Lethal Injection

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Lethal injection is the practice of injecting a criminal with a fatal dose of drugs (typically a barbiturate) for the express purpose of executing the subject. The main application for this procedure is capital punishment, but the term may also be applied in a broad sense to euthanasia and suicide. Lethal injection gained popularity in the twentieth century as a form of execution intended to supplant other methods, notably electrocution, hanging, firing squad, gas chamber, and beheading, that were considered to be more painful. It is now the most common form of execution in the United States: every American execution in 2005 was conducted by lethal injection.