Five states authorize the firing squad by name. Three more — Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee — authorize it by implication, through open-ended statutes providing that if their named methods are held unconstitutional or become unavailable, executions proceed by any method not deemed unconstitutional. The federal government added it by policy in 2026. Six firing squad executions have been carried out in the United States since 1977, three of them in a single state in a single year. What follows is a file on each jurisdiction: how the method reached the books, what the statute actually requires, and what would have to happen for a rifle to be used.
Utah
Status: narrow statutory exception
Historical. Utah is the taproot. The 1851 territorial assembly designated three punishments for murder: shooting, hanging or beheading. 1 Historians of Mormon doctrine tie the beheading and shooting provisions directly to blood atonement theology and to the men who sat in that assembly, including Brigham Young, Jedediah M. Grant and Heber C. Kimball. 2 An 1877 Utah sentencing produced the first U.S. Supreme Court case testing a specific method, Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130 (1878), which upheld shooting. 1 Of the roughly fifty executions in Utah since the 1850s, about forty were by firing squad. 3 Gary Gilmore, shot January 17, 1977, was the first person executed anywhere in the country in the modern era. John Albert Taylor followed on January 26, 1996, and Ronnie Lee Gardner on June 18, 2010. 3 4 Until South Carolina in 2025, Utah was the only state to have used the method since 1977. 4
Legislative. House Bill 180 in 2004 removed the defendant’s right to elect the firing squad, making lethal injection the method for anyone sentenced on or after May 3, 2004, while preserving the election for those who had already made it. 5 That grandfather clause is how Taylor and Gardner came to be shot after the repeal. 6 House Bill 11 in the 2015 session restored the method as a contingency where the drugs are not reasonably available. 7 The provision now sits at Utah Code § 77-18-113, renumbered from the former § 77-18-5.5. 8
Contemporary. Four triggers replace lethal injection with the firing squad. One: a court holds the defendant’s right to be shot was preserved. Two: a court holds lethal injection unconstitutional on its face. Three: a court holds it unconstitutional as applied to that defendant. Four: the sentencing court determines the state cannot lawfully obtain the necessary substances thirty or more days before the warrant date.⁸ The fourth is the one most often omitted from summaries, and it is the one that matters. It requires no ruling against lethal injection, only a finding that the shelf is empty. Squads in Utah consist of five certified peace officers, one issued a blank at random, none knowing who.⁴
The case that would have tested all of this was Ralph Leroy Menzies, convicted in 1988 of the 1986 murder of Maurine Hunsaker, and one of two men still holding a preserved election to be shot.⁵ ⁶ Menzies had vascular dementia. On June 6, 2025, Third District Judge Matthew Bates found him competent to be executed; on July 9 Bates signed a death warrant setting the execution by firing squad for September 5.⁹ On August 29, 2025, the Utah Supreme Court unanimously vacated that warrant, holding that Menzies had made a prima facie showing of material deterioration entitling him to a new competency determination.⁴ ¹⁰ Bates set a hearing for the second week of December. Then, on November 17, the State’s own forensic psychologist, Dr. Michael Brooks — who had twice before found Menzies competent — reversed himself, concluding that Menzies no longer had a rational understanding of why the State intended to execute him, that he was not competent, and that there was no realistic prospect of restoration, his dementia being progressive and untreatable.¹¹ ¹²
The hearing never happened. Menzies died of presumed natural causes at a hospital on November 26, 2025, at the age of sixty-seven, nine days after the State’s evaluator declared him incompetent and roughly two weeks before the court was to rule.¹³ The proceedings ended without any final determination. Utah spent thirty-seven years preparing to shoot a man and did not manage it. Hunsaker’s eldest daughter had opposed the execution;⁴ her brother said the death left him with a sense of relief rather than justice.¹⁴
Three men remain under sentence of death in Utah, on a row that has produced no new death sentence since 2008.¹⁵ One of them, Troy Kell, still holds an election to be shot.⁶
Notes
011. Associated Press via St. George News, “Man killed by firing squad for the 1st time in 15 years. A look at Utah’s history,” March 8, 2025. https://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/man-killed-by-firing-squad-for-the-1st-time-in-15-years-a-look-at/article_be4765fe-fa22-11ef-b64d-cbadba2dc8a9.html
022. Martin R. Gardner, “Mormonism and Capital Punishment: A Doctrinal Perspective, Past and Present,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V12N01_11.pdf
033. KSL, “Experts argue firing squad is a humane execution,” June 2010. https://www.ksl.com/article/news/utah/experts-argue-firing-squad-is-a-humane-execution/11194774
044. Death Penalty Information Center, “Utah Supreme Court Stays Ralph Menzies’ Execution After Finding ‘Serious and Significant Questions’ About his Competency,” September 2, 2025. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/utah-supreme-court-stays-ralph-menzies-execution-after-finding-serious-and-significant-questions-about-his-competency
055. Utah H.B. 180 (2004), enrolled text amending § 77-18-5.5. https://le.utah.gov/~2004/bills/hbillenr/HB0180.htm
066. LegalClarity, “Utah Death Penalty Methods: Lethal Injection and Firing Squad,” May 2026. https://legalclarity.org/utah-death-penalty-methods-lethal-injection-and-firing-squad/
077. Utah Legislature, Death Penalty Procedure Amendments, 2015 General Session draft (2015FL-0007/006). https://le.utah.gov/Interim/2014/pdf/00005163.pdf
088. Utah Code Ann. § 77-18-113(1)-(4). https://codes.findlaw.com/ut/title-77-utah-code-of-criminal-procedure/ut-code-sect-77-18-113.html
099. Utah News Dispatch, “Judge denies Ralph Menzies’ request for another competency evaluation,” August 14, 2025. https://utahnewsdispatch.com/2025/08/14/ralph-menzies-execution-court-ruling-competency/
1010. Utah News Dispatch, “Death row inmate Ralph Menzies wins appeal, Sept. 5 execution called off,” August 29, 2025. https://utahnewsdispatch.com/2025/08/29/menzies-execution-called-off-utah-supreme-court/
¹¹ Utah News Dispatch, "A state evaluator says Ralph Menzies is too ill with dementia to be executed," November 21, 2025. https://utahnewsdispatch.com/2025/11/21/a-state-evaluator-says-ralph-menzies-is-too-ill-with-dementia-to-be-executed/
¹² Death Penalty Information Center, "New Evaluation Finds Utah Prisoner Ralph Menzies Incompetent for Execution, State Court to Hear More Evidence in December," November 25, 2025. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/new-evaluation-finds-utah-prisoner-ralph-menzies-incompetent-for-execution-state-court-to-hear-more-evidence-in-december
¹³ Utah Department of Corrections, "Inmate Ralph L. Menzies Passes Away," November 26, 2025. https://corrections.utah.gov/inmate-ralph-l-menzies-passes-away/
¹⁴ Utah News Dispatch, "After decades on death row, Ralph Menzies dies of natural causes instead of firing squad," November 26, 2025. https://utahnewsdispatch.com/2025/11/26/ralph-menzies-dies-on-death-row-after-execution-called-off/
¹⁵ [Utah Department of Corrections death row roster.] Michael Anthony Archuleta, Von Lester Taylor, and Troy Kell. Douglas Stewart Carter’s sentence was vacated in May 2025 and Douglas Lovell’s in July 2025.
South Carolina
Status: inmate election, three carried out
Historical. South Carolina could not obtain lethal injection drugs and carried out no executions between 2011 and September 2024, a pause of thirteen years. 1 Stephen Bryant, executed November 14, 2025, was the fiftieth person put to death in the state since capital punishment resumed after 1976. 2
Legislative. The 2021 restructuring of S.C. Code § 24-3-530 made electrocution the statutory default and added the firing squad alongside lethal injection as methods the condemned may elect. 3 The election must be made in writing at least fourteen days before the scheduled date. A refusal to choose results in electrocution. 4 A 2023 shield law concealed the identity of drug suppliers, execution team members and certain witnesses, which allowed the state to obtain compounded pentobarbital and restart executions. 5 In Owens v. Stirling, 904 S.E.2d 580 (S.C. 2024), the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld all three methods under the state constitution. 6
Contemporary. Three men have died before a South Carolina firing squad, all in 2025: Brad Sigmon on March 7, the first anywhere in the country in fifteen years; Mikal Mahdi on April 11; and Stephen Bryant on November 14. 7 8 2 The protocol seats the prisoner in a chair with head and limbs strapped, hoods him, and places a white target with a red bullseye over the heart. Three volunteers fire live rounds from behind a wall, from fifteen feet, using ammunition calculated to do maximum damage to the heart. 5 9 Sigmon was pronounced dead in under three minutes and his heart was essentially destroyed. Mahdi’s autopsy found two wound tracks rather than three, with only minor perforation of the right ventricle. His counsel argued he remained consciously in pain for thirty to sixty seconds. 9 10 The miss was reported by NPR and The Guardian in May 2025. 10 Bryant made no statement and no sound. The bullseye flew from his chest and he was pronounced dead at 6:05 p.m. 11 Mahdi’s lawyer described the statutory election as choosing the lesser of three evils. 12
Notes
011. WCIV/ABC News 4, “A look back at who South Carolina has executed on death row in 2025,” December 2025. https://abcnews4.com/news/local/a-look-back-at-who-south-carolina-has-executed-on-death-row-who-remains
022. WACH/ABC News 4, “Stephen Bryant executed by firing squad, third in South Carolina’s history,” November 14, 2025. https://abcnews4.com/news/crime-news/stephen-bryant-executed-by-firing-squad-third-in-south-carolinas-history-death-row-governor-henry-mcmaster-willard-tj-tietjen-broad-river-correctional-institute
033. Death Penalty Information Center, “Lawyers Raise Concern as Autopsy Finds South Carolina’s Second Firing Squad Execution May Have Been Botched,” May 2025. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/lawyers-raise-concern-as-autopsy-finds-south-carolinas-second-firing-squad-execution-may-have-been-botched
044. S.C. Code Ann. § 24-3-530; see also Fox News, “Death row inmate Stephen Bryant chooses firing squad execution,” 2025. https://www.foxnews.com/us/death-row-inmate-stephen-bryant-chooses-firing-squad-execution-admitting-gruesome-murder
055. Death Penalty Information Center, “South Carolina Preparing for State’s First Firing Squad Execution,” March 2025. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/south-carolina-preparing-for-states-first-firing-squad-execution-marking-first-firing-squad-execution-in-u-s-in-15-years
066. Owens v. Stirling, 904 S.E.2d 580, 599 (S.C. 2024), discussed in Berry, “State Constitutional Limits on Nitrogen Hypoxia Executions,” Illinois Law Review (2025). https://illinoislawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Berry-1.pdf
077. Post and Courier, “SC slow to release autopsy after execution that inmate’s lawyers say was botched,” November 2025. https://www.postandcourier.com/columbia/news/firing-squad-execution-autopsy-sc-mahdi/article_9ef6ee92-ec87-4132-b093-6de98668956c.html
088. CBS News, “Man executed by firing squad was conscious for up to a minute after bullets missed target, lawyers say,” May 8, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/firing-squad-execution-bullets-missed-target-lawyers-south-carolina/
099. WIS-TV, “Attorneys: Firing squad execution of South Carolina inmate was ‘botched,’” May 8, 2025. https://www.wistv.com/2025/05/08/attorneys-firing-squad-execution-south-carolina-inmate-was-botched/
1010. NPR, “A firing squad tried to shoot a prisoner in the heart. They missed, autopsy indicates,” May 8, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/05/08/nx-s1-5389846/firing-squad-south-carolina-death-penalty-execution
1111. South Carolina Public Radio, “South Carolina executes third person by firing squad this year,” November 14, 2025. https://www.southcarolinapublicradio.org/sc-news/2025-11-14/south-carolina-executes-third-person-by-firing-squad
1212. Fox News, “Second South Carolina inmate chooses execution by firing squad,” March 28, 2025. https://noticias.foxnews.com/us/second-south-carolina-inmate-chooses-execution-firing-squad.print
Oklahoma
Status: fourth in a cascade, never used
Historical. Oklahoma originated the modern lethal injection protocol, proposed by state medical examiner Jay Chapman in 1977. 1 It has never used a firing squad and has not electrocuted anyone since 1966. 2 Its credibility on method collapsed with the execution of Clayton Lockett in April 2014, who was seen writhing on the gurney and died roughly forty minutes in after a misplaced IV line. 3
Legislative. Before 2015 the statutory order ran lethal injection, then electrocution, then firing squad. 4 House Bill 1879, authored by Rep. Mike Christian and Sen. Anthony Sykes and signed by Gov. Mary Fallin on April 17, 2015, made Oklahoma the first state to authorize nitrogen hypoxia and inserted it as the second alternative, moving electrocution to third and the firing squad to fourth. It passed 85-10 in the House and 41-0 in the Senate. 4 5 The cascade is codified at 22 O.S. § 1014, subsections A through D. 6
Contemporary. Reaching the rifle requires the collapse of three methods above it, each by an appellate holding of unconstitutionality or a finding of unavailability. 6 That is less remote than it sounds. On June 9, 2026 U.S. District Judge Emily Marks permanently enjoined Alabama from using nitrogen gas to execute Jeffery Lee, finding the method unconstitutionally cruel. On June 11 the Supreme Court declined Alabama’s request to proceed. 7 Marks found the firing squad to be a feasible and readily implemented alternative that substantially reduces the risk of severe pain, the standard drawn from Glossip v. Gross, 576 U.S. 863 (2015), and Bucklew v. Precythe, 587 U.S. 119 (2019). 7 Litigation of that kind, reaching Oklahoma’s drug supply and its nitrogen protocol together, is the only realistic path to a rifle in McAlester.
Notes
011. The Atlantic, quoted in KPBS/NPR, “Oklahoma Approves Nitrogen Asphyxiation For Executions,” April 17, 2015. https://www.kpbs.org/news/2015/apr/17/oklahoma-approves-nitrogen-asphyxiation-for/
022. Associated Press via CBS, “Oklahoma House Passes Bill Ending Electric Chair Executions.” https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/texas/news/oklahoma-house-passes-bill-ending-electric-chair-executions
033. Reuters, “Oklahoma adopts nitrogen as possible execution method,” April 2015. https://news.yahoo.com/oklahoma-adopts-nitrogen-possible-execution-method-203753321.html
044. Office of Gov. Mary Fallin, press release on signing House Bill 1879, April 17, 2015. https://arnett.substack.com/p/gov-fallin-signs-bill-expanding-execution-alternatives
055. Washington Post, “Oklahoma says it will now use nitrogen gas as its backup method of execution,” April 17, 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/04/17/oklahoma-says-it-will-now-use-nitrogen-gas-as-its-backup-method-of-execution/
066. Okla. Stat. tit. 22, § 1014(A)-(D). https://law.justia.com/codes/oklahoma/title-22/section-22-1014/
077. Nolo, “Firing Squad Executions: Why They’re Back and Are They Legal,” June 13, 2026, reporting Judge Emily Marks’s June 9, 2026 order and the Supreme Court’s June 11 denial. https://www.nolo.com/news/firing-squad-executions-why-they-re-back-and-are-they-legal.html
Mississippi
Status: commissioner’s discretion, never used
Historical. Mississippi has never used a firing squad. It carried out no executions between 2012 and 2021, unable to obtain drugs and in litigation over its three-drug protocol. 1 Since then it has executed four men: David Cox on November 17, 2021, Thomas Loden in December 2022, Richard Gerald Jordan on June 25, 2025 and Charles Ray Crawford on October 15, 2025. 1 2 3 4 Jordan was the state’s oldest and longest-serving condemned prisoner, a Vietnam combat veteran with PTSD, executed forty-nine years after the crime. He thanked the state for a humane death. 3
Legislative. House Bill 638 of 2017, sponsored by Rep. Andy Gipson and framed by him as a response to lawsuits by “liberal, left-wing radicals,” amended Miss. Code § 99-19-51 to add methods beyond lethal injection. The Senate initially stripped the firing squad and kept only gas and the chair. 5 6 As reported, the act arranged the methods in a cascade. 7 The section as codified today is flat rather than sequential. It lists four authorized manners at subsections (1)(a) through (1)(d), including the firing squad, declares intravenous injection the state’s preferred method as a matter of policy, vests in the Commissioner of Corrections the authority and discretion to select the means, and requires written notice to the condemned person of the manner of execution within seven days of the warrant issuing from the Mississippi Supreme Court. 8 9 Rep. Summers has repeatedly filed bills to strike the firing squad from the section. None has advanced. 10
Contemporary. Mississippi is the only firing squad jurisdiction in which the method may be reached by administrative discretion alone. There is no cascade to exhaust, no court finding to obtain and no election by the prisoner. 8 Roughly three dozen people are under sentence of death at Parchman. 10 Commissioner Burl Cain has led the selection of lethal injection in every case to date. 3 Nothing requires Cain and other administrative officials to keep doing so.
Notes
011. World Socialist Web Site, “Mississippi executes Thomas Loden despite ongoing lawsuit by inmates against state’s lethal injection protocol,” December 2022. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/12/16/aoxo-d16.html
022. CNN, “Mississippi executes the state’s longest-serving death row inmate,” June 25, 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/25/us/mississippi-execution-richard-gerald-jordan
033. WLBT, “Mississippi’s longest-serving death row inmate is executed,” June 25, 2025. https://www.wlbt.com/2025/06/25/live-updates-mississippis-longest-serving-death-row-inmate-be-executed-wednesday/
044. UPI, “Mississippi executes Charles Crawford for 1993 rape, murder,” October 15, 2025. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/mississippi-prepares-execute-charles-crawford-200021603.html
055. Associated Press via Fox News, “Mississippi considers firing squad as method of execution,” 2017. https://foxnews.com/us/mississippi-considers-firing-squad-as-method-of-execution
066. JURIST, “Mississippi Senate approves gas chamber and electrocution as execution options,” March 2017. https://www.jurist.org/news/2017/03/mississippi-senate-approves-gas-chamber-and-electrocution-as-execution-options/
077. Mississippi H.B. 638 (2017), enrolled text. https://legiscan.com/MS/text/HB638/2017
088. Miss. Code Ann. § 99-19-51 (2024). https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-99/chapter-19/in-general/section-99-19-51/
099. Mississippi Department of Corrections, “Federal & State Law,” death penalty page. https://www.mdoc.ms.gov/general-public/death-row/death-penalty-mississippi
1010. Magnolia Tribune, “Bill of the Day: Removing ‘firing squad’ from death penalty execution options,” January 11, 2023. https://magnoliatribune.com/2023/01/11/bill-of-the-day-removing-firing-squad-from-death-penalty-execution-options/
Idaho
Status: primary method as of July 1, 2026
The primary method of execution as of July 1, 2026, with lethal injection as the fallback. Idaho is the first and only jurisdiction in American history to make the firing squad its default method. The governing statute is Idaho Code section 19-2716, as amended by House Bill 37, signed March 12, 2025 and effective July 1, 2026. Subsection (1) lists the two methods. Subsection (2) requires the director of the Department of Correction, not later than five days after a death warrant issues, to determine and certify by affidavit to the issuing court whether execution by firing squad is available. Subsection (3) makes the firing squad the method if he so certifies. Subsection (4) makes lethal injection the method if he does not certify or fails to file. Subsection (5) makes lethal injection the method if a court holds the firing squad unconstitutional. Subsection (6) gives the director authority over execution procedures and exempts those procedures from the Idaho Administrative Procedure Act, an exemption added by House Bill 803 in March 2026. Subsection (7) applies the statute to every execution after the effective date regardless of when sentence was imposed. Execution secrecy is governed separately by Idaho Code section 19-2716A. The operative protocol is the Department of Correction standard operating procedure published June 8, 2026: three shooters drawn from six certified law enforcement volunteers, each rifle loaded with a single live round, no blank, fired in unison on a team leader’s cadence, with a second volley available at the director’s order. As of this writing no death warrant has been sought under the amended statute and no execution by firing squad has been carried out in Idaho.
Florida
Status: authorized by implication, never used
Not named in statute, but authorized by implication. House Bill 903, signed May 22, 2025 and effective July 1, 2025, provides that if electrocution or lethal injection is held unconstitutional, or if lethal injection drugs become unavailable or impractical to use, all persons sentenced to death shall be executed by a method not deemed unconstitutional. Contemporaneous coverage understood the provision as opening the door to the firing squad, nitrogen gas and hanging. Florida carried out nineteen executions in 2025, a modern state record. No firing squad execution has been carried out. Of the three states that have authorized the method by implication, Florida combines the broadest language with by far the highest execution volume, which is the combination that matters.
Indiana
Status: not authorized, defeated by three votes
House Bill 1119, authored by Rep. Jim Lucas with three Republican coauthors, would have let the Department of Correction choose between lethal injection and the firing squad regardless of drug availability, removing any prisoner election. Committee amendments stripped nitrogen hypoxia. It cleared committee eight to five on January 21, 2026 and was defeated on the House floor on January 28, 2026 by a vote of 48 to 47, three short of the constitutional majority required in the hundred-member chamber. Nineteen Republicans and twenty-eight Democrats voted no. Lucas did not call it back before the February 2 deadline, and a companion Senate measure stalled in committee. Reporting in June 2026 indicated that Indiana’s newly constructed correctional complex had nonetheless been built with the capacity to accommodate firing squads.
Tennessee
Status: authorized by implication, never used
Tennessee is rarely counted among the firing squad states, and it does not name the method. But Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-23-114(d) provides that if lethal injection or electrocution is held unconstitutional by the Tennessee Supreme Court or the United States Supreme Court, or if either court declines to review such a holding, all persons sentenced to death "shall be executed by any constitutional method of execution."¹ The same section provides that no death sentence shall be reduced because a method has been declared unconstitutional, and that the sentence remains in force until it can be carried out by some valid method.
The doors are not identical. Electrocution is the named alternative where lethal injection is merely unavailable; the open-ended clause in subsection (d) reaches further but requires an actual holding of unconstitutionality.¹ Tennessee’s door is therefore narrower than Florida’s, which opens on drug supply alone.
The state has already been asked to walk through it. In November 2018, days after Edmund Zagorski chose the electric chair over lethal injection and died in it, four Tennessee death row prisoners asked a federal court to let them be shot instead.² Roughly forty people are under sentence of death. No firing squad execution has been carried out.
NOTES
1. Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-23-114(d), (e). https://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/title-40/chapter-23/section-40-23-114/
2. NPR, "Tennessee Death Row Inmates Request Death By Firing Squad," November 5, 2018. https://www.npr.org/2018/11/05/664548834/tennessee-death-row-inmates-request-death-by-firing-squad
North Carolina
Status: reachable by administrative selection, never used
North Carolina has executed no one since 2006, held back by litigation over its protocol and by the Racial Justice Act. More than a hundred and twenty people are under sentence of death, the fifth-largest condemned population in the country. It belongs in this appendix because of what the General Assembly did in 2025.
Session Law 2025-93 rewrote G.S. 15-188. Subsection (a) keeps lethal injection as the mode "unless subsection (b) applies." Subsection (b) provides that on notice either that lethal injection has been declared unconstitutional by a North Carolina court or that it "is not available," the Secretary of the Department of Adult Correction must, within 120 days, "select another method of executing a death sentence that has been adopted by another state unless such method has been declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court."¹ Subsection (c) gives the department 120 days to establish protocols and requires the Secretary to schedule an execution within 60 days of establishing them. Subsections (d) and (e) require reports to a legislative commission.
Read it again. No court need find lethal injection cruel. It need only be unavailable — the condition that has obtained across the country for a decade and that drove Idaho, South Carolina, and Mississippi to the rifle in the first place. And the field of replacements is not defined by North Carolina’s own legislature. It is defined by whatever other states have adopted. Every legislature that adds the firing squad enlarges the menu from which a North Carolina cabinet secretary must choose. This is the contagion described at the end of this appendix, converted into positive law: a statute that delegates the question to a corrections official and then delegates the answer to other states.
No firing squad execution has been carried out in North Carolina, and none is imminent. The machinery is what matters here, not the schedule.
NOTES
1. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 15-188(b)-(e), as rewritten by 2025 N.C. Sess. Laws 93, § 6.5(b). https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/PDF/BySection/Chapter_15/GS_15-188.pdf, Associated Press via PBS NewsHour, "What to know about execution methods in the U.S. after judge blocks Alabama from using nitrogen gas," June 10, 2026. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/what-to-know-about-execution-methods-in-the-u-s-after-judge-blocks-alabama-from-using-nitrogen-gas
The Federal Government
Status: added by executive action, April 2026
Historical. The federal government has never executed anyone by firing squad. 1 It carried out thirteen executions in the closing months of the first Trump administration under a single-drug pentobarbital protocol adopted by Attorney General William Barr. 2 A moratorium was in place from 2021, and Attorney General Merrick Garland withdrew the pentobarbital protocol days before the second inauguration, citing concerns about unnecessary pain and suffering. 3 President Biden commuted thirty-seven of the forty federal death sentences, leaving three men on federal death row: Dylann Roof, Robert Bowers and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. 3
Legislative and regulatory. There is no statute here. The change is regulatory. In November 2020 the Department amended 28 C.F.R. Part 26 to expand permissible methods beyond lethal injection to any other manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence was imposed, and to authorize the use of state facilities and personnel. 4 Part 26 further provides that where applicable law allows the prisoner to choose among manners of execution, the Director must notify him of that option. 5 That amendment is the hinge. Federal adoption of the firing squad required no act of Congress.
Contemporary. On his first day in office President Trump issued the executive order Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety. 6 On April 24, 2026 the Office of Legal Policy released Restoring and Strengthening the Federal Death Penalty, prepared at the direction of former Attorney General Pamela Bondi, with sections on the firing squad, electrocution and lethal gas. 7 The same day the Department announced it had directed the Bureau of Prisons to reinstate the pentobarbital protocol, to expand it to include additional manners of execution such as the firing squad, and to examine relocating or expanding federal death row or building an additional execution facility to permit them. 8 Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche instructed BOP to modify the protocol to include additional constitutional manners of execution currently provided for by the law of certain states, citing drug availability. 9 The report argues the Biden-era review erred on both the science and the legal standard. 10 Further announced steps include a proposed rule barring capital clemency petitions until direct appeal and first collateral review are final, and a rule to streamline federal habeas review of state capital cases. 8 DOJ has authorized seeking death sentences against forty-four defendants. 10 The date is April 2026, not 2025.
Notes
011. Fox News, “Justice Department announces it’s readopting the firing squad as a means of execution,” April 24, 2026. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/justice-department-readopting-firing-squad-execution
022. Associated Press via Houston Public Media/NPR, “Justice Department to allow firing squads for executions,” April 24, 2026. https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/npr/2026/04/25/nx-s1-5798990/justice-department-to-allow-firing-squads-executions-move-ramp-up-capital-punishment/
033. NewsNation, “DOJ bringing back firing squads as option for federal executions,” April 25, 2026. https://www.newsnationnow.com/crime/firing-squads-federal-execution-option/
044. Department of Justice, Request for Information Regarding the Manner of Execution Regulations (Sept. 27, 2022), describing the November 27, 2020 amendments to 28 C.F.R. Part 26. https://regulations.justia.com/regulations/fedreg/agencies/department-of-justice/2022/09/27
055. 28 C.F.R. § 26.4 (2024). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2024-title28-vol1/pdf/CFR-2024-title28-vol1-sec26-4.pdf
066. Exec. Order, Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety (Jan. 20, 2025), described in Death Penalty Information Center coverage of the April 2026 report. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/department-of-justice-releases-memo-calling-for-expansion-of-federal-death-penalty-and-new-methods
077. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Office of Legal Policy, Restoring and Strengthening the Federal Death Penalty (Apr. 24, 2026). https://www.justice.gov/ag/media/1437806/dl?inline=
088. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, “The Justice Department Takes Actions to Strengthen the Federal Death Penalty,” April 24, 2026. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-takes-actions-strengthen-federal-death-penalty
099. NBC News, “DOJ recommends bringing back firing squads in federal executions,” April 24, 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-justice-department-firing-squads-lethal-injection-executions-rcna341897
1010. Death Penalty Information Center, “Department of Justice Releases Memo Calling for Expansion of Federal Death Penalty and New Methods,” April 27, 2026. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/department-of-justice-releases-memo-calling-for-expansion-of-federal-death-penalty-and-new-methods
The Mechanism to Watch
Alabama does not authorize the firing squad at all, and yet Jeffery Lee proposed it as his alternative to nitrogen and a federal court accepted it as feasible. That is the mechanism worth watching, and it does not require a legislature. Under Glossip and Bucklew a prisoner challenging a method must plead an available alternative. Every ruling that accepts the firing squad as that alternative makes the next legislative adoption easier, and every adoption in turn makes the method easier to plead in the next case. The record traced in Chapter 15 is that loop running.