Title: Firing Squad to Gas Chamber: How Long Do Executions Take?
Headings: Firing Squad to Gas Chamber: How Long Do Executions Take?
Firing Squad to Gas Chamber: How Long Do Executions Take?
Guillotine: Less than a minute
Firing squad: Less than a minute
Electric chair: 2 minutes to 15-plus minutes
Hanging: 4 to 11 minutes
Gas chamber: 10-18 minutes
Lethal injection: 5 minutes to 2 hours
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Content: The last inmate to go this way, Walter LaGrand, chose it over lethal injection and choked and gagged for several minutes until he was pronounced dead 18 minutes after the poison pellets were dropped into acid, according to media witnesses in the Arizona prison. In 1983, Mississippi officials claimed child rapist and killer Jimmy Lee Gray died two minutes after the gas started, but witnesses said he was still alive — moaning and banging his head against a pipe — when the viewing room was cleared eight minutes into the execution. Restraints are shown on a table inside the death chamber of the new lethal injection facility at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif. Eric Risberg / AP file
Lethal injection: 5 minutes to 2 hours
The length of lethal injections can vary widely due to the chemicals used, the physiology of the inmate and other complications. In cases where a short-acting barbiturate is followed by a paralytic and a heart-stopper, inmates have been rendered unconscious in seconds and pronounced dead in as little as five minutes. Due to drug shortages and bans, however, many states are using substitute chemicals that have led to protracted executions. Recommended
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In April 2014, Oklahoma officials halted Clayton Lockett ’s botched lethal injection after he regained consciousness, but he died anyway — 43 minutes after the procedure began. Three months later, Joseph Wood remained alive – gasping hundreds of times — for nearly two hours after Arizona injected him with a drug it had never used before. A poll conducted for NBC News last May found that Americans support a range of execution methods if lethal injections are no longer viable. While one in three said the needle is the only acceptable form of capital punishment, others were open to more primitive methods: