The use of the death penalty in the US came under renewed scrutiny after Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that the military would livestream the firing-squad execution of Nidal Hasan, the former military psychiatrist who fatally shot 13 unarmed soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. It would be the US Army's first use of a firing squad since 1945. The announcement followed the failed lethal injection of Christa Pike, a woman convicted of murdering her classmate, who was taken to hospital and discharged back to prison 10 days later, according to her lawyers. Lethal injection has dominated US executions since Texas introduced it in 1982. The Death Penalty Information Center counts 64 botched executions over 50 years, 51 of them lethal injections, out of 1,683 in total. Its executive director, Robin Maher, blamed inadequate staff training, degraded or poorly stored drugs and untested drug combinations. Dr Joel Zivot, a professor of anaesthesiology and surgery in Atlanta, called the method's peaceful image a myth, saying the drugs can cause pulmonary edema and a sensation of drowning. Medical bodies including the American Medical Association bar members from taking part, and many drug makers refuse to supply prisons. States have responded by turning to other methods. Alabama and Louisiana have used nitrogen gas, Alabama executing seven people that way since January 2024, while Arkansas, Mississippi and Oklahoma also permit it. Nine states have approved the electric chair, with South Carolina using it as its default. In July Idaho became the first state to make the firing squad its primary method; Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah and South Carolina also authorise it. Experts said every method can cause severe pain when it goes wrong, and lawyers for Mikal Mahdi, executed by a three-person firing squad in 2025, said his death was prolonged. No state authorises hanging, which Maher linked to a history of racial violence and lynching. Alonzo Lunsford, a former army sergeant who survived being shot seven times by Hasan, told the BBC the firing squad was a "befitting" method. Donald Trump restored the federal death penalty on returning to office in 2025, ending a moratorium imposed by Joe Biden's administration in 2021, and has called for it to cover large-scale drug dealers, human traffickers and police killers. Asked whether Pike's case should prompt changes, he said the method "shouldn't be very difficult".