HUNTSVILLE, TX—In response to a nationwide shortage of the chemicals conventionally used to carry out capital punishment, officials from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced Friday that the state would begin executing death row inmates with an experimental new three-drug Molotov cocktail. “Once the inmate has been secured to the execution table, a technician will proceed to dispense precise doses of an anesthetic, a paralytic, and gasoline into an appropriately sized glass liquor bottle,” said TDCJ spokesperson Jane Dawson, adding that, beginning at exactly midnight, prison personnel would follow a prescribed protocol of allowing the offender to state any final words, igniting a butane lighter, and then setting alight an oil-soaked rag stuffed partway into the bottle’s neck. “Finally, barring any last-minute stay from the governor, the technician will commence the procedure by hurling the bottle at a carefully chosen point on the inmate’s body.” Officials further stated that should the initial Molotov cocktail of drugs fail to render the inmate deceased, additional bottles would be administered until he or she is pronounced dead.

Advertisement