“There’s no nice way to kill someone,” a man facing execution once told me, raising heavy eyes.

From my work as a licensed death penalty investigator, I know this too, which is why Utah’s decision to reinstate the firing squad for executions doesn’t trouble me the way it might trouble others.

Attorneys hire me to find out the truth. I’m the one who ferrets out long-lost witnesses, digs into dusty basements to unearth ancient records, and finds the evidence that exonerates, or – more often – explains.

I love my job, because I am the one person who gets to understand why.

Why do people do such terrible things to each other? Why is our country so enthralled with murder that we bookend one death with another?

For many years, lethal injections were the popular way to execute people in the US.

Lethal injections seemed humane, whereas gas chambers were too grotesquely evocative of the Holocaust, and guillotines just too French for a country that prides itself on provincialism.

But there have been problems with lethal injections, as several recent botched executions of writhing, convulsing men demonstrated. In 2014 a man being executed in Oklahoma spent his final moments writhing and thrashing in a scene that witnesses said was like a horror movie.

Medical companies began refusing to supply the drugs, unwilling to be manufacturers of death.

Enter Utah, which on 23 March returned to the firing squad as an alternative, if no such drugs are available.

For some, the firing squad has a certain second-amendment, bloody finality about it, with the punch of bullets on a backboard, and no end to the men who volunteer for the honour.

But for others, it causes qualms.

There is nakedness to the firing squad; it is an unequivocal act. Someone gets shot, obviously, and other people, most likely inmates, have to go in later and clean up the blood and brain matter. Even Utah’s governor, Gary Herbert, admitted it is “a little bit gruesome”.

This is why I think Utah is doing us a favour.

One of the unexpected curses of lethal injection was that it cloaked executions with the veneer of medical legitimacy. Executions were depicted as painless, gentle – even kind. Death lost its punch.

The myth of the humane execution began with lethal injections.

If doctors were willing to administer executions, the public began to think, then executions must be OK. Executions retreated behind a medical curtain, residing in the shadowland where the American public hides most death.

By bringing back the firing squad, Utah has brought executions from behind the curtain. They unholstered the gun. Executions are real again, and that means we can talk about them.

I believe we need to start with why so many people support executions.

Even in countries such as the UK, where capital punishment has been outlawed for years, up to half of people still favour executions.

I have sat with families of victims, and felt their terrible, all-encompassing pain wash over me. One cannot imagine such pain, and yet one knows it instinctively. It is our absolute worst fear. If one of my children was hurt I’d want revenge, too.

The myth of the humane execution began with lethal injections

I believe any starting point to discuss capital punishment has to honour this desire for revenge. It is deep, human and rooted in our impossible love for each other. Only then can we can talk about justice.

We can talk about what law enforcement agencies need to do their job properly. We can talk about the flaws in capital punishment, including the 151 people exonerated while on death row in the US. Those are the ones who weren’t executed before they were proved innocent. We can talk about a financially driven prison industry. We can talk about how crimes still go unsolved, and what we can do to change that.

We can talk about the needs of victims to be heard and seen and have their loved ones honoured.

We can talk about creating a society where the names of victims are remembered more than the accused.

Maybe we can even talk about what connects us – our love for our families – and perhaps about creating a society that prevents death instead of adding to it.

Sometime soon, a person facing execution in Utah will stand in front of a firing squad, instead of having a lethal injection. They might be guilty. They might not.

But they won’t die nice. No one ever does.