How 2022 turned into a 'year of botched executions' for the United States

A new study has revealed that the number of executions in the United States has gone down in the past decade and in 2022, more than a third of one was actually mishandled. The data has left a lot of capital punishment researchers stunned as they went on to call 2022 “the year of botched executions”.

The researchers stated that out of the 20 execution attempts in 2022, seven were “visibly problematic” with two getting completely abandoned. The study, which was hailed by experts as one of the most comprehensive annual examinations of the death penalty, also pointed out that the number of executions has been rapidly declining since the 1990s and it is almost half of that in the 2000s.

The data is also impacted by the fact that 37 states in the US have already abolished the practice.

“As support for the death penalty has declined, we’ve been seeing more and more extreme conduct by the states that want to carry it out,” said Robert Dunham, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center according to a report on the New York Times. “And it’s been manifest in recklessness.”

A closer look at the distribution of the executions shows that Texas and Oklahoma carried out five each, Arizona had three cases while Alabama had two. Oklahoma actually dominated headlines after 25 people were handed capital punishment within a span of just 29 months.

While politicians and the authorities have blamed the late appeals filed by the defence and the time limit given on the death warrant as reasons for the botched executions, the report added that the difficulty to find the lethal injection drugs has contributed massively towards the failed attempts.