execution chamber awaiting his fate. This usually is a male, though in Idaho there is one of the eight prisoners on death row is a woman. The prisoner is brought into the execution chamber, usually by two or three guards. They're sat down on a chair surrounded by sandbags in case the bullets fly around. They're strapped down so they're absolutely immobile, including a strap over their chin so that their head can't move.

1:06And then they have a black hood placed over their head so they cannot see what's happening. The marksmen take their positions. They stand behind a wall so you can't see them. There is a slot in the wall. They direct their guns, they target their guns on a target that is put directly over the heart of the prisoner. And then on the signal given by an executive, they fire in unison. What Ed has just described sounds archaic. It sounds barbaric. But this way of killing prisoners is becoming popular again in Trump's America. And this week, the state of Idaho became the first to choose the firing squad as its primary preferred method.

1:54You know, it's a scene of indescribable horror in my view, but that's how it works in America in 2026.

2:09From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus. America's latest death protocol.

2:23Ed Pilkington, in your 20 years reporting on America, reporting on executions has become something of a specialism for you. What is it about that particular topic that draws you as a journalist? I think the death penalty illuminates so much that is critical about the fault lines in America today. At the heart of it is race. The death penalty was adopted by former Confederate states as they came out of the Civil War. It became an official alternative to lynching, which was a sort of unofficial way of doing things. And you can draw a line from that all the way to today. And meanwhile, it also illuminates the extreme inequity in criminal justice in America, the shocking sort of glibness almost with which many states prosecute and then convict people and put them on death row and then carry out executions has constantly stunned and amazed me.

3:24I mean, people are put on death row on the flimsiest of evidence when you would assume that being the ultimate punishment, it would be ultimately correctly carried out. The truth is quite the opposite. And can you tell us how many people are executed in the US each year? Yeah, well, those of us who follow this stuff closely are seeing a disturbing revival. It's coming back. It's rising up again. Last year, there were 47 people executed in the US. And that's quite a jump from the sort of less than 30, the fewer than 30 that we've been seeing per year before that. 19 of those executions were down to Florida, which sort of leapt into it with a vengeance.

4:04but we've been seeing Donald Trump enthusiastically encouraging states to ramp it up. Now they give the death penalty where they give a slight injection so that they don't have pain when the needle goes in to slowly put them to sleep. I mean, these people have to be treated very, very severely. And of those states that are engaged in this, there are about seven active states who are doing most of it. They've done just that. They've been ramping up their executions.

4:40An increasing number of the people who are being put to death are being killed by firing squad, which to my ears just sounds completely barbaric and archaic. Why is this method back in vogue? I think it's because a couple of things. First off, and the main thing, is that lethal injections, which since the 70s have been the most common way of carrying out an execution in the US, which was seen as the perfect, humane, medicalised way of doing things, is run into a lot of trouble. There's a huge international boycott. It began in the UK and then spread through Europe and then round the world. The manufacturer of ketamine, Hikama, doesn't want to see these drugs used and has already sent a cease and desist letter to the Attorney General's office.

5:23And yet, here we are still trying to move forward with this execution. And now we see these drugs have expired and we're seeing the same thing happen. It means they can't get hold of the drugs they need to do these lethal injections. And they've also been having a string of gruesome botches where they can't find the veins of the prisoners they're trying to kill. The state of Idaho will be delaying the execution of one of America's longest serving death row inmates. This after a failed lethal injection attempt when the medical team couldn't set up an IV line to administer the drugs. When we've been seeing prisoners survive an execution, which for me is about the most unimaginable experience possible.

6:03A convicted killer who survived a botched execution is trying to avoid setting a date for a second attempt at lethal injection. So people are turning to the foreign squad. They say, OK, maybe a bit bloody and brutal, but it's foolproof and therefore it's humane. Well, we'll talk in a bit about whether this method is indeed foolproof and always succeeds quickly. But can you just tell us where else in the world is firing squad a favoured method of execution? Well, interesting company for the leader of the free world, the US to be keeping. On the list, North Korea, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Belarus all have firing squads as their main method of an official method, really, of capital punishment in those countries.

6:48So we're keeping interesting company. And in the US, we've got a growing number of states who are entering the game. We've got Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina. Utah has for about 100 years been almost the only state practicing the foreign squad, but now it's been joined by many others. And this week, Idaho has become the first state in the nation to make the foreign squad the primary method of its judicial killings. So that's a significant stamp of approval, I think, to a method that has historically been seen as brutal and bloody in most states. Even if they practice a death penalty, they didn't want to go near it.

7:30And when you say that in Idaho it will now be the primary method, does that mean it's going to be the default? Or will prisoners on death row have a choice between different methods? I think it's going to be the default unless prisoners insist on a different method. And under Supreme Court law introduced recently, prisoners do have to be able to offer an alternative if they argue that they shouldn't be killed by any particular method. So there will be other choices, including lethal injections, but they have now set up their execution chamber to allow for the firing squad, and that will be the prime method.

8:06And have they used the same arguments to justify this move, i.e. that it's more reliable than lethal injections? Yes. I mean, the shift towards firing squad in Idaho is a primary method. It came through the legislature. It was done by sort of lawmakers in the state. The particular representative, Bruce Gork, who co-sponsored the bill and introduced it, he has said in an interview that he's pointed out that the lethal injection could have problems. Six to seven percent of intravenous injections of pentobarbital or other medications, so to speak, fail on executions. And I thought, well, that is cruel and unusual punishment in a way.

8:48And he said, quote, we needed something that was sure and humane. That's an interesting word to use for the firing squad. Firing squad is quick. It's certain. There's no failure. The person that is condemned is unconscious immediately. so I think it's the more humane way to go

9:14You've said before that proponents of the firing squad claim that it's quick, it's certain, it's foolproof Is it? That's the claim You know, it's the left ventricle that's hit that's the critical ventricle of the part that pumps blood to the brain as soon as blood stops reaching the brain, it cuts off, and therefore death is instantaneous. That's the claim. The record of history of the firing squad is not quite as simple. It goes all the way back to 1608, where the very first judicial execution was carried out in the Jamestown settlement. And all these centuries, there are thought to have been 147 executions of civilian prisoners by firing squad since James Down.

9:59And there are two very important examples where things definitely went wrong. In 1879, a prisoner called Wallace Wilkerson, he took 27 minutes to die. The marksman shot way above his heart and into his left arm, and he screamed out, oh my God, my God, they have missed, which is a refrain that sticks in the mind. More recently, in 1951, there was a prisoner called Alicio Mares. A law professor who studied his case said that all the bullets missed his heart in that case. It was reported that he died a very slow and very gruesome death. And the law professor went on to speculate that actually it may even have been an intentional missing of his heart for reasons that the scholar couldn't actually ascertain.

10:51And he posited two possible reasons. One, that the marksmen were kind of freaked out. They didn't want to hit him in the heart, which is for reasons that we don't know. But he did also speculate there was another possible explanation, and that was that the riflemen wanted to torture this guy, Ulysses Omares, to the max. That's the possible explanation. Speculative though it is that I found very, very distressing. Definitely. And I think over the past 16 years, there have been four firing squad executions, and I think at least two of those have generated similar concerns. Can you tell us about those executions?

11:29Yeah, the first was in 2010, again in Utah, that state that has historically been the epicenter of all this. I was actually there. I was at the prison, though they wouldn't let me into the death chamber. So I wasn't an eyewitness, but I was outside the prison when this happened because it was, even then, pretty rare event. the prisoner, Ronnie Lee Gardner, had been 25 years on death row for murdering an attorney during an attempt by him to escape a courthouse. And eyewitnesses who did get into the execution chamber, unlike me, they said that they saw his fists clench several times in the seconds after he was struck in the chest, and they thought that he was fighting against the pain.

12:15When he was shot, some of us, I think, weren't sure if he had passed away because we could see movement. He had his fists clenched and we can see his elbow move up and down and his thumb and forefingers rubbing against each other. It even inflicted in several of the eyewitnesses the suspicion that they would have to shoot again a second volley of bullets before he died. I think for a brief second we were starting to wonder if that was going to happen because he kept moving. That didn't happen, but it was an excruciating wait for him to die, and that's a quote from one of the eyewitnesses. So that case was very, very problematic, and there have been studies into the autopsy pictures organized by the family of the prisoner who died, and they have shown evidence that the bullets missed his heart.

13:09So that was a very, very, very disturbing case. And, yeah, I put all the allegations about the Ronnie Lee Gardner execution that it was botched and even the speculation that it might have been intentional. I put it all to the Utah DeBondmer Corrections, but they came back to me and said they had nothing to say about it. And in the article you wrote about this, you discussed in detail the execution of a man called Mikhail Maddy. What was significant about this case in particular? Yes. Last year, South Carolina jumped into this business with a vengeance. They carried out three firing squad executions.

13:47And bearing in mind that Utah had been pretty much the only state ever to do this in US history, this was a big deal. And of those three, maybe two of the three had problems associated with them. But one in particular, the middle one, Mikhail Mahdi, age 42 his death was very very disturbing eyewitnesses said that he groaned that he gasped for for breath as long as after 80 seconds now very mind the protocol even the protocol in south carolina says that prisoners should die within 10 to 15 seconds should be instantaneous that's the claim of this foolproof method but it took four minutes before he was proclaimed dead and disturbing scenes in the process.

14:34Mikhail Mahdi was sitting in the firing squad chair. They came out and right at 6.01, they put the hood over his head. Mahdi had a groan, I wouldn't call it a scream, but it was like a groan or some indication of pain immediately after he was shot. And then there was also one like final gasp or one kind of final deep breath. And then lawyers for Mardi, as well as for other death row inmates who had execution dates coming up, examined the admittedly very paltry evidence that the state allowed to be seen by the public, including some photographs. And that showed that the three bullets that had been fired, there had been only two entry wounds into the body, which puzzled many people.

15:24The state said that maybe two bullets had entered the same hole, but pathologists say that's very unlikely. And the bullets that did enter the body, they missed the critical left ventricle. And that's accepted fact. The bullets missed the left ventricle, and they may have glancingly hit the right ventricle. Now, this is a problem, because the left ventricle, as we've discussed, is what pumps blood to the brain. It's what kills you instantaneously, if you don't hit the left ventricle, much more likely to bleed out, which is a process that takes much longer and would be excruciatingly painful. The state and the top court in South Carolina disagree with many, many people who say, including experts who say this was a botched execution.

16:11They say it was textbook. It was not botched. But the evidence, I think, is disturbing enough to demand more examination and give people pause that they're taking on board a method that certainly seems to be difficult and if not absolutely terrifying if it goes wrong. And in that case, the Mardi case in South Carolina, is there a suggestion or a suspicion perhaps on behalf of his attorney or his family that, again, they might have deliberately missed in order to prolong his agony. Yeah. I mean, there's allegation that firing squads might intentionally be missing the heart of a prisoner in order to inflict extreme maximum suffering on that prisoner.

17:00I want to give a kind of warning to this at the beginning. That's a very, very heavy allegation to make, and it is speculative. They speculated because we cannot know the motive of the people who are behind those rifles. They're shrouded in secrecy. We don't know their names. We don't know their gender. All we know is that they're trained marksmen who have been trained heavily to be able to do this, to be able to kill someone at the end of a gun. So we don't know their motive. But expert witnesses, including pathologists, including ballistic experts, who were brought on board by legal teams working for other death row inmates in South Carolina who have upcoming executions, have brought in experts to look at the autopsy photographs for Mardi.

17:46and they have both confirmed that the bullets missed the left ventricle and some of them not all but some have gone on to speculate that this could have been an intentional event why do they say that well they say look at the facts here we have three expert trained snipers you could call them marksmen they're carrying ar-15 style guns precision made absolutely brand new completely accurate, with scopes, and they're standing maybe 21 feet away from a motionless prisoner who's been strapped to the chair, cannot move. These experts say it's virtually impossible under these circumstances for the three marksmen to miss the heart, and therefore that leads them on to speculating about was this intentional.

18:37Some have also added the fact that the victims in both the Mardi case and in the earlier Ronnie Lee Gardner case in 2010 that I attended in Utah, the victims of the murderers were law enforcers. In the case of Mardi, it was an off-duty police officer that he killed. Mardi is black, the police officer was white. And so that has also encouraged speculation that there could have been some intentionality here. And as you say, this is a very, very contentious allegation to make, this idea that they might have deliberately missed the crucial part of his heart. What has South Carolina, as the state, said about these allegations?

19:22Yes, I put this to South Carolina, obviously, to the Department of Corrections, and they dismissed the allegations out of hand. They said it was purely speculative and entirely wrong. and they also pointed me to a ruling from the top court in South Carolina the state supreme court which looked at the evidence that the state had presented to the court and and ruled that the execution was not botched now technically in legal terms the ruling of the top court in the state of South Carolina is the record of fact it's the court's job to find fact yeah and you can say, therefore, argument over. The fact is, the execution was not botched.

20:04But evidence that has been compiled by defence teams stands. It's disturbing. And I think it can't be argued away as easily as all that.

20:18Coming up, Trump's growing enthusiasm for the death penalty.

20:33listening to you talk from my position here in london in britain a country that hasn't executed anybody since the 1960s this all sounds so cruel and retrograde and i just wonder are those feelings shared by many people in the u.s or is there actually a lot of support for the firing squad in particular as a method of execution? Yeah, like anything in America today, there's no simple answer to that. It's a country riven down the middle. It's hugely divided. And so, too, is the answer to your question, really. I mean, Trump has been talking it up. He's recently issued an order to apply the firing squad to federal executions.

21:18The U.S. Justice Department plans to bring back firing squads as a permitted method of execution. The move is part of a broader push by the White House to speed up federal death penalty sentences. Purely symbolic because there are only three death row inmates left in federal death row. Joe Biden, before he stepped down, he commuted all the others. And those three won't be executed anytime soon. So it was a purely symbolic move on Trump's part. But I think it does signify what's happening. There's wind in the sails of the death penalty states. They're going for it in new numbers. And, you know, one has to assume that within those states, there is some degree of support for what they're doing.

21:59Otherwise, they wouldn't do it. Nationally, though, the figures continue to show that the death penalty is declining in support. Gallup, which has been carrying the poll on this for many years, shows that it's formed to like 52 % of people asked in the poll, favor the death penalty for murder and that's declined substantially over the last 10-20 years right having said that still 52 percent it's still like more than it's still more than half of americans are backing it so it's not going away anytime soon within the death penalty states and you know and that's something i've i've noted personally i've reported on this stuff for many years it's just it's an impression that i've had uh you know when i write a piece uh readers in in the UK go ballistic on it.

22:48They get very, very angry about it. I don't quite feel the same anger in the US. And I've pondered that a lot over the years. And I think it's just in a way for moderate and progressive Americans, it's just like one step too far. It's just, that's how they do it in the South. Death penalty states are largely in the South. And we got enough on our plate. We can't get to that. Are there any forces or any organizations, people really fighting this development? Absolutely. There are very brave, very determined abolitionist groups going at it, particularly in the South. Some of them are Catholic. The Catholic Church is pretty involved in all this.

23:29One thinks of Sister Helen Prejan, who was the subject behind the famous book and then movie Dead Man Walking. Can you help the church uphold the dignity of all life, that to take a human being and render them defenceless and kill them can never be justified? And so Pope John Paul was the first one, and then Pope Francis finally moved it to completion and said under no circumstances can we ever allow the state to do it. There are lots of groups in places like Idaho and Utah who are struggling against the firing squad and trying to stop executions more generally. So yes, absolutely. And including actually increasingly conservative and even Republican groups who are trying to kind of stop this from within the Republican Party.

24:19Freshman Republican is signed on as co-sponsor of a House bill that would repeal the killing of U.S. citizens by the federal government as a means of... Which I find particularly interesting. They're using arguments such as it costs too much, it costs the taxpayer too much, which is they're using conservative arguments to try and stop the death penalty. Death penalty has never been shown as an effective deterrent. It's expensive. And he doesn't trust the government's decision making. But still, I think it's fair to say that on the margins, the big guns have not really got engaged in the subject that much.

24:53Although it has to be said across democratic control states, increasingly there are either moratoriums in place or actual abolition of the death penalty in those states. So across democratic control states, you know, the argument's really over. The death penalty has gone away. Mm. And finally, what do you think it tells us about the USA in 2026 that this particular method of execution is being favoured again? Yeah, well, I think it falls into the bigger picture of the death penalty being revived here. Just in the last two or three years, it's partly connected to Trump and the encouragement he's given.

25:31But I think it's also something bigger than that. I've always seen the death penalty in America as a fundamental vein that runs through the country's politics and its way of seeing things. It is confined largely to the former Confederate states, so it is a sort of rump of states. You cannot say this is America writ large, but it signifies for me a brutal streak in the country's politics, very much attached to the history to the history of slavery and the civil war and lynching and mass incarceration and everything that has flowed from that and to me it says this brutal streak is here it's not withering as as people had hoped on the left if anything is gaining ground and if you want to turn away from it and turn the blind eye to it and hope it will just go away I think you're wrong and I think you ignore it at your peril.