Firing Squad is Still a Legal Means of Execution in Oklahoma

Oklahoma's relationship with lethal injection has been a wild ride over the years. After several botched executions where the inmates suffered before departing, the state put a stay on death sentences for a bit, but they're back on track now.

This doesn't mean they've solved the issues with lethal injection. The old reliable drugs aren't available anymore, and the newly sourced ones are still problematic. Regardless, Oklahoma hopped back into the chamber and carries out justice when it can.

Throughout this debacle that has been going on for half a decade, other means of legal and lawful execution have come back to light.

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Oklahoma hasn't used the electric chair since 1966, but it's no longer an option. Legislation was passed in 2017 to remove electricity from the lawful execution protocol across the state, which, in hindsight, really put the justice system behind the eight ball since that's around the time the lethal injection issues arose.

Oklahoma still has the chair, but it's in storage. Due to the upkeep and cost of electricity, the legislature deemed it too expensive to maintain.

How expensive could it be?

It's wild that the expenditure of the electric chair could be the main reason Oklahoma stopped using it. In public records, lethal injection typically costs a large amount of money throughout the process.

While Oklahoma doesn't provide those numbers for one reason or another, other states do.

According to the most recent numbers, Texas has paid around $1500 per vial of the lethal drug, plus an additional cost for the others administered side-by-side. Missouri last paid around $8000 just for the drugs per execution. More recently, in 2023, Idaho paid $50,000 for just 15 grams of the lethal drug to keep on hand.

As Oklahoma has had to find new suppliers in the last decade, there's no telling how much it's costing the taxpayer.

On top of the drug costs, the doctor who administers the drugs gets paid a flat $15,000 too, plus $1,000 for each day of mandatory training leading up to D-Day.

The gas chamber.

There is a newer technology available and recently added to the Oklahoma execution protocol. It's called nitrogen hypoxia.

The process is rather simple. Oxygen is slowly replaced by inert nitrogen in a sealed death chamber, and they say the person being executed drifts off to sleep due to a lack of oxygen before ultimately suffocating.

It is still an unproven and unused method of execution in Oklahoma. It has been used in Alabama and Louisiana in a handful of executions, successfully, according to the internet.

The firing squad.

It's astonishing to think that the simplest means of execution is still legally included in the Oklahoma protocol in 2025. Death by gunshot.

It works nearly the same as you may have seen in movies, with little differences.

The condemned is no longer strapped to a post, they're restrained in a chair instead. A target is placed over the heart, and five different shooters are given rifles loaded and ready to shoot. However, at least one of the rifles is loaded with a blank cartridge, and they're told that in order to lessen the psychological burden of the whole ordeal.

The countdown is given, all shooters do their thing simultaneously, and the execution is over in an instant.

Even though it's a lawful approved means to execute a criminal, it has never been used in Oklahoma's storied past. It has been requested a handful of times over the years, but never granted.

Since becoming a state, it was first hanging, then electrocution, then lethal injection. Even with additional approved methods, the practice has been narrow for the last 120-ish years.