America's use of the death penalty is under the spotlight once again after US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the military would livestream the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan. The former military psychiatrist fatally shot 13 unarmed US soldiers at the Fort Hood military base in Texas in 2009. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.
His execution would be the first time the US Army had used a firing squad since 1945, a method that several states already authorise to put people to death. And it comes on the heels of the botched death by lethal injection of Christa Pike - a woman convicted of murdering her classmate. Pike was taken to hospital and then discharged to prison 10 days later, after making a recovery from the failed attempt, her lawyers said.
Amid rising concerns over botched executions - and renewed federal support for the death penalty - the US has introduced both new and old forms of execution like firing squads, the electric chair and the gas chamber.
The vast majority of executions in the US have been lethal injections since they were first introduced in Texas in 1982. The Death Penalty Information Center, a non-profit think tank that does not take a stance on the death penalty, says that there have been 64 botched executions over the past 50 years - including 51 botched lethal injections - out of a total of 1,683 executions.
The difficulty of carrying out these executions, and the uproar over what some perceive as inhumane treatment, has led officials to consider alternative methods of putting people to death. But medical experts and those who study executions say every method the US uses to put people to death can result in severe pain, especially when botched.
"We always have the possibility that there's going to be a mistake made when human beings are involved in executions," said Robin Maher, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
Several medical groups - including the national associations for doctors and nurses - also ban their members from participating in executions. The American Medical Association, which represents doctors in the US, states they are "a profession dedicated to preserving life when there is hope of doing so" and that participating in any way in executions is antithetical to their oath.
Lethal injection, which was first used in Texas in 1982, is now the most common way people are executed across the US, with many states making it their default method.
Dr Joel Zivot, a professor of anaesthesiology and surgery based in Atlanta, Georgia, said states turned to lethal injection because it appeared from the outside to be a more peaceful means of execution.
Dr Zivot said that sometimes the injection of the drugs can cause pulmonary edema, when a person's lungs fill with fluid, which can give people the painful sensation of drowning.
"It's a terrifying way to die - to drown," he said.
Other times, people have medical conditions, like Pike - who suffered from thrombocytosis and other medical problems her lawyers warned about - that can complicate the execution and make it more painful.
During Pike's failed execution, "she could be heard crying, whimpering, and breathing loudly throughout the procedure", her lawyers said.
There are a host of reasons why so many lethal injections have been botched, but some of the same factors persist, said Maher.
"Oftentimes, the executions go wrong because training of staff is inadequate, because drugs are degraded or expired or improperly stored, or because states are experimenting with different combinations of drugs that have never been used before," she said.
Most of the time, little information is available to the public about the people administering the lethal injection, as the states do not usually share what training they have had.
"We have discovered that in many instances, and unfortunately subsequent to a botched execution, that the cause was the inadequate experience and training of the execution staff," Maher said.
Drugs for lethal injections are also hard to obtain because many pharmaceutical companies do not want to sell the medications to prisons for that use, since they were developed for life-saving purposes.
In light of many of these challenges, some states have turned to executing people with a new and controversial method: nitrogen gas.
Alabama and Louisiana are the first states to have carried out executions with nitrogen gas, though three other states - Arkansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma - also allow for it.
Two years ago, Alabama used nitrogen gas to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith, after a botched attempt to put him to death via lethal injection in 2022.
During the execution, which took 25 minutes, Smith thrashed violently on the gurney as he was given the gas, a witness told the BBC at the time.