The Death Penalty Information Center is calling 2022 “The Year of the Botched Execution.”
According to a new report from the DPIC, one-third of all executions in 2022 were botched due to a number of issues.
Several states using lethal injection messed up setting intravenous lines or had chemical contaminations. Alabama, Arizona and Texas were the states that experienced the most issues.
Still, 18 executions were ultimately carried out in 2022, despite many inmates who were killed claiming they were innocent, or suffered brain damage or serious mental illness. Victims‘ families and prosecutors also tried to withdraw death warrants, but those pleas were ignored.
The death penalty isn‘t as widely used in the U.S. as many would think, with 37 states having banned it or not executing anyone in over 10 years. However, this doesn‘t mean that states don‘t still have death row. California, for example, hasn‘t executed anyone since 2006 but still has 690 prisoners on death row.
The death penalty continues to be a controversial issue in the U.S., especially among Christians. In recent years, there’s been more support for reframing the death penalty as a pro-life issue. As Shane Caliborne writes, “We Christians, of all the people in the world, should be the voices opposing death.”
