DALLAS — A bungled execution in Oklahoma in which the condemned prisoner writhed and moaned as he received a lethal injection outraged death-penalty opponents, invited court challenges and attracted worldwide attention.
But the inmate’s agony alone is highly unlikely to change minds about capital punishment in the nation’s most active death-penalty states, where lawmakers say there is little political will to move against lethal injections — and a single execution gone wrong won’t change that.
Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian, a Republican lawmaker who pushed to have state Supreme Court justices impeached for briefly halting Tuesday’s execution, was unsparing.
“I realize this may sound harsh,” Christian said, “but as a father and former lawman, I really don’t care if it’s by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions.”
Attorneys for death-row inmates hope Tuesday’s spectacle provides new evidence to argue that the injections are inhumane and illegal.
But beyond the courtroom, support for capital punishment is undeterred in the states that perform the greatest number of executions — Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Missouri, Alabama, Georgia and Ohio. And nowhere in those places are any elected officials of either political party talking seriously about using the incident to seek an end to executions.
National surveys by Gallup indicate that support for the death penalty remains strong, although it has declined over the past 20 years — from 80 percent in favor of capital punishment in 1992 to 60 percent two years ago.
There are signs of a shift, primarily in the West and Northeast, after almost four decades in which no state legislatures voted to end executions.
Five states — New Jersey, New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut and Maryland — have formally abolished the death penalty in the past seven years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment.
New York’s death penalty was abolished by a court, and several other states have placed executions on hold. An anti-death penalty bill in New Hampshire fell one vote short of passage.
Lawmakers in those states most often cited factors besides problems with lethal injection. Several governors cited the risk that an innocent person could be executed or the skyrocketing costs of fighting appeals in death-row cases.
Texas has executed 515 inmates since reinstating the death penalty in 1982, by far more than any other state. Gov. Rick Perry and both the Republican and Democratic candidates for governor have repeated their support for capital punishment and their confidence in Texas’ system.
Juries in Texas are already giving fewer death sentences, suggesting a larger shift, said Kristin Houle, executive director of the Texas Coalition to End the Death Penalty.
