Botched executions are nothing new in US history. In the era when hangings were common, some condemned people were decapitated. Later, when the electric chair was in vogue, every now and again, someone would catch fire during an electrocution. And nitrogen hypoxia, the US’s newest execution method, has already proven notoriously unreliable.
But, of all of the ways we have tried to execute people, lethal injection has the worst track record. More than 8% of all lethal injection executions have been botched. Most of them resulted when those charged with carrying them out could not find a usable vein.
