Let Them Choose: The Case for a Firing Squad Option in Indiana
Recently, the State of Tennessee strapped Christa Pike to a gurney, spent roughly an hour hunting for a vein, pushed two rounds of pentobarbital, and then called it off. She left Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in an ambulance, not a hearse.
Indiana uses the same drug and the same single-drug protocol. We have an execution scheduled for November 5, 2026. And earlier this year, the Indiana House came within three votes of giving the State another option.
I want to make a case that will sound strange coming from a criminal defense lawyer: Indiana should let the condemned choose the firing squad. Not because I favor the death penalty, but because as long as the State insists on killing people, the person being killed should have the final say over how.
What Happened in Nashville
Pike was 18 when she and two others lured a 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer into the woods near the University of Tennessee and killed her in 1995. It was a brutal crime, and Pike has never denied her role. She was sentenced to death in 1996 and would have been the first woman executed in Tennessee in roughly two centuries.
Her execution was set of September 30, 2026. According to her attorney, the team spent about an hour trying to establish IV access and used at least seven needles in her left arm alone. The State then administered an initial dose and a backup dose. Nearly two hours after the protocol began, the execution was halted and Pike was taken to an outside hospital.
Her lawyers say she is being treated for serious injuries to both arms from the pentobarbital. Media reports describe her as unconscious and on a ventilator. The D.O.C. insists it followed every step of its protocol. Governor Bill Lee called the outcome deeply disturbing, ordered an outside review, and postponed the State’s only other execution scheduled for 2026.
Even the victim’s family, which supported the execution, has called the attempt a mess. It was the second botched execution in Tennessee in five months.
Tennessee has been here before
Last year I reviewed Steven Hale’s Death Row Welcomes You on this blog (link). Hale opens with the 2018 execution of Billy Ray Irick, who suffered visibly on the gurney. What struck me then was what came next: the men Hale later watched die chose the electric chair instead. Tennessee confirmed that five prisoners between 2018 and 2019 selected electrocution over lethal injection.
Think about what that says. Men facing death looked at the state’s “humane” option and decided the electric chair was the safer bet. Hale called lethal injection barbarism dressed as bureaucracy. Whatever you think of his politics, the condemned seemed to agree with him.
Tennessee at least let those men choose. The lesson of Pike’s case is that the choice matters, and that a single sanitized method, run in secret, can fail in exactly the way it was designed to hide.
Indiana is not immune
Indiana has used pentobarbital in all three executions since it resumed capital punishment in December 2024: Joseph Corcoran, Benjamin Ritchie, and Roy Lee Ward. At Ritchie’s execution, attorneys who witnessed it reported seeing his head and shoulders suddenly lift from the gurney after the drug was administered. D.O.C. disputes that account.
The day after Pike’s failed execution, Indiana D.O.C. said it remains confident in its procedures, even though it uses the same protocol as Tennessee. It declined to discuss training, medical personnel, or drug safeguards. The Indiana Supreme Court has ordered Jeffrey Weisheit executed before sunrise on November 5, 2026.
Here is the part that should worry everyone: as of this week, state officials say the D.O.C. has no execution drugs in inventory and has not yet acquired any for Weisheit. Indiana has already spent at least $1.275 million on pentobarbital since 2024. And because Indiana shields the identity of its suppliers, defense lawyers cannot meaningfully test what the State plants to put in a man’s veins.
House Bill 1119 and Representative Andrew Ireland
In July 2025, Representative Andrew Ireland (R-Indianapolis) told the Indiana Capital Chronicle he was drafting legislation to give Indiana real alternatives to lethal injection, describing the firing squad as “fast, effective, and constitutional.” He pointed to Idaho’s 2023 law as a model.
That work became House Bill 1119 in the 2026 session, authored by Representative Jim Lucas (R-Seymour) and co-authored by Representatives Ireland, J.D. Prescott, and Steve Bartels. As filed, the bill authorized the firing squad and nitrogen hypoxia, kept lethal injection as the default, and let the condemned person request a different method. A companion Indiana Senate bill from Senator Mike Young (SB 11) likewise let a prisoner request the firing squad at least 30 days before the execution date.
Then the bill changed. Nitrogen hypoxia was stripped out on second reading, and the version that reached a final vote would have let the D.O.C., not the prisoner, choose between lethal injection and the firing squad. On January 28, 2026, it failed 48-47, three votes short of the 51 required. Nineteen Republicans and 28 Democrats voted no. SB 11 died in committee.
I think the bill failed partly because it lost its best argument. A firing squad imposed at the warden’s discretion looks like the State shopping for a cheaper way to kill. A firing squad chosen by the condemned is something else entirely: an act of autonomy.
Why the choice belongs to the condemned
A person on death row has lost almost every choice a free person makes. When to wake, what to eat, whom to see, what to wear. By the end, the State controls the date, the house, the room, and the witnesses. Letting that person decide how they die is one of the few remaining ways the law can treat them as a person rather than an object being processed.
The firing squad is also the honest method. Lethal injection was sold as medicine, complete with gurneys, IV lines, and a physician in the next room. That costume is exactly what lets it fail quietly behind a curtain, as it did in Nashville. A firing squad does not pretend. Everyone in the room, and everyone in the state, understands what is happening.
And for many prisoners it is the method they would pick. When South Carolina offered the choice in 2025, Brad Sigmon chose the firing squad because he feared lethal injection. Justice Sotomayor, no friend of capital punishment, has written that the firing squad may be significantly more reliable and less painful than lethal injection. If people who have studied these deaths up close keep landing in the same place, the law should let the condemned land there, too.
There is a litigation point as well. Under Glossip v. Gross and Bucklew v. Precythe, a prison challenging a method of execution must identify a feasible, readily available alternative. Putting a firing squad option in the Indiana Code makes that alternative real instead of hypothetical.
Answering the objections
“It’s barbaric.” During the floor debate, Representative Matt Pierce said he hoped society had advanced beyond the firing squad. I respect the instinct. But what happened to Christa Pike was not advanced. The question is not whether an execution looks civilized to witnesses. It is whether the person being executed suffers, and whether they had any say.
“Firing squads can go wrong, too.” True. South Carolina’s 2025 execution of Mikal Mahdi drew serious questions about whether the shooters hit their target. Any method run carelessly and in secret can fail. That is an argument for transparency, training, and independent oversight of every method, not for forcing everyone onto the one with the most documented failures.
“This makes executions easier.” Some lawmakers worried the bill would speed things up. A choice held by the prisoner does not do that. It does not add a single execution date. It only changes who decides the method once the State has already decided to kill.
“You’re a defense lawyer. Why help the State?” I am not. Representative Bob Morris was right on the floor: no one can be 100% certain of guilt, and a life taken cannot be returned. I would abolish the death penalty tomorrow. But Indiana has not, and while it has not, I would rather my clients have one more choice than one fewer.
What the 2027 General Assembly Should Do
HB 1119 failed by three votes. Indiana’s new prison is reportedly already equipped for firing squads. The question next session is not whether the idea comes back, but what form it takes. Representative Ireland and his co-authors should bring back the bill as it was first filed, and lawmakers should insist on four things:
The choice belongs to the prisoner. Lethal injection stays the default; the condemned may elect the firing squad in writing by a set deadline. The D.O.C. gets no discretion to impose it.
No secrecy beyond what safety requires. Protect team members’ identities if necessary, but guarantee independent media witnesses and full post-execution review.
A stop rule. If an execution has not been completed within a fixed time, it ends and medical care begins.
Mandatory review after any failure. No more “we followed protocol” press releases in place of answers.
Christa Pike’s case should end any illusion that lethal injection is the gentle option. If Indiana is going to keep killing people, it can at least let them decide how. That is not much. But for someone who has lost everything else, it is something.