Louisiana advances a bill expanding death penalty methods in an effort to resume executions
Associated Press— In an effort to resume Louisiana’s death row executions that have been paused for 14 years, lawmakers on Friday advanced a bill that would add the use of nitrogen gas and electrocution as possible methods to carry out capital punishment. Over the past couple of decades, executions in the United States have reduced — in part because of legal battles, a shortage of lethal injection drugs that is used as the primary method for capital punishment and declined support for the death penalty leading to a majority of states to either pause or abolish it all together. However, between a new conservative governor and, just recently, the nation’s first execution using nitrogen gas — the first time a new method had been used in the United States since lethal injection was introduced in 1982 — there has been a renewed push for additional ways to carry out the death penalty in Louisiana. For four decades, Louisiana used the electric chair — dubbed by death row inmates as “Gruesome Gertie” — until its final execution in 1991 when the state moved to lethal injections.
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