Death penalty

A firing squad has executed a South Carolina man who killed an off-duty police officer decades ago. It is the second time the rare execution method has been used by the state in the past five weeks.

States are increasingly moving away from lethal injection, in favor of using nitrogen gas during executions. Here’s what to know about the controversial practice.

Four states — Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma — specifically authorize execution by nitrogen hypoxia

Brad Sigmon, convicted in a 2002 double murder, chose a method that is rarely used. Utah carried out the last firing squad execution in 2010.

A terminally ill man who spent over 30 years on death row in Louisiana for the killing of his stepson has died.

Richard Lee Tabler, 46, was given a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He is the second person executed in Texas in a little over a week.

Alabama is planning to carry out its fourth execution with nitrogen gas. Demetrius Terrence Frazier is scheduled to be executed Thursday night at a south Alabama prison.

An Arizona death row prisoner has asked the state’s highest court to skip legal formalities and schedule his execution earlier than authorities were aiming for.

Next month, Biden, a practicing Catholic, will meet with Pope Francis, who recently called for prayers for U.S. death row inmates in hopes their sentences would be commuted.

An Alabama man convicted in the 1994 killing of a female hitchhiker cursed at the prison warden and made obscene gestures before being put to death in the nation’s third execution using nitrogen gas.

South Carolina has put Richard Moore to death by lethal injection for the fatal shooting of a store clerk in Spartanburg.

Despite saying credible evidence of his innocence has been raised, the Supreme Court of the United States has denied a stay for Texas death row inmate Robert Roberson III and said it’s up to Gov. Greg Abbott to issue a 30-day stay.

Robert Roberson’s attorneys are asking for a 30-day stay of execution before Thursday.

The state’s Republican attorney general agrees that Richard Glossip’s conviction should be thrown out based on problematic testimony at trial.

A man convicted of killing three people in workplace shootings has been executed with nitrogen gas in Alabama.

The executions in Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas will mark the first time in more than 20 years that five were held in seven days.

South Carolina has put inmate Freddie Owens to death in the state’s first execution in more than a decade.

The fate of a Missouri man convicted of killing his cousin and her husband nearly two decades ago appears to rest with the U.S. Supreme Court, with just hours to go before the scheduled execution.

A convicted killer on death row in Alabama told NBC News he no longer wants to delay justice for the families of the five people he murdered eight years ago and is ready to pay the ultimate price for his crimes.

Kenneth Eugene Smith appeared to shake and convulse before being pronounced dead Thursday at an Alabama prison after breathing the gas through a face mask to cause oxygen deprivation.