Throughout American history, each legal execution method—from hanging to firing squad, gas chamber to electric chair—has been sanctioned by U.S. courts, only to be banned later in many states for failing to measure up to the Eighth Amendment’s prohibiton of “cruel and unusal punishment.” Each method, in turn, has be replaced by a new, “more humane” one. Now, after the botched executions of Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma and, more recently, Joseph Wood in Arizona, Americans are looking at what had been deemed the most humane method yet—lethal injection—with increased scrutiny, prompting a new national debate about the ethics of state-sanctioned killing. In the words of Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, who dissented when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Wood’s motion to be provided information on which chemicals would be used in his execution, lethal injection is a “misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful.” Kozinksi is a proponent of returning to execution by firing squad. Execution rates have already been declining for the past few years due to a shortage of lethal injection chemicals—largely the result of the European Union’s 2011 ban on the export of one of the key chemicals used in lethal injections, which has forced U.S. institutions to experiment with different drug cocktails. According to an NBC News poll, one-third of those surveyed said that if lethal injection were to be found unconstitutional, they would no longer support the death penalty at all, while several others would support returning to prior methods of execution. Twenty percent favored the gas chamber and 18 percent supported electrocution, reflecting Americans’ inability to reach any sort of consensus on what “humane” killing means and whether it exists at all. Photographer Lee Saloutos has visited abandoned prisons throughout the United States, capturing the debris left over from our more primitive criminal justice system. His photos give us a unique look at what humane used to look like in America. Above, a gas chamber at the Wyoming Frontier Prison. This is what an inmate would see as s/he was led into the chamber. Just beyond the door and windows to the left is the outside world. The window in the gas chamber provides a glimpse of the observation room just beyond, where family members, friends and reporters could watch the executions take place.

Lee Saloutos