Is the death penalty slowly dying?

The United States is one of a dwindling number of nations that stills executes its citizens (thirty nine individuals in 2013). That job has recently gotten harder.

Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the US has used a cocktail of three lethal drugs as its preferred method of execution.

However, since the Danish manufacturer of one of these drugs declared that it would no longer sell their product to US prisons, states have been scrambling for alternatives. 

The Missouri State Department of Corrections chose to substitute another drug, compounded pentobarbital, but a Federal judge blocked the pharmaceutical company’s attempt to supply the drug. The lawsuit declared that execution by compounded pentobarbital would cause  

“severe, unnecessary, lingering and ultimately inhumane pain.”

Faced with the same problem, Virginia attempted to make death by electric chair the default method of execution under state law. The bill failed earlier this week.

Finally, some states have abolished the death penalty altogether. Maryland outlawed the punishment last May, making it the eighteenth state to do so. Washington declared a state moratorium on Tuesday.

The death penalty inspires passion on both sides of the aisle, and with good cause.

Join the debate, and tell us: is it every okay for the government to kills its own citizens? And if somebody is going to die, does it matter how it happens?